Topics: behavioral science

Essay by Dilip Soman, and Bing Feng: “Over the past few years, we have had the opportunity to work with over 20 behavioral units as part of our Behaviourally Informed Organizations partnership. While we as a field know a fair bit about what works for changing the behavior of stakeholders, what can we say about what works for creating thriving behavioral units within organizations?

Based on our research and hard-won experience working with a diverse set of behavioral units in government, business, and not-for-profit organizations, we have seen many success stories. But we have also seen our share of instances where the units wished they had done things differently, units with promising pilots that didn’t scale well, units that tried to do everything for everyone, units that jumped to solutions too quickly, units too fixated on one methodology, and units too quick to dispense with advice without thinking through the context in which it will be used.

We’ve outlined six prescriptions that we think are critical to developing a successful behavioral unit—three don’ts and three dos. We hope the advice helps new and existing behavioral units find their path to success.

Prescription 1: Don’t anchor on solutions too soon

Many potential partners approach behavioral units with a preconceived notion of the outcome they want to find. For instance, we have been approached by partners asking us to validate their belief that an app, a website redesign, a new communication program, or a text messaging strategy will be the answer to their behavior change challenge. It is tempting to approach a problem with a concrete solution in mind because it can create the illusion of efficiency.

However, it has been our experience that anchoring on a solution constrains thinking and diverts attention to an aspect of the problem that might not be central to the issue.

For example, in a project one of us (Dilip) was involved in, the team had determined, very early on, that the most efficient and scalable way of delivering their interventions would be through a smartphone app. After extensive investments in developing, piloting, and testing an app, they realized that it didn’t work as expected. In hindsight, they realized that for the intervention to be successful, the recipient needed to pay a certain level of attention, something for which the app did not allow. The team made the mistake of anchoring too soon on a solution…(More)”.

Article by Erik Angner: “On a late-summer afternoon of 1938, two eleven-year-old girls waded into the water in Stora Rör harbor on the Baltic island of Öland. They were awaiting their mother, who was returning by ferry from a hospital visit on the mainland. Unbeknownst to the girls, the harbor had been recently dredged. Where there used to be shallow sands, the water was now cold, dark, and deep. The girls couldn’t swim. They drowned mere feet from safety—in full view of a powerless little sister on the beach.

The community was shaken. It resolved that no such tragedy should ever happen again. To make sure every child would learn to swim, the community decided to offer swimming lessons to anyone interested. The Stora Rör Swimming Association, founded that same year, is still going strong. It’s enrolled thousands of children, adolescents, and adults. My grandmother, a physical-education teacher by training, was one of its first instructors. My father, myself, and my children all learned how to swim there.

It’s impossible to know if the association has saved lives. It may well have. The community has been spared, although kids play in and fall into the water all the time. Nationwide, drowning is the leading cause of death for Swedish kids between one and six years of age.

We do know that the association has had many other beneficial effects. It has offered healthy, active outdoor summer activities for generations of kids. The activities of the association remain open to all. Fees are nominal. Children come from families of farmers and refugees, artists and writers, university professors and CEOs of major corporations, locals and tourists…

In economic terms, the Stora Rör Swimming Association is an institution. It’s a set of rules, or “prescriptions,” that humans use to structure all sorts of repeated interactions. These rules can be formalized in a governing document. The constitution of the association says that you have to pay dues if you want to remain a member in good standing, for example. But the rules that define the institution don’t need to be written down. They don’t even need to be formulated in words. “Attend the charity auction and bid on things if you can afford it.” “Volunteer to serve on the board when it’s your turn.” “Treat swimming teachers with respect.” These are all unwritten rules. They may never have been formulated quite like this before. Still, they’re widely—if not universally—followed. And, from an economic perspective, these rules taken together define what sort of thing the Swimming Association is.

Economist Elinor Ostrom studied institutions throughout her career. She wanted to know what institutions do, how and why they work, how they appear and evolve over time, how we can build and improve them, and, finally, how to share that knowledge with the rest of us. She believed in the power of economics to “bring out the best in humans.” The way to do it, she thought, was to help them build community—developing the rich network of relationships that form the fabric of a society…(More)”.