Behavioral Science Consulting: Behavior Change That Lasts

Behavior change, starting with the right behavior

Most companies that look for a behavioral science consultant have a behavior change problem. Customers sign up and never come back. Employees get a new tool and keep using the old one. A program enrolls people who then stop showing up.

I help leaders solve these problems while solving them is still cheap: before the product, process or program is locked in. We start with the outcome you need. Then we look at the different behaviors that could get you there and pick the ones people are actually able and willing to do. Only then does it make sense to design anything.

That first step is the one most behavior change work skips. By the time outside help arrives, the behavior has usually been chosen, and what is left to change is the message around it.

I work with a small number of organizations. If you are still deciding whether outside help is worth paying for, read my essay Behavioral Science Consultancy: Why you probably shouldn’t hire one. It explains when a good UX researcher or designer is the better hire.

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Where behavior change work pays off

Customer behavior. What do customers need to start doing, or keep doing, for your product to grow? Which of those behaviors should the product be built around?

Employee adoption. Why aren’t people using the new process or tool? What are they actually being asked to do, and what stands in the way? This applies to AI tools as much as anything else; see why employees don’t use AI tools, and what changes it.

Plans and investments. What does this plan assume people will do? Before money goes into a launch, a program or an acquisition, it is worth checking whether the behavior it depends on is realistic.

Why most behavior change work delivers so little

Read the case studies behavioral science firms publish and a pattern shows up. Most of the work improves something that already exists: a letter, an email, a reminder, a sign-up form. That work has real strengths. It is cheap, it is testable, and the best teams publish what failed.

But the behavior being promoted was usually chosen before anyone with a behavioral background arrived. And message-level changes are small. When two of the largest US nudge units ran 126 randomized trials with government agencies, about nine out of ten of their nudges went out as emails, letters or postcards, and the average effect was 1.4 percentage points. The few that changed the structure of the choice did several times better. Even when a change is tested, it often isn’t kept: cities used the tested version in later communications only 27% of the time.

The size of the change tends to follow the size of the decision you are willing to revisit. Rewording a reminder can move a number a little. Choosing a different behavior, or redesigning the product or process around the right one, is where large and lasting change comes from. That is the work I focus on.

Why You Should Work With A Behavioral Strategist—Not A Behavioral Scientist Or Behavioral Economist

I have a unique approach to behavior change and consumer psychology problems based on nearly 18 years of applied behavioral science experience.

My approach is called Behavioral Strategy, and is focused on integrating behavioral insights into the strategic planning portion of new products and initiatives. The goal of a Behavioral Strategy project is achieving Behavior Market Fit, which is when you’ve chosen a behavior that is useful, doable, compelling, and rewarding for your target audience that also achieves your business objectives.

To do this, we undergo a Behavioral Research and Behavior Matching process that allows us to understand our target audience and select the right behavior for them. This behavior then becomes the focus of any products or services that we go on to create.

Most Behavioral Science Interventions Deliver Far Less Than Promised

If you’re interested in working with someone who will come in and make small tweaks to your product or project, I’m not your person. Small tweaks (sometimes called “nudges”) deliver far less than their case studies suggest, no matter what other behavioral scientists or consultants may tell you.

Some change a specific behavior in a specific setting. But one major reanalysis of a large nudge meta-analysis found no convincing evidence of an average effect once publication bias was taken into account. The meta-analysis authors’ reply accepted the bias problem and stressed how much results vary. Save your money.

The often impressive case studies they present are usually the result of poor experimental design, cherry picking, and small sample sizes. The best evidence we have is the set of 126 nudge-unit trials described above, which averaged 1.4 percentage points.

You don’t need a behavioral scientist to achieve these sorts of effect sizes. Any team member can get the same results for far less money. Nudge trials published in academic journals averaged 8.7 percentage points, about six times the nudge units’ average. The researchers trace most of that gap to selective publication. Remember that whenever you read a behavioral economics paper or are told what to expect by a behavioral science consultant or behavioral science firm.

Here are a few articles I’ve written on this topic (in case you’re interested in reading further):

The site’s Evidence Library also reviews this comparison: How well do nudges work at scale?

If you are interested in baking behavioral insights and a focus on behavior into the very fabric of new products or services, let me know. This approach is intended to connect product decisions with business objectives and long-term behavior. Its impact must be tested in the setting where it is used.

A Little About Me:

I founded Dopamine, a behavioral science firm in Silicon Valley that focused on helping startups build better, more engaging products.
I studied neuroscience at Stanford University, and was a researcher in BJ Fogg’s Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab (now known as the Stanford Behavior Design Lab). While in the lab, I was involved in the creation of the field now commonly known as Behavior Design (also called Behavioral Design). My work in the lab was featured at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
I co-founded Walmart’s behavioral science unit, one of the earliest at a Fortune 500 company, and was Global Head of Behavioral Science for the company—applying research to dozens of marketing, product, and store initiatives at the company. Our team was responsible for the new member experience at Sam’s Club, and was integral in the creation of new store concepts (Sam’s Now), in-store order pickup, the in-store return experience, and checkout design.
A serial entrepreneur, I co-founded the mobile search startup Kite.io, which was acquired by Quixey. I’m also co-founder and CEO of Persona, which builds software and assessments to evaluate job fit and uses them to recruit and staff teams for clients.

More about my background and current advisory work: Work with me.

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What Is The Current Role Of The Behavioral Sciences In Business And Product Design?

In recent years, companies have become interested in applying the behavioral sciences to customer experience, product design, marketing, change management, and employee engagement problems. Some companies have even applied behavioral science research (from specialized subfields like Behavioral Finance) to financial decisions.

The belief is that a scientific understanding of human behavior can solve a wide variety of issues. While some behavioral science research is filled with actionable insights, most behavioral science research isn’t easily applicable. In addition, some of the most obviously actionable research has a dubious replication record. As covered above, the behavioral economics nudge literature is filled with overstatements, and the impact of these interventions on important outcomes is disappointing at best.

After working in this field for nearly 18 years, it’s my belief that the behavioral sciences are being misapplied by most consultants and internal behavioral science teams.

The biggest issue is that behavioral science teams and consultants rely on discredited research, or on research that is of dubious quality. For example: behavioral economics nudging, behavioral priming, mindset, ego depletion, etc. The second biggest issue is that organizations tend to apply behavioral insights to products and company initiatives after the plans have been created—when they have the lowest potential for impact.

At most companies, behavioral scientists (sometimes called Behavioral Designers) are brought in to review a product after the initial design or first prototype has been created. At this point, it’s usually quite hard to make any substantial changes. For example, it’s usually hard to get senior executives or a product team to change the feature set of an already roadmapped product. Thus, behavioral science recommendations are usually relegated to small things like copy changes and notification or email changes.

Sometimes behavioral scientists are able to convince the product team to change the onboarding flow or tweak the visual presentation of information inside the product, but most of these changes are not big enough to have a substantial impact on the success of the product.

This is one of the many reasons behavioral science teams and consultants are unsuccessful, and why behavioral science teams are quick to be laid off once budget cuts are needed.

Most people with a behavioral science background work for companies in a user research capacity (also known as user experience (UX) research). These individuals often collaborate with data and analytics teams in order to build to a detailed picture of customers. With this understanding, they identify issues and opportunities and make recommendations to the product and marketing teams—helping them create an even better customer experience.

Sometimes these recommendations are given before a product is created, in which case they can impact the strategy and core feature set. However, a lot of the time user researchers are brought in to test and troubleshoot a product that has already been planned and built. At this point it’s usually too late to have any meaningful impact.

The Right Way To Apply Behavioral Science And Psychology To Business: Behavioral Strategy

Let’s recap what we’ve covered so far:

Behavioral science consultants frequently present case studies based on poor experimental design, cherry picked data, and small sample sizes.
The largest real-world data set shows that nudges move the targeted behavior by 1.4 percentage points on average, about one-sixth of the average in published academic trials, in percentage points.
Most companies bring in behavioral scientists to work on projects when their potential to make an impact is lowest (i.e. after product/project planning and v1).
Most companies employ behavioral scientists in a research capacity; however, this reduces their ability to impact strategy and key outcomes.

So what are we to make of all this? A few things:

Don’t hire behavioral economists. The research has a poor track record. Trust what the academic studies say, not what a consultant (with a clear incentive to knowingly or unknowingly misrepresent their findings) says.
Make sure that the behavioral scientists you work with are up to date on the latest research findings and know which studies have failed to replicate. Ask them about mindset research, ego depletion, stereotype threat, terror management theory, nudging, the loss aversion controversy, the rising doubt in the endowment effect, Brian Wansink’s small plate work, overclaimed uses of the mere exposure effect, and behavioral priming. If they aren’t aware that these findings have either been overturned or are in serious doubt, do not work with them.
When you find a behavioral scientist with an accurate and up-to-date understanding of the research, make sure to bring them into your project as early as possible. Have them help you create a Behavioral Strategy.
If possible, hire a Behavioral Strategist who has worked with a diverse variety of clients and has an extensive knowledge of behavioral science research in addition to practical skills relevant to your project (UX/UI design, market research, data analysis, etc.)

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