Behaviour Change and the MEDICs

Fraught Decisions
Julie Dirksen's been writing about Fraught Decisions and fraught subject matters. Here she is summarising some of the ideas on fraught decisions from Thaler and Sunstein's bestseller, Nudge:

One of the book’s examples of a fraught decision is saving for retirement – you have costs now, but don’t see the benefits for years or decades, it’s very difficult to determine what the right amount really will be, and also difficult to wade through all the fund options, tax laws and retirement plans that make little or no sense to the lay person, you probably only make these decisions once a year or so, while you do get feedback in the form of account statements, it’s difficult to interpret that feedback (“Did the account go up because of something I did, or is it just the state of the market?”), and unless you are a professional or a retirement account wonk, you aren’t like to have innate likes or dislikes to guide you (“You know, I just really like the feel of no-load mutual funds.”).

It's a great post (as usual) and if you're involved in any kind of LXD or Instructional Design you should click through.

Re-education Camps
Grappling with the idea of helping people change their behaviour - for that's what the whole business of Fraught Decisions is about - is a relatively recent phenomenon for most learning professionals. You'll struggle to see more than a hint of behaviour change in Bloom's Taxonomy, for instance. (Kirkpatrick fudges it.) And there are some good reasons for this, perhaps. Would you want to take part in a 'behaviour change programme'? 


Nevertheless, if you work for an organisation with some kind of competency framework, you're already under a behaviour change regime - and probably not a very good one at that.


As Julie points out, BJ Fogg has been doing some great work on a possible theoretical framework for behaviour change. He's identified three necessary conditions for behaviour change; motivation, ability and trigger. Without all three there will probably be no behaviour change (there's a clue to the weakness in the way trainers view this).

More recently, he's come up with the Fogg Behaviour Grid. In his own words:

With this framework, people can refer to specific behaviors like a "PurpleSpan Behavior" or a "GrayPath Behavior." For example one might say, "The Google Power meter focuses on a GrayPath behavior." My new terms give precision. 

But this innovation goes beyond identifying the 15 types of behavior change and giving them clear names. I also propose that each behavior type has its own psychology. And this has practical value: Once you know how to achieve a GrayPath Behavior, you can use a similar strategy to achieve other GrayPath Behaviors (for example, getting people to watch less TV). In this way, the Behavior Grid can help designers and researchers work more effectively.

And here's the grid (you have to click on it to make it big enough to read - UX #FAIL on my part. Sorry.):

The grid is great, and undeniably useful. But I do have a small niggling doubt.

One of the reasons we all did so badly on behaviour change in the past was the organisational silo. In many L & D-type scenarios, workers would be shipped off to the trainer, who would attempt some kind of knowledge transfer. Workers then went back to their managers who, in theory, followed up on the learning but, in practice, ticked a box on an appraisal form. There are lots of versions of this silo mentality but the crucial detail is this: the 'learning function' was kept separate from the 'doing function' in order to execute strategy more efficiently.

Every time we 'learning professionals' create another model or framework we put up another barrier to effective collaboration; we produce language anxiety.

We're implementing a "lean" initiative. . . 

And that's it, really. I worry that talking to people about Purple Dots and Black Spans will lead to fatigue. One thing I've noticed about workplace 'initiatives' is that as soon as people start to refer to the 'initiative' as an 'initiative' (with accompanying discomfort, embarrassment and the rabbit ears of forced irony) then that 'initiative' (or tool, technique, framework, whatever) is doomed. There are no exceptions to this rule. 

Unfortunately, I don't have much in the way of positive suggestion for how to overcome this apart from:

• Many Londoners refer to the tube lines by colour (eg the 'yellow' line instead of the Circle Line and so on). Giving the behaviours dual names might allow the possibility of colloquial versions emerging and thus avoiding the rabbit ears of forced irony (ie it's officially called the 'increase behaviour' column but space is left for users to add in their own idiomatic taxonomy).
• Some organisations use the acronym, MEDIC, for strategic planning and organisational development. MEDIC stands for maintain, enable, decrease, increase, cease (or Maintain, Eliminate, Decrease, Increase, Create, depending on who you talk to.) These correspond to the 'colour' columns of BJ Fogg's grid. It's 'stickier' - but could easily lead down the warren of disillusionment. Anyway, my main point is that organisations are already familiar with the maintain, increase, decrease etc thing and there might be a way to piggy-back on that.

The Neglected Half of Behaviour Change

Karen S Brethower wrote her seminal Human Performance Technology paper, Maintenance Systems: The Neglected Half of Behaviour Change [Link: PDF], back in 1967. So, 'behaviour change' shouldn't be an entirely new concept for L & D people.

Failure looms for programmed instruction projects in which there is inadequate consideration of maintenance systems. What happens to the trainee after training via programmed instruction is at least as important to job performance as the training itself. . .

If a system is to maintain a behavior it must do four things: (1) allow the behavior to occur with sufficient frequency; (2) not punish it; (3) reinforce it; and (4) not reinforce behaviors which conflict with it. . .

Analyze any problem you face to see whether it stems from a deficiency in main-tenance or from a deficiency in acquisition. . . 

Analyze and restructure, as necessary, the job environment in which employees are to use the skills trained. If this is not done, programs can fail for lack of job support. In designing your program, keep in mind that programmed instruction is a means of acquisition and, as such, only the first part of a behavior change system. Without maintenance acquisition is temporary.

BJ Fogg's grid is an incremental step forward for thinking about behaviour change in a systematic way. But, as this paper from 1967 observes, if there's no communication between the 'learning function' and the 'doing function' then all efforts will go to waste.

It's really really useful to learn about behaviour change from a psychological perspective but in (dysfunctional) organisations the 'system' will trump individual actions every time. The last post here was about collaboration, the priority in any Organisational Development programme. This post has been about performance support, the second.

More on Learning & Development:

• Why training departments aren't the best people to take ownership of behaviour change.
• Why behaviour change and anti-stress programmes at work are doomed.
• Triggers for behaviour change mean performance support and just-in-time learning (and why if you don't provide opportunities for this, somebody else will).
• Merit vs Worth. L & D evaluation shouldn't be judged on merit.
• This popped up via @hjarche and Tweetdeck as I was writing this. Serendipity.

More on Behaviour Change and Fraught Decisions:

• If you don't know Dan Lockton's work then shame on you!
• A couple of really really good pieces from McKinsey and Gary Klein - When can you trust your gut? How to test your decision-making instincts.
• ADKAR - a bit like BJ Fogg's MAT?

Humantics, hypergogues, collaboration, cognitive load

Hello, there. I've not posted for a while due to us having a new baby at home. Which has given me a chance to think about what I want to do here. And part of that is to place a greater emphasis on curation. Here's an experiment in form as I give a right good curating to something fantastic I found via @Choosenick on The Twitters. (You should follow him etc but you should also read his blog).


Let me know if you want more/less of this in the comments, please! Or just leave a random insult because of some imagined slight! It's all good! (You know who you are. . .)

Open publication - Free publishing

I've been spending (too much) time thinking about what exactly my approach to Instructional Systems Design (ISD) is. After a while, it gets a little tiresome when you end up defining up what you do in negative terms; we don't do formal learning! Man the barricades! Social Media, harumph!

One of the ideas I've been playing with is the idea of something which I couldn't give a name too. I tried Unreal Trainer and toyed with Pedagogy 2.0 (and even unPedagogy, andragogy, heutagogy, erm, unLearners - you get the picture). I eventually settled on Hypergogue. As a word, it's a little like my first bedsit - awkward and untidy but it feels like home. The basic idea is that my approach to ISD will to focus on, in order of priority:
1. Collaboration
2. Performance Support
3. Learnscape Design¹

Humantics is all about, No.1 on my list, sustainable collaboration.

The basic idea. . .
. . . of the Humantics thesis is to combine 'theory from psychology with design methods [to] promote successful collaboration by designing tools to help work groups manage their weakness and build on their strengths'.

Fraser Marshall and Justin Witman suggest a helpful way to analyse collaboration paralysis might be through the anxiety caused by LADR issues which can 'stunt autonomous behaviour', a prerequisite of creativity.

Language, Authority, Direction, Role (LADR)
Healthy collaboration is playful. Issues in the following areas can cause collaboration anxiety [all the pictures get bigger if you click them]:

Language: what does it all mean? ie unnecessary jargon, poorly organised information, over-reliance on text, lack of 'actionable knowledge'

Authority: who's the best person to lead at this moment? ie reactance, dependence, uncertainty

Direction: what are we trying to achieve?

Role: what am I supposed to be doing? What am I allowed to do? When should I stop?

One method to overcome anxiety is to use design tools which, ideally, 'present the user with the ambiguity of outcome', a concept influenced by Sutton-Smith's idea that "the distinguishing feature of play is that it is an exercise in free choice."

I'm guessing a distinguishing feature of 'play' is also a lack of anxiety.

The Humantics Process
Three phases, each with their own tools and aims:
Articulation: mapping, visualisations and scenario building.
Anxiety: filtering using LADR to identify possible sources of anxiety. Then co-creating cognitive tools to fight it.
Ambition: more tools to encourage self-sufficiency in the group; Motivators (maintain purpose), Generators (promote sharing and group health), and Reflectors (assess performance).

A look at Co-Working spaces
The authors spend some time studying Indy Hall, a co-working space, to work out what makes collaboration there successful. Quotes from some of the interviews:

"You're not renting a desk, you're renting your neighbours and a community."

People like social objects, such as:

"The chess board. Someone comes over to the chess board and four of us can work with a puzzle. It's a way to bond with people and make connections. It's a catalyst for creating relationships and conversations."

As well as chess boards, there's also "We Like" groups. People 'liked' coffee so they held a "Coffee-Off".

"The goal was to determine the exclusive coffee of Indy Hall, but three weeks later no winner had been decided. Why? It’s not important. Psychologically speaking, it simply served as an effective way to get people together to talk, bond and possibly collaborate. Sounds silly? One member had this to say about coffee time at Indy “Just the ideas that developed over coffee was amazing.” 

"When you create management for the sake of it, there's no way you're not overmanaging. So don't. Try and find ways to help things manage themselves."

Some observations from me:
I enjoyed the interviews. A lot of them reminded me of one of my favourite books, The Social Life of Information. With regard to management structures, the last quote is pretty much exactly what Systems Thinkers are saying. Or, at least, this is exactly how I'm interpreting them.

In my own experience, the people who are often the most sceptical and/or uncomfortable about games and touchy-feely facilitation tools like cards are the people with the most significant investment in the visible structures of the organisation.

Which is odd when you think about it. One of the arguments against, say, card games as a facilitation tool is that it's childish; adults don't need this kind of hand-holding from facilitators. But a card game is simply a very limited and very temporary structure. I guess nobody's saying we don't need 'structure' but rather that it's better to have structures that are rapidly assembled and then dismantled again. We're far better at assembling structures than we are at dismantling them. Compare that idea with this quote:

“At Indy Hall, unlike the corporate world, if you’re working with someone on a project and it doesn’t work out, you don’t have to work with them on the next one. In the corporate world, you’re stuck with that person and the relationship will get worse and you’ll get less productive.”

As somebody once said (I can't remember where, possibly in meatspace, it may even have been me), "You can often discover all of an organisation's mistakes by reading their HR and policy manuals." We tend to idolise our mistakes.

I was also interested in Indy Hall's insistence on low tech.

. . .nor will you be given a tutorial on the sophisticated printer–because there isn’t one. The most high-tech items available are the coffee machine and the dishwasher.

The bits from Humantics I'm so going to steal
Like I say, I think the whole thing's great. LADR's a useful framwork. But this is the bit I liked most, about the way they learned to organise information during the Articulation stage:

As mentioned, upon analysis of the workshop, most intriguing to us was what we learned from the group. We leaned how to categorize the interests. Specifically, definite requirements are Essentials, those that need serious consideration are Differentiators, whereas unique interests open for discussion are Exciters.

Essentials: These are the items that most participants agree on. Because they are represented by majority decision, these items are essential to the work-task and cannot be ignored or down played. Interestingly, while these items are seen as essentials, they can be put aside to focus on the next level interests.

Differentiators: These are the interests that are common to, but not shared by everyone in the group. For example, if an issue is of interest to only 30% of the group it is not essential yet it can also not be ignored. These differentiators should be discussed and related to other interests that share a similar point of view. This can often lead them to be part of a majority interest.

Exciters: These are the individual interests developed via the D.I.Y cards. These are individual interests that are created by single group members to express personal interests not represented by the provided topics. Because of their originality, exciters can be the topics of innovative discussion. These are unique, desired and therefore open to exciting development and creative solutions.

Humantics, Visualisation and Cognitive Load
I'll finish this summary with, what was for me, the main selling point of the Humantics approach.

As you'd expect from designers, they like a bit of visualisation. And some of the partipants' comments about visualisation techniques in their pilots are persuasive.

"Visualisation would help me overcome roadblocks that verbal communication cannot."

But the Humantics authors are hard-headed clear about the reasons behind their tools and approach; it reduces cognitive load.

It's useful to look at collaboration anxiety through the LADR lens but the cognitive limits to our ability to collaborate are just as important as the social limits. They quote Herbert Simon2 in the introduction:

“solving a problem simply means representing it so as to make the solution transparent.”

One way to make a solution transparent is to reduce cognitive load.

“Abstraction is hiding detail. Good abstraction is hiding the right detail”²

¹You can see I've nicked quite a bit from others. Not least the Internet Time Alliance. There's more here on how I'm using the word Hypergogue, if that's the kind of thing you're into. One thing I should say, Hypergogy is not supposed to replace anything. It just defines the kind of work I'm interested in. I've said it before and I shall say it again - there's still a place for training courses and the idea of the Teachable Equivalent is a useful one.

²Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial
There's a good summary here of the main ideas [PDF] which includes this quote from Mary Shaw
This piece is clear about our cognitive limits.