Hello World Labs School of Climate Action Design

“Block Leader" programs are proven to be the most effective way to spread environmental change. Here are 5 things you can do to get started on this proven-to-work method in your community??. What is a block leader? It's a motivated person in each "block" i.e. a street or area containing about 30 - 100 households. Out of this block, they may inspire 5 - 10 people to join an active team and meet regularly. These folks go out feet-on-the-street and talk to their neighbors, host events, Zooms, and info nights about the environmental action at hand. It could be about installing heat pumps, food gardening, or anything. It's also called "relational organizing." And we need sustainability programs doing WAY more of it. ?? Stop thinking of your audience as finite individuals. ? Start thinking of your audience as "pods" of socially connected groups of 4 - 7 people - with a leader. Here's a checklist of 5 things to brainstorm on how your environmental org could incentivize these hyper-local groups to manifest: ?? How can you discover, invite, and motivate members of your community to become block leaders? ?? How can you support them with software, training, check-ins, and resources? ?? How can you help Block Leaders communicate with each other and buddy one another so that they keep making progress? ?? Can you offer Block Leaders a monthly stipend payment and give them a budget? ?? How can you reward Block Leaders for reaching goals and making measurable progress? Once again, behavioral science research shows that the chestnuts we have often relied on to engage people such as climate facts, climate doom, and environmental education are often the least effective ways to get people to act. It seems that getting people into small geographically close-knit groups is the secret sauce of driving change. Research Paper: Social influence approaches to encourage resource conservation: A meta-analysis, Wokje?Abrahamse, Journal of Global Environmental Change. Enjoy this? Learn how to design the world's most impactful climate program in our 2025 Climate Action Design School. Join the waitlist here ?? https://lnkd.in/gRtR-ect Share and follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design ?? for daily tips on how to build a movement of change.

"How much do we need to pay each household to decarbonize their home?" a sustainability manager asked ??. Here's why the question is wrong: Behavioral science shows that all pro-environmental behavior is governed by two forces. It's called "The Campbell Paradigm." These forces are: 1. Attitude: "How motivated am I to do the green action?" 2: Barriers: "That thing is stopping me from doing the green action." ?? A highly motivated person will overcome big barriers. ?? Tiny barriers will stop less motivated people. Makes sense. So where does it get messed up? ?? Mistake 1: Increasing "environmental attitude", like adding more education to a community that already has a high green attitude. More green info ?? for already motivated green people ??. It's like giving a vitamin to someone who does not have a deficiency - it's unnecessary. We see this all the time. ?? Mistake 2: Removing the wrong "barrier" (like cost). Is the barrier price? Maybe it's something else. Barriers are not just $. Each demographic of people will experience a different type of barrier. Your community could not be taking action because of SIX potential barriers: 1. Cost 2. Physical 3. Time 4. Habit 5. Attention 6. Culture (it's socially awkward) Address each one of the barriers. 5 out of 6 are not financial. Putting all your budget towards removing the cost barrier might be the least efficient and most expensive way to get your community to change ??. ?? Mistake 3: Using ?? as the carrot?? to increase motivation. Money CAN motivate behavior, but it is the most expensive way to do it. I talk with lifetime researcher of The Campell Paradigm, professor Florian G. Kaiser, on the How to Save the World Podcast about the limitations of finance-only models of thinking. He reveals that financial incentives only work short term. Once the $ isn't there, the behavior stops. The solution? ? Map out your target audience. Talk to them. Learn from them. Find the barriers and thoughtfully work to remove them. It's often not a deficit of "knowledge" or "affordability" as we assume. ? Use $ incentives very surgically ONLY when it's a known barrier for an already motivated group. You know that saying: "When you have a hammer, every problem looks like a nail"? Share with your sustainability network and follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design?for more behavioral science insights for green leaders. Want to design the world's most impactful climate program? Join the waitlist for our 2025 Climate Action Design School ?? https://lnkd.in/g2AXiaB2

Why do we need “individual action” when what we really need is “systems change”? ?? Positive environmental change requires 3 main drivers: 1. Technology: simple or high-tech - anything in the 3D world. 2. Policy: the rules that prevent and incentivize behavior. 3. Psychology: the collective mindset, culture, habits, and norms of the people. Money mitigates each of the spheres. Why can’t we simply leap to system-change everywhere? We have to look at what changes a system. Change doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in stages through a process of social diffusion. Early innovators take on the new behavior and influence the early adopters. The early adopters influence the early majority. Somewhere in here, the magic zone of the tipping point takes place. And then, the society is primed for the government to take action, as a system. It would be nice to wave a magic wand and have systems everywhere instantly changed, but the reality is that government (systems) will only bring in a mandatory system AFTER some kind of tipping point of traction has been reached. The individual actions of every eco innovator, indie activist, green lifestyle enthusiast, and clean tech inventor is REQUIRED to spread the movement to the early adopters IN ORDER for it to get traction with the government, where at this stage, it may get embedded into “the system.” There is no system change without first, individual behaviors building a movement. Just like big corporations don’t innovate like startups, governments don’t innovate social change like indie innovators or grass roots groups. It’s not a binary. It’s a flow. Enjoy this? ?? Share and follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design for more evidence-based insights on the science of social change. Want to design the world's most impactful climate program? Join the waitlist for our 2025 Climate Action Design School ?? https://lnkd.in/g2AXiaB2

Want to design the world's most impactful climate action program, startup, or campaign? Steal our signature behavior mapping process??: This template is what we use to help environmental leaders take complicated, messy, and confusing environmental challenges (they all are!) and streamline them down into a singular elegant concept that gets the right target person across the line to complete an action. We've taught it to UNEP, Google, NASA, and many more environmental groups, universities, and climate tech startups. If your environmental work in any way requires influencing a human to do a thing (which is most of the time), you HAVE to learn this process. It will reveal blindspots you didn't know you had that are killing your engagement. It will help catalyze great ideas, based on proven behavioral science. And will start to put it together in an "action funnel" where you can start tracking the progress of how effective you are in attracting the right people's attention and successfully guiding them to complete the action. This behavior mapping process is as detailed as it gets and leaves no stone unturned. This process differs from other behavior, gamification, or software design tools on one critical point - it doesn't optimize for clicks, sign-ups, or sales that most other materials you'll read are created to do. It revolves around a data-driven feedback loop of a *real-world* environmental metric, like CO2, trees, temperature, plastic, or water. The core is a systems-driven cybernetic feedback loop. The rest of it augments that primary mechanism of change - and that changes everything. People think I'm all about environmental behavior - and it does look like that on the surface, but what I'm really about is CAUSALITY. What is the causal mechanism of change? Get this right, and your campaign will flourish. That's what this template maps out. Learn how to wield this powerful 10-step process and the 96 behavior techniques by listening to a free podcast tutorial on Episode 41 of the How to Save the World Podcast. Get the higher-resolution file of the poster as a free bonus when you sign up for the waitlist ?? Want to learn how to design the world's most impactful climate program? Join the waitlist for our 2025 Climate Action Design School ?? https://lnkd.in/g2AXiaB2 Follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design ?? for daily tips on building movements of change.

The biggest blind spot nearly EVERY climate entrepreneur has is funnel-blindness ??. It could be costing you all the momentum and impact you hope for. "Funnel blindness" is working on your "idea" while ignoring the “funnel” that brings people to it. 90% of climate and sustainability projects stay half finished and NEVER launch, often for this reason. If you don't want this to happen to you, you need to: ?? Stop working on your current idea. ? Start working on your funnel instead. In this post, I will teach you the structure of a Climate Action Funnel. The thing is, EVERYTHING is a funnel. No amount of funding, gamification, or nice graphics can outdo a weak or non-existent funnel. You need to get this right. A funnel is 3-part online system you build to: 1. Grab the attention of your target people 2. Build a relationship with them 3. Sell a product, action, or behavior. BUT you need to CONNECT each step in the funnel with a bridge. That's why the “Climate Action Funnel" has these 6 steps: 1. HOOK: What phrase will you use to grab their attention? BRAINSTORM THIS FIRST ???? ?? 2. SOCIAL MEDIA CONTENT: If they are grabbed by the hook, they'll watch the reel or read the post. ?? 3. LANDING PAGE: If they love the video, post, or DM, they'll sign up to give their email and phone number to a waitlist, newsletter, or online group. ?? 4. RELATIONSHIP-BUILDING: Now you have their contact details, you can invite them to know you and your cause better with more detailed long-form content like a webinar, 1:1 call, in-person event, group zoom, or free assessment. ?? 5. OFFER: If they've enjoyed the deep dive, you can sign them up to the offer. This can be a physical product, installation, taking an action, or changing a behavior. ?? 6. PRODUCT/ACTION: Now you deliver the product, service, or community to support your customer. If any step is missing, your idea has no means to get the 20, 100, or 2 million people you need to see it for it to get off the ground. To create environmental transformation, don't fall into the trap of thinking you need a single idea. No ? In fact, you need SIX ideas (omg yes 6) for each section of the funnel. The purpose of each idea is to guide a person to the next step. Excited to 6X your ideas? It is work. But it WORKS. Start brainstorming ideas for each of these six steps ???????????? Enjoy this? Share and follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design ?? for daily tips for sustainability leaders to build movements of change. Want to design the world's most impactful climate program? Join the waitlist for our 2025 Climate Action Design School ?? https://lnkd.in/gRtR-ect

Could financial climate incentives be a mistake? It's easy to assume money is the best way to motivate change, but depending on the situation, it might be THE most inefficient way, per dollar per ton of CO2 to persuade people. Use "The Campbell Paradigm" to figure out the answer for your climate program. The Campbell Paradigm shows all pro-environmental behavior is governed by two forces: 1. Attitude: "How motivated am I to do the green action?" 2: Barriers: "The thing stopping me from doing the green action." ?? A highly motivated person will overcome big barriers. ?? Tiny barriers will stop less motivated people. 5 out of 6 barriers are not money. Things that stop people other than the price, are: 1. Physical 2. Time 3. Habit 4. Attention 5. Culture Take time to carefully map out how these other 5 barriers are stopping people. Financial incentives often only work short term. Once the $ isn't there, the behavior stops. There are 3 scenarios people will fall into: SCENARIO 1: High green attitude person + high barrier ?? Don't create more green info ?? for already motivated green people. It's like giving a vitamin to someone who does not have a deficiency. ? Use $ incentives very surgically ONLY when it's a known barrier for an already motivated group. SCENARIO 2: Low green attitude person + low barrier ?? Don't remove the wrong "barrier" (like cost). Maybe the barrier is something other than money. Study the target person and address each one of the barriers. 5 out of 6 are not financial. ? DO Increase knowledge and awareness about the cause. Map out your target audience. Talk to them. Learn from them. Find the barriers and thoughtfully work to remove them. SCENARIO 3: High green attitude + low barrier ?? Don't use ?? as the carrot?? to increase motivation for people who have a high green attitude but for some reason, haven't gotten around to the action. By applying The Campell Paradigm to your climate program, you can be more deliberate and surgical about where to focus your environmental education efforts, and how to structure financial incentives so you get the most green bang for your climate bucks. Share and follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design ?? for daily tips on how to build a movement of change. Want to design the world's most impactful climate program? Join the waitlist for our 2025 Climate Action Design School ?? https://lnkd.in/g2AXiaB2

Quiz: Which type of image works better to trigger climate action? This is what a neuroscientist discovered ???? ?? Images of climate impact: storms, drought, pollution etc. OR ?? Images of climate solutions: solar panels, green roofs, wind turbines etc. Research by neuroscientist Dr Joshua Carlson tested the effect of different climate images in his lab. His hypothesis? That scary climate impact images of storms and fires would increase our autonomic (unconscious) attention the same way a threat might trigger our attention. He was surprised that his hunch was wrong. The climate doom images didn't grab attention at all. They had the opposite effect. The storms, floods, melting glaciers, and fires triggered our autonomic freeze effect" (like a deer-in-the-headlights) essentially shutting down attention ??. Conversely, images of climate solutions like wind turbines, solar panels, and vegetable gardens increased the participant's attention. In this study, "attention" was measured using the instant milliseconds of eye movement before the conscious mind had the chance to kick in. This research suggests that if you're using problem-centric climate messaging, it could be backfiring ??. ?? Repost and share or tag someone you know who frequently shares negative climate news. What do you think of this new comic style of psychology tips for Hello World Labs School of Action Design? Does it clearly explain the concept? Let me know ???? Enjoy this? Follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design ?? for more psychology-backed tips on how to activate your community to take environmental action. Want to design the world's most impactful climate program? Join the waitlist for our 2025 Climate Action Design School community & training program ?? https://lnkd.in/g2AXiaB2

Don't fall in the trap of accidentally using climate action techniques that don't work. Here are 24 evidence-based behavioral science systems that are proven to influence environmental and climate behavior in the real world (not just more talking and learning). How to use it: Firstly, map out your "starter triad" for impact of: ? The single data metric you are trying to shift. ? The target person you need to influence. ? The medium you'll use to make first contact. Identify the specific real-world action you want them to do. Then go through each of these techniques carefully, one by one, and consider how you can use them to encourage your target person to complete the action. This is Step 8 of my signature Behavior Mapping Template. Note that none of these techniques include "education" or "caring." Although these two things do increase green motivation, they are weakly linked to real world behavior that you can measure. Skip directly to the action you want your people to take and pile on as many nudges as you can. Enjoy this? ?? Share and follow Hello World Labs School of Action Design ?? for daily tips on how to build a movement of change. Join the waitlist for our 2025 community and training program at ?? https://lnkd.in/g2AXiaB2