Obama’s hundredth day…change is coming
Tomorrow, as you read all the brouhaha marking Barack Obama’s symbolic 100th day in office as President of the United States, you might want to keep the following ideas in the back of your mind. These ideas are about what motivate people to change in today’s world and they come from behavioral scientists. A recent Time Magazine article - ”How Obama is Using the Science of Change” describes how these change ideas work.
The article outlines how the Administration is using them to set policy, structure speeches and create legislation to guide our country and the world through a difficult economic and social re-structuring. But bottom line is that the change ideas focus on how to restore people’s confidence and sense of what are the new appropriate behaviors for success.
These ideas about what motivates people to change are both familiar and at the same time illuminating as you consider the actions of President Obama, his Administration and of his Presidential Campaign. I simplified the article’s ideas into a set of six (6) best practices for behavioral change.
1. Easy Access to Good Information - helps people make better choices
2. Motivate by Making It Easy – no action to say “yes” works the best
3. Focus on Values for Long-term Success – helps people accept discomfort, overcome barriers and change
4. Just Say Everybody is Doing It – appeal to the need to “fit-in” to build new social norms
5. Shame and Competition Work – part of the “everybody’s doing it” message and the challenge of can someone do it better
6. Make Change Lucrative and if Necessary Mandatory – find the “what’s in it for me” angle or make it too expensive not to
So if you are responsible for leading change in your organization, your community, your family or for yourself, you might want to think about how to apply these ideas in your world.
PS – If you want to go to an original behavioral science source, the following website and blog from the authors of the book Nudge might be helpful.
