We spend a lot of time on strategy, technology, and operations planning exercises. And yet, the area that gets the least attention and that has perhaps the most impact is in planning behaviors, especially around decision making. Instead of really getting clear on the way humans make decisions, we revel in process flows and decision diagrams, as if robots were going through the motions and the decisions were bespoke.

Maybe we just don’t like the ‘idea’ of social engineering or defining behaviors in that way, but all change management programs or transformation programs contain an element of architecting behavior. The challenge is especially hard when the new behaviors require different decision making or when loci of power and control move – which happens in pretty much every transformation project!

By being explicit and intentional about the behavioral architecture associated with your transformation, I suggest you can see better results.  We know that behavior changes in adults when expectations are clear, when they are allowed to iterate through new behaviors routinely, and when they can learn by doing. Tying new behaviors to visible results is required as well. Thinqshift has done a good job of quickly hitting some of the highlights in this video, emphasizing the need to create a behavioral architecture that will drive success. Check it out !