This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Key Points
Training is often called upon to provide solutions to difficult problems, but there are often bigger system issues at play, and an intervention that only focuses on training is often not enough.
Every system is perfectly designed to get the result it gets, so always ask, “What is causing this behavior to happen or not happen right now?”
If a behavior is being blamed on attitude or capability, it’s important to dig deeper and see if there’s anything in the system or environment that is causing that behavior to happen.
Mapping a system, and considering what forces are encouraging the change and what forces are restraining the change, can help you identify the best places to intervene in that system.
A tight focus on individual behavior can help you design for behavior change, but you do need to periodically zoom out and consider the whole system to ensure that the individual behavior supports the outcome.
Always ask where the feedback or consequences of the behavior will become visible. If it’s visible at the individual level, it will be easier to provide feedback to individual learners. If the feedback only becomes visible at the group or system level, then there will need to be mechanisms in place to measure and assess group- or system-level impact.
Resources
Hunt, Christian. Humanizing Rules: Bringing Behavioural Science to Ethics and Compliance (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2023).
Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), 20 and 43.
Langley, Monica and Marc Benioff, “How Salesforce Closed the Pay Gap Between Men and Women,” Wired.com, October 15, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/how-salesforce-closed-pay-gap-between-men-women/.
Meadows, Donella H. Thinking in Systems: A Primer (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2008), 1.
Parker, Kim. “When negotiating starting salaries, most U.S. women and men don’t ask for higher pay,” Pew Research Center website, April 5, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2023/04/05/when-negotiating-starting-salaries-most-us-women-and-men-dont-ask-for-higher-pay/.
Senge, Peter M. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2006).
Starbucks Coffee Company. “Starbucks to Close All Stores Nationwide for Racial-Bias Education on May 29.” Starbucks press release, April 17, 2018. On the Starbucks website. https://stories.starbucks.com/press/2018/starbucks-to-close-stores-nationwide-for-racial-bias-education-may-29/, accessed May 22, 2023.