Applied Behavio(u)ral Science is not an Academic exercise

I love working in behavioural / behavioral science.

And I love the fact that we are wrestling with the growing pains of a maturing marketplace. Recently, I've observed that some of the more esoteric behavioural science studies are being questioned, and rightly so.

I think the long tail and 'codex of biases' is pretty ridiculous and not particularly helpful in designing behavioural solutions.

Here's what I've learnt from over a decade of dedicating my career to the field of applied behavioural science.

1.One small change often doesn't have a BIG effect. It takes lots of small changes.

If you're looking to change behaviour, I prefer to design an ecosystem of complementary principles, that work together in harmony throughout the experience, to change behaviour. For sure, it's far, far harder to disentangle what principle is driving which element of the behaviour change, but it's far easier to get repeatable business results.

I'm a firm believer in delivering 100 x small 1% changes. to achieve a good mutually based outcome.

2.Execution is everything. Poor design delivers poor results.

In my experience, behavioural scientists aren't taught how to design the end products and services in their training particularly well. Without training in an applied setting, very few make for good content creators. They are qualified to be very good strategists, but often hand over to a graphic or product designer to bring their ideas to life, and this is where dilution and misinterpretation occurs. Or worst still, they design things themselves that just look and feel rubbish and don't work very well.

3.Effect sizes are often incremental. Not transformational.

10x. Moonshots. Organ donations...

I'm so over this stuff. I often find that small changes that have incremental effects on markets at scale, can pay back significantly with statistically significant results. That's why I focus predominantly my work on larger businesses and bigger markets.

In my experience there are a number of robust, repeatable behavioural principles that do work across a variety of contexts in business, with measurable and beneficial outcomes.

Reducing Cognitive Overload - taking away things and chunking things up into smaller steps is very helpful I find

Default with a fall back - providing a preferred route whilst also offering alternatives often helps people achieve a mutual aim

Social proof - accurately and honestly providing information that demonstrates other people do this thing

Saliency - making it clear to people what you want them to do to achieve their aim ie. click this big button

Managing expectations - reducing ambiguity of what is expected and how long things take - really helps

Authority - demonstrating you have expertise in a field that can help guide and sometimes advise others

And finally, I agree that the science we use needs to be peer reviewed and progressed, such that it provides a robust foundation to do work in the real world.

In my experience, businesses over time, don't suffer fools. For sure, businesses buy snake oil, but when the cool aid runs out, good businesses do look at whether something has paid back or not.

What I'm finding in the applied space, is that the work we do is constantly under review and whilst not peer reviewed, it seems to have its own checks and balances.

Different agendas - I often find that once we're working with a client, another client in the organisation, who is working alongside us, may have a different agenda. Often to prove us wrong. This might be because they don't believe the science. They don't like me. Or they lost out in the budget allocation and they want to prove they would have been more successful with their idea. In a sense the work we do, often gets peer reviews from naysayers in the organisation with an axe to grind. I like this and think it's healthy and makes for good business.

Different businesses - It's encouraging to see how the same principles and approaches can work across different businesses in the same sector. Whilst every business has its differences, the programmes of behavioural science work I lead, seem to have similar effects and transfer well.

Different sectors - The same suite of principles identified earlier often work robustly across sectors - financial services, retail, utilities, healthcare. Again every sector has its differences, but the programmes of work behavioural science work I lead, seem to have similar effects and transfer well.

Different countries - This is where it gets really interesting. Different principles don't transfer well all of the time. To assume every citizen and customer wants frictionless and effortless experiences, all of the time, everywhere in the world, just isn't true. I believe our field is experimental with an opportunity to scale. And start with that mindset every time.

As the applied sector grows up and starts to deliver behavioural science at scale, for sure, I think we're going to rely more on the robust science and less on the esoteric.

With its own checks and balances.