Most change programs can't clearly answer this question: what behavior are we actually trying to change?
It sounds so simple...to just define the actions, but in almost every project I've worked on, when I ask teams to define the behaviors they're targeting, what I get back is a mix of outcomes, behaviors, and levers all bundled together.
-We need people to be more collaborative... not a behavior -We need to improve psychological safety... still not a behavior -We need managers to ask each team member for input before making a decision in the weekly standup....ahh... finally a behavior.
The difference matters because each one requires a completely different response.
Outcomes are the results you want to see.. reduced turnover, faster adoption, ...you can't intervene on an outcome directly, you have to work backwards from it.
Behaviors are the specific, observable actions that need to be done or stopped for that outcome to happen.
Influeces/drivers are the conditions that make a behavior more or less likely.. the norms, the incentives, the environment, the capability, the motivation, the friction in the process...this is what your interventions should be working to address
When these three get mixed up, which happens more often than not, teams end up designing initiatives for outcomes they can't directly change, or removing influences they haven't properly identified.
Getting this distinction right is one of the first things we do with clients, not because it's academic, but because everything downstream depends on it.. your diagnosis, your interventions, your ability to measure whether anything actually changed.
It takes practice to define behaviors precisely, and then to actually prioritize them and choose the 3-5 that actually are most important and that you can start working on.
Where does your team tend to get stuck when it comes to defining and prioritizing behaviors?