leveraging behavioural science to deliver transformational...
TRANSCRIPT
Leveraging behavioural science to deliver transformational organisational change
Networking Sponsor:
Dr Carla GroomHead of Behavioural ScienceDepartment for Work and Pensions
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Dr Laura de MoliereHead of Behavioural Science EU Exit Communications
People are not cogs: Leveraging behavioural science to deliver transformational organisational change
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Dr Carla Groom & Nicholas Warrington, Dept for Work & Pensions
Goals are set by Parliament, Ministers and senior leaders
DWP creates strategies, systems
and internal processes
People respond
e.g. DWP staff, claimants, doctors
Outcomesare measuredIncluding short and long term indicators
When outcomes don’t match up to our goals, it’s natural to think the problem lies in people’s choices. In fact, it’s often because inaccurate assumptions have been made about people’s behaviour
Sometimes ‘nudges’ can go some way to close the gap
e.g. HMRC tweaked the text on their tax reminder letters, increasing tax revenue by £210m
But large‐scale behaviour change requires fundamental systemic change
e.g. DWP and the Pensions Commission introduced automatic enrolment, projected to increase savings into workplace pensions by £17 billion a year from 2019‐2020
Our system-wide approach to behaviour
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1. Refining intent 3. Understanding barriers and motivators to behaviours to achieve intent
4. Designing approaches and systems to make the desired behaviours more likely
2. Defining behaviours required to achieve intent
Our methods support the very early stages of change
HR: Re‐designing performance management
Finance: Supporting senior leaders to think about behaviour in transformation
“Some of the biggest problems with reforms have arisen when people have not behaved as departments expected.”
Lessons for Major Service TransformationNAO, 2015
We discovered some commonalities – which were backed up by successive reports on transformation programmes
We’ve worked with two major change programmes
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Why is behaviour overlooked?
Consider the language of transformation: “blueprint”, “lever”, “reengineering”…
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Goals are set Creation of systems and internal processes
Outcomes are measured
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Goals are set Creation of systems and internal processes
People respond
e.g. staff, stakeholders, customers
Outcomes are measured
But organisations are not machines, and people are not cogs
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Preferably not like this…
Goals are set Creation of systems and internal processes
Culture change work
group
How to change the behaviour of
people so that it fits the
systems/processes?
How can we ensure people’s responses align with goals?
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Two reminders
1: As you cannot ‘design’ the people so that they fit the system, you have to design the system so that it works for the people.
2: “"Culture change" is merely a zeroth-order framing that screams "some hard, context-specific thinking needs to be done here."” – Venkatesh Rao
Pre-requisites for designing systems that work for people
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Empathy• Perspective-taking is
essential
• What is easy for people to do?
• What is difficult? • Why? • How could the environment
be changed to make it easier for them to do what they need to do?
Curiosity• Ask “why do people
behave the way they do?”
• Any answer needs to be backed with context-relevant, empirical evidence
• User research methods can become staff research methods, which can be supplemented with tools from behavioural science
Openness• We have a tendency to
view the behavior of other people as caused by their internal and stable dispositions
• This can make us miss the effect of situational factors, and so lead to inaccurate assumptions about behavior
• Remaining open to new information is necessary for keeping us grounded in reality
Doing the hard, context-specific thinking: Step by step
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1. Refining intent 3. Understanding barriers and motivators to behaviours to achieve intent
4. Designing approaches and systems to make the desired behaviours more likely
2. Defining behaviours required to achieve intent
Susan Michie’s COM-B tool views behaviour as resulting from interaction between 3 conditions:
CAPABILITY MOTIVATION OPPORTUNITY
Do I have the right knowledge to do it?
Do I have the right skills to do it?
Am I physically and mentally able to do it?
Do I believe I should do it?
Do I want to do it?
Do I have the necessary habits in place to do it?
Do I have the resources to do it?
Will the system or environment allow me do it?
Will the people around me help or hinder me in doing it?
Doing the hard, context-specific thinking: A behavioural tool
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Understand the problem before
designing the solution
Draw on context-specific evidence
Co-produce solutions, designing services around
the user
Investigate behaviour within processes and
systems
Define objectives and behaviours
required
Understand barriers and motivators to
behaviour required
Behaviours you might see if you’re doing behaviourally-informed transformation
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Over to you: What are the barriers to doing transformation this way?
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Understand the problem before
designing the solution
Draw on context-specific evidence
Co-produce solutions, designing services
around the user
Define objectives and behaviours
required
Understand barriers and motivators to
behaviour required
Investigate behaviour within processes and
systems
CAPABILITY MOTIVATION OPPORTUNITY
Do I have the right knowledge to do it?
Do I have the right skills to do it?
Am I physically and mentally able to do it?
Do I believe I should do it?
Do I want to do it?
Do I have the necessary habits in
place to do it?
Do I have the resources to do it?
Will the system or environment allow me
do it?
Will the people around me help or hinder me
in doing it?