¿Cómo se puede utilizar la ciencia del comportamiento para mantener el impulso del cambio cultural?

It is not only the effort required to overcome inertia that matters. It is the attitude, subconscious or not, of clinging to the comfort of what is familiar, visible, & known. After all, “People do not fear change, they fear loss.“ As a change leader, you must show, & show clearly, how what people are gaining (versus what they perceive they are losing as you journey together from “the now“ to “the new“) is better than what they currently have, even though it is unfamiliar, invisible, & unknown. By bridging present & future in accessible, tangible, & meaningful ways, you invite others to focus on what they gain. This fuels an asset-based mindset, rather than a deficit-based one, helping people see how they play their part in leading change.

This is a great starting point but lacks clarity on where to begin. To make change management easy, i'd recommend starting with your personas. For example, if you're transitioning to a new task management software it's helpful to preemptively outline the observed strengths and challenges that different roles or departments may face with this transition. From there, you're better equipped to see the obstacles they're facing and how you can actually make it easier for them.

Make it easy AND have senior leadership model the desired new behaviour. For example, if the new cultural norm is "failing is ok, it helps us innovate", then ideally, the senior leadership starts sharing their very own experiences having made a mistake, what they learned in the process and how this has made them better leaders. This could be turned into a company wide co-creative effort: have employees talk about failed projects and what they learned from it on the intranet. Sky really is the limit when it comes to modelling new behaviours and habits and communicating these new norms on company-wide channels.

While all Change Management best practices are coming from understanding the human psychology, using learnings from behavioural science is a next level. Everybody knows that communication is inevitable in a change but that does not say what to communicate. Like, what are the current beliefs in the organization that should be considered helping, or hindering the change. If change is needed, how to build up the new language that can support the spread of new beliefs with credibility. A basic example: Do your employees believe that your company is successful or not. Surveys might not bring you the true responses. But the belief will define how the management communication will be interpreted by the employees, and how will they react.

In my experience, to sustain cultural change momentum as a change executive, leverage behavioral science by understanding human behavior, setting clear behavioral goals, implementing nudges and social norms, gathering feedback, and iterating your strategies. Ensure leadership role modeling, effective communication, training, and inclusivity. Apply behavioral economics principles, measure progress, and maintain a long-term commitment. This approach fosters a culture aligned with desired behaviors, making change more lasting and impactful.

"Making it easy" is not always surface level. Though through a behavioural science lens, you can design great change experiences by really looking into what "easy" might mean, to your audience. For example, the use of the COM-B model. Capability, Opportunity, Motivation = Behaviour). How are you making the Capability uplifts easy and relevant? How are you creating the physical and or psychological Opportunities to change - e.g., identifying and removing barriers, roadblocks and or mitigating risks where the processes, work or otherwise, get in the way. And Motivation. Considerations for social norms or other factors that could be perceived as easy or hard by our intrinsic system.

Start with the Why! Also, do not give other options. Make the transition easy, maybe even fun. Make sure it's simple and not complicated. Make sure there are clear instructions available after training is implemented. Make training mandatory.

Simplifying the approach to change is the key to increase adoption. Think Global Act Local, the principle comes handy to have a consistent overall strategy while using tactical approaches to implement the desired change in different teams. Share stories that highlight the simple shifts that can be incorporated into everyday decisions and actions. Most importantly, socialize the touch points to resolve issues when stuck. That makes it little more simple, doable and the change begins!

Whether using Waterfall or Agile or a hybrid, as you create and refine the system design (manual and computer processes), do everything possible to simplify the existing or new process for the front-line user. Communication to all those impacted by the change should get regular info about what changes are coming. As part of that info, point out how their process is being kept as simple as possible (preferably simpler than before the change), to get their buy-in from the start. Communicating often, not just to executives and mangers, but to all stakeholders at all levels of the organization, is crucial to successful adoption.

At the beginning of the change journey, the end result is known but it is not clear in terms of its final shape and form. That will happen in due course of the transformation project. At the beginning, the focus should be on understanding the stakeholder map and also understanding their pain points. Then, use these pain points to create urgency for the change.

What this truly boils down to is 'what is in it for me'! As soon as we bring forth the individuals' personal goal or self-interest with the behaviour change, it shows them the direct impact of the change on their life. External motivation or a reward may not be sustainable, but when the motivation is intrinsic, it becomes part of their habit. That's what makes behaviours stick!

In addition to making it attractive, motivation for end users is equally important. A compelling vision for change, supporting self-efficacy, and involving impacted stakeholders in the process so they have their 'skin in the game' will result in better outcomes and real and sustained change.

As stated in the previous point, regular communication is key. Letting EVERYONE know the project progress along the way will generate wider interest. Having front-line users directly involved in some of the testing will also help spread the news of better and/or simpler processes being developed. I suggest having many users working on small pieces. This has the advantage of spreading information as widely as possible, and minimizes the impacts to any single manager or group. Getting front-line staff to help on a project is always seen as taking away from the day-to-day work. Keeping the work small for each person makes the burden much lighter for each manager.

This post eludes to the EAST model. This is a great behavioral science tool to encourage behaviour and memorability. Both of which are important for change in highly distracted workplaces. Make it Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely. This can be applied to many facets of change, from engagement, communications or collateral. Though, it is a good check-in, rather than the only behavioural science model / tool that can be applied to change that gets both cut-through and sticks.

Do you know what I really like? "Kudos" intranet boards where employees can praise each other for their model behaviour and effort! Every single time I received one of these "kudos to you" messages while working for a Swiss bank, it absolutely made my day.

Find the parts of change that will make things better, easy, fast for the individual stakeholder groups and let them know about them. This is attractive. Then pick the not-so-attractive ones and communicate them also. This is important. This is setting the right expectations. Finally the ugly ones ... well, you got to deliver the bad news too but see if there is a possibility of opening up a dialogue with project team to see if the ugly ones could be made better. Inform the stakeholders on this too. Deliver the good news .. and the bad news too. Build credibility for the change process and yourself too. This will come in handy in the later stages of the project.

People find things more attractive when there is social proof (see Robert Cialdini for more on influence techniques). That means others are getting involved or doig things differently and they are having some FOMO. You can seed a small group tasked with doing something differently …. and then task then with getting others involved. This will build initial momentum. Refer to 17 top transformation tips for more. https://learnadmin.futurebuildersgroup.com/register-for-17-top-tips

When designing rewards, we can often revert to feeding extrinsic motivations like recognition, status, financial incentives. These have their place, but it's worth targeting intrinsic motivation because that means people are acting for personally meaningful reasons, making it more likely for them to continue to act in that way. Continuing with the H&S culure change example, making hazard reporting attractive could involve something simple like a notification letting the frontline worker know the hazard has been fixed & providing examples of the kind of workplace injuries their timely action saved their co-workers from. Equally it may need to involve making not-reporing unattractive by targeting personal accountability through penalties.

When highlighting the benefits and attractors of change, don't underestimate the power of being honest about the potential challenges as well. If you call out the potential issues ahead of time, employees are not surprised when one of them arises. This makes them more adaptable to the challenge, rather than that challenge overbearing their ability to remain focused on the benefits. Also, this creates greater trust. There is no sense of burying the challenge underneath the benefits (like "the fine print"). And it gives you the opportunity to build the bridge for them between how the benefits outweigh the challenges anyway (in spite of).

Navigating the merger of seven companies into one was a monumental task. The key? Emotional intelligence. Over 800 hours of workshops engaged more than 500 colleagues, turning them into change agents. We simplified the change process, making it easy to digest. Workshops made it attractive, highlighting the benefits of a unified culture. Emotional intelligence communities made it social, offering peer-to-peer learning and emotional support. Timely alignment with merger milestones ensured the change was not just implemented but deeply felt. The result? A thriving, unified culture.

On many projects (e.g. new products, regulatory changes, new payment methods, etc), we made sure there were multiple channels for feedback. We made sure to keep the front-line people informed, and they were encouraged to submit questions and observations. Many times, their input helped improve the final product by letting us know about procedures that were usually not documented. It also gave everyone a sense that the changes were something THEY owned.

This is true and the challenge is: How do you engage the non-engaged employees? Ultimately, their resistance or lack of buy-in to a new project / program will cost an organization money/ resources.

The intention-action gap can honestly be a huge chasm to cross in culture change 😅! Even after the environment is optimised & awareness saturated, behavioural change may not spread. This is where executives and peer influencers can shine. In the case of driving 100% hazard reporting, normalising safety culture as a core value is a given. Encouraging compliance would mean routine spotlighting of desired safety behaviours by leaders. Equally important is organic adoption from the bottom-up. I've seen this work to great effect where geographically spread champion networks of a firm would compete with before & after pics of their physical sites as part of their efforts to embed the 5S Lean methodology. Collective action driven commitment 😉

If you adopt the practice of enlisting "change champions" be VERY intentional. You are not always seeking the most extroverted "people person." They may be very social and charming, and very poor at responding to change. They may be great at holding engaging conversations and offering a platform for others to offer concerns, and also very good at focusing on problems rather than orienting to solutions. Change Champions can have an amazing impact on the success of change initiatives. Just be sure they have the right attributes to make a positive impact rather than a toxic one (even if on accident).

I've spoken in each submission above about the importance of regular communication to every stakeholder, especially front-line staff. In one project, we started this method for the first time, and initially received little response. We increased the communications to monthly. Feedback greatly increased once we started to include the feedback provided in our communication, as well as the communication being more timely. We also made sure to keep everything in simple English/French. By having monthly updates, the entire company felt a vested interest in the success of the project, and training time was minimized. The updates continued through the end of the roll-out to ensure the whole company knew how it went.

Making change timely is not just about feedback and timely behavioral cues. It's also about the literal timeliness of the change - when it is occurring. Be strategic about when making a change, what change you are making at that time, and how fast or slow you are trying to make that change. People need adaptation time when it comes to change. They need to have time to process mentally, as well as time enough to fail at the change too (they need to have time to try, accidentally relapse, and then succeed). Make the timing of a change a very "on purpose" act.

The timing is very important and this brings us to the importance of have an exhaustive communications plan that uses multiple modes of communication and addresses all the stakeholders. Take your stakeholders through the AUSIC communication continuum AUSIC - Awareness Understanding Support Involved Commitment

For the behaviour to change in a timely and contextual manner, you require individuals who will champion this. This will ensure the different situations and feedback are attended to in time as they will be monitoring and facilitating these processes. These champions will need to have been onboarded and trained before the change initiative is rolled out to employees. It would be useful to ensure these champions come from all levels of the business. They will also be meeting after the initiative has been rolled out to share how it is progressing.

Let's face it - humans are attention-poor, inerita-laden creatures. Presenting information, just-in-time in the relevant context vastly improves the chances that we will take the appropriate action or make the right decision. To wrap up the scenario of maintaining momentum on a safety culture, adoption of digital twins could provide timely nudges to on-site workers so they can keep an eye out for specific hazards based on environmental conditions or other data. This would ensure they are not only alert & actively aware of potential issues in the moment (hence saved from harm), but can then also confirm the existence of the hazard to improve the system's predition capabilities as well as auto-report the hazard for fixing.

The change manager's role is to help people (including themselves) get past their conceptual habits and biases. That's the important (and often overlooked) CONCEPTUAL component of CHANGE. We ignore it because in many people’s mind... “Conceptual” is essentially a synonym for talking (or thinking) things to death and not getting enough done. But “getting stuff done” usually means getting stuff done within the boundaries of what people believe is achievable and acceptable. Those boundaries are imposed by their mindset... A way of thinking that leads them to evaluate and respond to change in a certain way. Behavioral science can help people to see opportunities beyond what they have defined as limits.

James Clear’s Atomic Habits it’s one book that one should consider reading to gain additional perspective. Change is challenging, change is disruptive and change is inevitable. Making it as easy as possible for people helps to lower our nature defence mechanism, to reject changes. Give change the necessary time that it deserves and not expecting things to happen overnight.

To sustain cultural change momentum as a change executive, leverage behavioral science by understanding human behavior, setting clear behavioral goals, implementing nudges and social norms, gathering feedback, and iterating your strategies. Ensure leadership role modeling, effective communication, training, and inclusivity. Apply behavioral economics principles, measure progress, and maintain a long-term commitment. This approach fosters a culture aligned with desired behaviors, making change more lasting and impactful.

It's important to embrace early resistance as a natural response! To recognize it as one of the ways that people engage with the change. I would be far more concerned if people are passive, if they're not reacting, if they're not questioning or seeking to understand the change. Change succeeds or fails one person at a time. We succeed with change when we can influence the mindset of groups; when we can identify and realign the learnt patterns of teams and individuals; when we can inspire action!

Here is another dimension to approach culture change momentum and incorporating behavioral science. Look at it from a product management view and treat change as a ‘product’ and people your ‘customers’. Then assess the cognitive, emotional and behavioral and financial distance of the people involved/impacted by change to the change itself and what measures and indicators are needed to close that gap. This can also help identify the objectives and key results(OKRs) that organizations are intending to enable with culture change and agility, thus resulting in increased customer experience.

Human nature is to be afraid of change, no matter how it's portrayed. The best way I've found in many projects over 35 years to reduce the stress, is by bringing as many of those impacted by the change into the heart of the change. The wider the involvement, the more people see the benefits and feel ownership of the change. That positivity can spread quickly.

Gotta love the EAST framework by the Behavioural Insights Team! I'd say that before jumping into designing interventions to influence culture change, it's important to conduct on-the-ground research around barriers and facilitators for the desired behaviours and outcomes. That should then inform the interventions for each principle in the EAST framework. Usually the COM-B model or the TDF model can assist in identifying and digging into this. I enjoy reading Robert Meza's ideas around how to apply these models, worth checking out :)