Culture is the key to outstanding and sustainable performance in any organization.
Building that culture depends on team members’ behavioral tendencies, including their beliefs and motivations. Understanding their behavioral tendencies can help identify the data needed to tailor those tendencies toward logical decision-making. This data validation is done using choice architectures. Some examples of behavioral tendencies and choice architectures are below:
Behavioral Tendency |
Organizational Management of Tendencies: Neutralize, Balance, and/or LeverageUse of Measurement? |
Risk and loss aversion |
Seeing and experiencing individual and collective value of longer term impact |
Endowment effect |
Seeing and experiencing the individual value of “giving to get” proposition |
Narrow framing |
Having and experiencing a contextual understanding of the impact to the larger picture/environment |
Assuredness of Gains |
Understanding and experiencing the incremental progression toward value creation |
Mental accounting |
Envisioning and promoting half-full versus half-empty scenarios |
Transaction utility |
Understanding and experiencing the value of delayed gratification |
Fairness |
Seeing and experiencing collaborative value in long term relationships |
Inertia, status quo, “yeah, whatever” |
Seeking intentions to shape/suggest econ choices; default options |
Choice Architecture |
Formative Statements and/or QuestionsUse of Measurement? |
Framing |
Build awareness of biases and blunders, mindless choosing, use of autonomic and reflective systems |
Mental Accounting |
Suggest self-control measures to resist temptations, encourage big picture awareness |
Priming |
Measure intentions to affect people’s conduct toward their expressed intentions, give a range of contextual parameters for choices when decisions are to be made |
Peer pressure |
Incent actions as others have acted before you |
Following the Herd |
Share history of others’ previous actions, information on others’ behaviors; the spotlight effect |
Channel factors |
Eliminate obstacles to facilitate econ behavior, make econ decisions less cumbersome and easier to make |
Artifacts and cues |
Provide symbols that spark and encourage econ decisions |
Default options |
Shape choices with “opt in” or “opt out” compliance; answer to inertia, “whatever” modes; offers path of least resistance |
Expect error (forcing function) |
Avoids human errors by structuring a solution )an econ decision) into the process, e.g., avoid a “postcompletion” error by requiring the last, necessary step before the completion step |
Give feedback |
Build into a process a warning of good and bad performance that will lead to problems |
Mappings for understanding |
Make choices more accessible through better understanding of pros and cons |
Structure complex choices |
Eliminate choices through categorization of aspects, prioritize aspects by importance, make parameters and criteria for decisions |
Incentives |
Keep the beneficiary and payer aware of costs and benefits |