Designing blueprints for behavior change with Ruth Schmidt
I cannot tell you how many times I’ve been in organizations that are wringing their hands, they’re wanting people to be innovative. They say, “We keep telling people to be innovative, and nobody is. What’s wrong?” And then you dig under the hood and you realize how they’re configured, how the structures are and how people move up, what people are held accountable for, what the metrics are. Pretty much everything is set up to do exactly the inverse of innovative.
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Intro
In this week’s episode, Brooke speaks to Ruth Schmidt, Associate Professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design, and expert in all things related to behavioral design and its application to organizational strategy. Their conversation looks at the evolution of choice architecture to a deeply human-centered evaluation of organizational systems and processes, and how it’s impacting behavioral change strategies, and ultimately, organizational success. Some of the things discussed include:
- How insights from behavioral science and behavioral design can be used to complement each other in addressing organizational challenges, despite their differences in approach.
- Balancing evidence of something working in the past, with evidence that something else may work in the future.
- How behavioral design can improve strategy – moving from choice architecture to choice infrastructure.
- Behavioral design and innovation. Having a true understanding of why you’re trying to innovate and aligning your systems, culture, and incentives with that ambition.
- The role of leadership, and why behavioral interventions need to be driven both from the top-down and the bottom-up.
