How To Shift Mindsets & The Art of Influence (With Julie Dirksen)

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Julie Dirksen: big picture in terms of your system.

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Yeah, we can do training, but you do understand that there's a

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whole slew of other variables that are impacting whether or

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not this behavior is going to happen, and so we can push on

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this one, the training one, but let's make sure we're keeping an

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eye on all of these other things at the same time.

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And so I think that the benefit in this book for people who are

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coming in as learning designers , coming in as training people,

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is to have a little bit more vocabulary to have that

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conversation with stakeholders so they can say look, here's the

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part we can help you with.

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We're pretty confident we can do that.

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Ben Maynard: Welcome to the Product Agility podcast the

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missing link between agile and product.

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The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips,

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strategies and stories from world-class thought leaders and

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practitioners.

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Why, I hear you ask.

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Well, I want to increase your knowledge and your motivation to

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experiment so that together we can create ever more successful

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products.

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My name is Ben Maynard and I'm your host.

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What has driven me for the last decade to bridge the gap

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between agility and product is a deep-rooted belief that people

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and products evolving together can achieve mutual excellence.

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Welcome to the Product Agility podcast.

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This week sees us joined for technically the second time

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because we're joined by Judy Dirksen, who recorded an episode

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with me over a year ago regarding Judy's first book.

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I say that tentatively because I'm not sure if you might have

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sneaked out of another book that I didn't know about, but your

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first book, design for how People Learn, which is a

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phenomenal book, changed how I design my learning interventions

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and is a fantastic complement to schools of thought, such as

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training from the back of the room.

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So, yeah, those first two episodes.

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They were some of our highest performing episodes of the year,

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in the top 25% globally for our podcasting platform, which is

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the world's biggest.

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So that is, yeah, nothing to smirk at.

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They did fantastically well because it was great content,

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and so I have been so excited to get Judy back and I think I

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even mentioned it when we spoke before, julie, because you were

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talking about this new book.

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You were writing and all of a sudden, this new book appeared

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and we are here to talk about it .

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So, judy Dirksen, welcome back to the Product Agility podcast.

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It is lovely to see you again.

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Julie Dirksen: Yes, thank you for having me.

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These are such fun conversations.

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I'm really glad to be back.

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Ben Maynard: Yeah, I'm hoping this will be fun.

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The conversation we had beforehand was fun, although not

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really on topic, and we didn't record it.

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Julie, I think for anybody that is looking to understand more

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about behaviour change and how we as teachers, coaches and if

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it's a human's leaders, I'm going to cast them very broadly

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here can help people on that behaviour change journey,

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understand people's motivations, how we design these

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interventions.

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I think your work holistically has a huge amount to offer.

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Now.

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Your new book is called Talk to the Elephant and I'll hold it

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up to the screen here for those of you that are going to be

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looking at this on YouTube, or maybe it's on TikTok or

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something as well.

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Talk to the Elephant.

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Talk to the.

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Julie Dirksen: Elephant Design Learning for Behaviour Change

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yes.

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Ben Maynard: Yes, but that's the full title, which I didn't do.

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So Design Learning for Behaviour Change.

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Julie, would you mind, for those people that haven't

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listened to their first episodes , perhaps give a little

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introduction to yourself and then tell us a little bit about

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your new book, if you will?

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Julie Dirksen: Yeah, absolutely so.

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I identify as an instructional designer, which means that my

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whole kind of professional world is about designing good

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learning experiences for people, and I have been doing this

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since basically the early 90s.

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I was doing training for a finance company and trying to

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understand what made for a good learning experience, and I got

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really interested in technology.

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I wound up being a project manager on the development of a

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front-end system for their customer service group, which

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also got me interested in things like user experience design

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Although we weren't even calling it that yet, it was still human

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computer interaction and user-goal engineering, yeah, so

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it was things like that, and so that I think is always colored

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my perspective about designing for learning, which was also

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this kind of piece of making sure that you really understand

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what's going on with your users.

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I did my graduate degree in instructional technology at

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Indiana University, which also had, I think, a very strong

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focus on again what we are now referred to as user experience

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or UX design and things like that, and it's interesting

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because I think I've always played with both of those areas

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and I don't really consider them different disciplines so much

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as a continuum.

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You either, when you have a challenge, you either want to

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fix the user, which is usually a training problem, or you want

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to fix the system, which is usually more of a UX problem,

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and so it's where along the continuum does the information

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need to live to best support people?

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But I got interested in the behavior change piece because I

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felt like I had all these good tools in my toolkit for helping

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people retain things or helping people learn stuff or helping

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people develop skills.

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And then it came to a project that I got involved with in kind

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of the mid-2000s, which was an AIDS and HIV prevention project,

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and I got really very involved because we had a group through

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one of the universities their School of Epidemiology, had this

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in-person intervention around AIDS and HIV prevention that

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they wanted to translate into online and online environment,

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and so we were helping with the online piece.

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But I was realizing that all the tools in my toolkit were

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about information delivery or skill development and that

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neither one of those were really the problem here, because by I

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don't know, 2005, 2006, I think the message had gotten out about

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the importance of condom usage to prevent the spread of HIV,

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and so it wasn't an information problem at that point.

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We weren't trying to just communicate that this is

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functionally how it works and this is functionally the

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behavior that you should do.

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It was related to a lot of other things and their

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curriculum that they had developed in person.

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One dealt with a lot of stuff.

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It turns out that people's mental health, emotional health,

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relationship health, physical health all of these kinds of

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things play into decisions that they make about things like

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condoms, and so I was looking at this and going, if it isn't a

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knowledge problem, what tools and strategies as a designer am

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I using to help with this?

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And just didn't feel like I had the right tools in the toolbox

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to try to tackle this problem and so kept looking at it.

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I wound up working on some health and wellness materials in

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like 2007, 2008.

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And wound up working with some behavioral experts in that space

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and around.

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Then we started getting books like Daniel Kahneman's Thinking

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Fast and Slow and Nudge, the Richard Dahlern-Kesson's Dean

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book with behavioral economics, and we really started to see a

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blossoming of this field that was pulling from a number of

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disciplines like behavioral economics or public health or

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psychology or finance or safety, coalescing into a single domain

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around behavioral science.

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And as I got more involved with that, there were some great

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models and frameworks in there and not a lot of them were

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making their way back over to the people who were designing

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learning interventions, and so that's what I was trying to do

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with this book was to take a lot of the things that are useful

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in behavioral science and try to translate them for people who

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are primary function is learning design.

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Ben Maynard: So the seeds of this book were so long time ago.

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Julie Dirksen: Yeah, I wound up having a whole conversation with

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my publisher about whether I should put a picture of a condom

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on the very first page of the book, and we ultimately decided

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not to.

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But I'm like, if I'm leading with condom usage, you know it's

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all easy after that, right.

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Ben Maynard: Yeah, I know.

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Well, I was musing over potential episode titles.

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Actually I'm just trying to fit condom usage too.

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I can't quite think of what it will be after that.

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Julie Dirksen: And now the environment has changed too, so

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some of these things are more complicated, because there's

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medications.

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I wound up working on an oral prep curriculum in Botswana last

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year because we were trying to help develop a micro learning

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strategy for one of the international healthcare

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education groups, and so I wound up learning about all about

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oral prep, and so the answer is changing.

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Now it's not just condom usage anymore, but it's still.

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It's really interesting to get into these different areas and

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to look at what else is going on that influences whether or not

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people do a particular behavior, because our answer

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traditionally has to tell them louder and more emphatically

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that they should, and that's not the right answer.

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In a lot of cases, I think there's a distinction between

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what people's physical and emotional environments are and

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what their intellectual knowledge is, and that most of

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the behavior change problems that we have, most of the really

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tricky behaviors that we struggle with as humans, tend to

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have a disconnect between those two, which is where the title

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comes from right.

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Your intellectual knowledge, your impulse control, logic,

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reasoning, verbal thinking, stuff like that is this part of

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your brain that, in a metaphor from Jonathan Hayweaver too, is

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like a writer.

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So you have a little writer sitting on back of a huge part

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of your brain that's concerned with, like, the physical reality

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of your world.

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What do you see here?

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Smell, touch, tastes?

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How do you move around in this world?

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How do you control your physical self?

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There's gross motor control and there's fine motor control, and

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there's visual perception and auditory perception and

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processing inputs and all these kinds of things.

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So there's this whole big swath of your brain that's concerned

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with what is the world looking, feel like and how do you feel

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about it.

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So you get your emotional area in the middle of your brain, you

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get the limbic system and the amygdala and the hypothalamus,

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which regulate a lot of emotional cues and things like

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that, and just a huge amount of your brain is tied up with how

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you perceive the physical world, how things feel, what you feel

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about them, what you're perceiving, and so that's all

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the elephants.

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The idea is we've got this intellectual knowledge and then

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we've got all of this data coming into us about what the

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world, what our immediate experience in the world, is, and

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so one of the things that happens is when our intellectual

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knowledge doesn't agree with what our physical environment is

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telling us.

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Those tend to be the behaviors we struggle with.

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So exercise is good versus this is painful and unpleasant.

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So my intellectual knowledge is this is a good thing to do.

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My physical world is this is not fun, I don't like it, and so

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those tend to be things where you do much better if you can

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find exercise you actually like.

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There's very clear science on if you need more durable

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exercise motivation.

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You really need to find something you actually like

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doing.

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Continuing to force yourself to do things you don't like is, and

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can be, a complicated thing.

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That was difficult, but I feel good afterwards or I feel a

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sense of satisfaction or something, some positive affect

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out of it.

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I should say, for retirement, nothing is different today if I

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failed to set up my retirement account, like today is very much

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like yesterday.

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There's nothing different about my environment.

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There's the intellectual knowledge.

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I still haven't done this thing that I was supposed to do.

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But I should wear sunscreen.

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But in a lot of cases, if you're not, it's not.

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The problem isn't sunburn, which would be more of that kind

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of immediate visceral feedback.

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Ben Maynard: The problem is that kind of prolonged sun damage

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that leads to skin cancer decades from now be Compared

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organizational context where you have and if I try and go ground

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it in something here which is perhaps they're really

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contextually relevant to to our listeners if, in a situation

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where intellectually someone can understand the benefits of not

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Planning, and in a huge amount of detail Upfront, but yet

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they've got their boss breathing down their neck, believing that

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if they don't do it in this way , but they're not gonna get that

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, Reward?

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Julie Dirksen: yeah, there's a whole bunch of variables that

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kind of come into play.

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So one is what are the incentives in the environment?

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Because whenever people do something quote-unquote wrong,

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it's always that behavior always makes sense.

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In some context we talk about bounded rationality.

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What is within the boundaries of this person's world?

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What's the logical reason they're doing this thing that we

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don't like that they're doing, right, is it?

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Because, oh my, my quick and dirty example of this is I was

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working for a company that was an insurance company and it was

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about entering insurance applications from multinational

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policies.

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Multinational policies are super complicated because you've got

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to deal with the laws of all the countries that are involved,

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and they were.

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We were working on the seed learning course and the

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stakeholder of the subject matter expert said you know what

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we really need to emphasize?

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We need to emphasize the importance of accuracy.

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And I was like, okay, tell me more.

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And he's like I don't seem to care if they're entering the

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data into the fields, can we just tell them how important

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that is?

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And I'm like, of course we can Remind me again.

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How are they compensated for the work?

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And he's oh, the number of applications to do per hour.

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I'm like all right.

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Do they get any feedback on their accuracy?

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And they're like no, I don't think they do and I'm just like

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you see the problem right.

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We can say accuracy important, but that's not what's being

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communicated about this environment, that's not the

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behavior that's being incented, the behavior that's being

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incentive to speed, and there's literally no feedback on

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accuracy.

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So there's no consequence to it .

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And so, as long as your incentives are this misaligned,

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it does not matter what we're gonna say in this training

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program.

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That's not gonna fundamentally change the behavior.

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So when we look at something like project planning the idea

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that you would use an agile method where you've got a goal

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or you've got a roadmap or something, but you don't do

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these big knockdown, drag out the gap charts or you know

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whatever it is and I I Worked for a company many years ago

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that did traditional P&P certification training, so I'm

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very familiar with but the big, dense version of project

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planning part of it is if that was the thing that gave you

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satisfaction as a professional was to Optimize all of these

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variables and figure this all out.

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Or is that with the behavior that was rewarded, or do that

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make you feel like you were productive?

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Does the idea of launching into something without that kind of

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roadmap feel insecure.

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The model that I lean heavily on the book is one from Susan

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Mickey in University College London, but they talk about she.

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The model has combi, which is the person capable of doing the

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thing.

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So if it's more of an agile, roadmap driven method for

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project management, then are they capable of doing it?

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Do they feel confident?

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Do they feel like they know all the pieces, that they know how

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to do this?

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Have they seen somebody else do it?

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Do they feel like, okay, I've seen it work, let me try it?

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As opposed to I Understand all the words you're saying but I

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just don't see how this is gonna work.

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That's a those are very different views on it.

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Then we look at opportunity, which is does the physical

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opportunity support it?

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Does the system opera supported to the tools supported?

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Then we look at social.

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If I seen somebody else do it, have I seen it modeled?

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Have I experienced it myself with other people, if I do this,

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what's the reaction of my environment, people in my social

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environment gonna be?

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Is my team gonna be on board?

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Are they gonna fight me on this ?

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All of these kinds of things.

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And then we look at motivation and within motivation.

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We want to look at things like are they confident?

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Do they see this as an important skill?

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Is this the goal that they have or are they resistant to it?

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Do they have the perception that it will be useful to?

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They have the perception that it's gonna actually fix some

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significant problems for them?

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Do they see it as part of their identity is to be good at this?

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So are they capable of doing?

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It is usually an infer in educational problem, right?

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Our traditional tool set of how do you teach people things, how

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do you develop skills, will work fit really nice into

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capability.

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But it's these other areas.

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So what does the opportunity look like?

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And then what are there?

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What does their motivation look like?

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That become Really important.

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And if you're solving the wrong problem, if the problem is I

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Don't feel confident that I can have the conversation to

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negotiate safe sex practices with a partner, is different

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than you're not gonna solve that with a motivation thing.

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Like they're motivated, they just don't feel like they have

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the capability or the confidence to do it and you're trying to

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just tell them it's really important, that's not gonna fix

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I don't feel confident.

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The two things are just fundamentally a mismatch in

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terms of problem and solution.

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Ben Maynard: So where does the boundaries of your book, your

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work, end?

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Because, because there's some stuff which, like having people

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learn something, is Enough.

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But with that then, are we talking about things such as

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persuasion, find a ways to motivate people.

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If I think of Conversation that I had God Good kick myself, I

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really come and do is with, a couple times in the past couple

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of weeks, somebody saying that actually we believe in all of

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this and we totally get it and we absolutely want it.

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But until my boss's boss actually decides to measure us

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on something other than just the output and the number of

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widgets we produce, I just don't see the point in trying here

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and then for me, like that Kind of implies there isn't so much

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of a learning intervention, that that's just something else at

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least of that.

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That condit that bounded context there.

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Julie Dirksen: Yeah, and so if we were doing a copy analysis

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we're looking at that We'd say that's not a capability problem

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and it's not a motivation problem.

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It is most likely an opportunity problem and probably

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what they would define is a physical opportunity in terms of

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the way that the system set up, which is a little weird to say

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that something like an incentive scheme is a physical

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opportunity.

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It's really more.

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There's a mismatch in the system and so then when we start

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looking at solutions for that, we might look at okay, we can't

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sell this in a big way, but can we carve out some room for a

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pilot project and maybe try to figure out what measures would

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we say that we would compare If we were doing a pilot, to an

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existing one?

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Can we get enough line to do just a small pilot of testing

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this out for something?

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Very?

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It's not going to interrupt all the deliverables and all the

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widget stuff that's scheduled already, but we just want you to

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give us a small enough thing that it's not scary To.

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Okay, where we're gonna test this out, and then we'll be able

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to come back and look at some of this data afterwards, right,

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and say, hey, look, here's what we found out from this, and you

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have to be prepared in those instances to be able to come

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back and be like yeah, guess what, it didn't help on some of

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these measures, but we did find this result or something like

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that, because the the challenge often is, if you're putting your

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opinion up against somebody else's opinion, that's whoever

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is the check wins in those cases , and so what's?

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Something that is Small enough that doesn't feel like a real

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loss to them but is still moving you forward in some way.

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Okay, would be a thing to look at there.

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Ben Maynard: Yeah, trying to find that sweet spot.

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Where is it?

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There's enough value to show that it was worthwhile.

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We're not so much that it's going to be too painful for them

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.

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We're not gonna be too embarrassed if it doesn't quite

00:19:02
work out.

00:19:03
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, yeah.

00:19:05
Ben Maynard: I love both your books, but I couldn't help but

00:19:08
feel every time I read through them that I ended up applying it

00:19:13
really broadly, if that makes sense.

00:19:16
So for example, in your first book, design for how people

00:19:19
learn, you talk about the gaps, and Now that's that form of spot

00:19:22
of every engagement I have with a client.

00:19:24
Oh, okay, it's talking about the different types of gaps and

00:19:27
explaining what the gaps up I can help them feel and the gaps

00:19:30
that, unless they want to engage me in a different way, I just

00:19:34
won't be able to feel for them.

00:19:36
I can't change.

00:19:36
I can perhaps motivate them to look at some of their

00:19:39
environmental gaps, but I can't change environmental gaps.

00:19:41
That's not my, that's not my, that's not even my remit.

00:19:45
Yeah, absolutely, I don't know.

00:19:46
Is that as a coach or a consultant?

00:19:48
That's why I wonder design for people learn and design learning

00:19:51
for behavior change, and what we're talking about with both of

00:19:54
the books really is effective mechanisms for change?

00:19:58
Yeah is that a fair summary?

00:20:00
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, and the Some of this stuff.

00:20:02
It was in the first book.

00:20:03
Chapter 8 is very much about motivation, and so this is

00:20:06
Expansion and some of the stuff that I was talking about in that

00:20:09
book, because there was so much more to there's so much more to

00:20:11
talk about.

00:20:11
I do think they have a whole chapter about what's really a

00:20:16
training problem and what's really not training's

00:20:18
responsibility.

00:20:19
Ben Maynard: Chapter 7.

00:20:20
Julie Dirksen: I think I don't know if you've gotten to that

00:20:21
one, but something about a million dollars.

00:20:23
If you gave somebody a million dollars and they could do the

00:20:26
thing, then it's not a trading problem, but it is question,

00:20:29
though that still becomes.

00:20:30
Unfortunately we don't have a million dollars to hand out

00:20:33
every time we need a behavior.

00:20:34
I'm sure they in the US, if any , issues on their most recent

00:20:37
uptake of the COVID, the COVID booster.

00:20:39
Covid, it's not a booster, I think it's technically a new

00:20:41
vaccine but the adoption wasn't what certainly the CDC was

00:20:46
hoping for and some of those people are Adamantly dead set

00:20:49
against it.

00:20:49
But then there were a lot of people who just weren't making

00:20:51
time for it and those people, if you gave them a million dollars

00:20:55
, they probably would have gotten vaccinated people who are

00:20:57
not fundamentally opposed.

00:20:58
But the people who are just like I can't be bothered.

00:21:00
If you gave them a million dollars, they probably do it.

00:21:02
So it wasn't an issue of that.

00:21:05
They were so dead-setting that in that particular population

00:21:07
they're so dead-set against it.

00:21:08
It's an issue that like it wasn't convenient or wasn't easy

00:21:12
or they didn't feel compelling, and that's not something where

00:21:16
I can give you more information about the nature of the vaccine

00:21:18
and probably change that behavior.

00:21:20
That's something where we have to figure out other.

00:21:22
Can we figure out a way that Literally make it simple for you

00:21:25
, or can we figure out a way that answers a problem for you?

00:21:28
Or we figure out a way that, like Pretty much always making

00:21:31
the behavior easier is usually helpful in terms of so some of

00:21:35
these other things like like social modeling or Persuasion

00:21:39
messages or something it's hit or miss.

00:21:41
You always want to test those Because it's not clear if

00:21:44
they're gonna land right with your audience.

00:21:45
But something like how do I make the behavior as easy as

00:21:48
possible?

00:21:48
That one pretty much always is at least somewhat helpful.

00:21:52
So there's those pieces of it.

00:21:54
The question of what's a training problem and what's not

00:21:56
a training problem Ostensibly, the incentive system is usually

00:22:01
not a training problem.

00:22:02
It's usually something you can't fix from the learning

00:22:04
point of view.

00:22:04
However, you can flag it for people.

00:22:07
You can make it clear that, hey , as long as you're only

00:22:10
compensating for speed, not accuracy, you're gonna have an

00:22:13
accuracy problem and I'm happy to put something in the training

00:22:16
about it.

00:22:16
But let's be honest about how much impact that's gonna have.

00:22:20
So I do think being able to name some of these things at

00:22:24
least gives you, I think, something that's a little bit

00:22:27
easier to have that conversation with people because a ton of

00:22:31
stuff gets Jammed in the training box.

00:22:34
Right, we're gonna fix it with training every time something

00:22:37
really embarrassing happens with an American corporation.

00:22:41
Oh yeah, the CEO will show up and promise that they're gonna

00:22:44
do training.

00:22:46
It's part of the script, it's part of the apology we're really

00:22:48
sorry that we did this Incredibly stupid thing where

00:22:51
we're gonna do more training, and it's if we look at big

00:22:54
picture in terms of your system.

00:22:56
Yeah, we can do training, but you do understand that there's a

00:22:59
whole slew of other variables that are impacting whether or

00:23:03
not this behavior is gonna happen.

00:23:04
Yeah, and so we can push on this one, the training one, but

00:23:08
let's make sure we're keeping an eye on all of these other

00:23:10
things at the same time, and so I I think that the benefit in

00:23:15
this book for people who are coming in as learning designers

00:23:19
Are coming in as training.

00:23:19
People needs to have a little bit more vocabulary to have that

00:23:22
conversation with stakeholders so they can say look, here's the

00:23:25
part we can help you with.

00:23:27
We're pretty confident we can do that.

00:23:28
Here's the part where we're happy to give it a swing, but

00:23:31
you do understand that we're really saying we don't think

00:23:34
this is gonna change the fact that you're currently in sensing

00:23:38
just widget production and not, they say, long-term quality or

00:23:42
overall team development or whatever, the whatever we think

00:23:44
the benefits gonna be of this other practice.

00:23:47
Ben Maynard: Yeah, I know it's making a lot of sense to me.

00:23:49
I can think of Every large change initiative that I've been

00:23:54
involved in or around.

00:23:56
When the system doesn't change, individuals can do their best,

00:24:01
but you're.

00:24:02
It's very difficult to achieve systemic change unless you are

00:24:06
the person who is Responsible for changing the system.

00:24:11
I think it's as Peter Senki said in the fifth discipline you

00:24:14
have a hardy push against the system, the harder push back.

00:24:17
Yeah, yeah, I think that's so true, and I think it's hard for

00:24:20
people who are brought in, and I think it is leadership.

00:24:23
There's an element of teaching in leadership.

00:24:26
I think they're reading your book and seeing how you talk

00:24:28
about how to write, how to communicate, how to send emails.

00:24:31
It will get people's attention to sign up.

00:24:33
If it's all about what the marketing and the PR because

00:24:36
ultimately you know, everything is learning.

00:24:39
If you're trying to change from state A to state B, there's

00:24:41
probably some kind of learning involved in that and I think it

00:24:44
is really hard for individuals to appreciate that.

00:24:48
Well, you can only push against the system so hard You're.

00:24:52
There's so much you can do within that context, I suppose

00:24:55
then, also frustrating for Trainers, and they make

00:24:58
reference in your book times when Perhaps you've been asked

00:25:01
if you can create some training and the question was what that

00:25:03
why?

00:25:03
Yeah what is it we're trying to solve with this?

00:25:05
And I think it's really hard when you're brought in to do

00:25:07
some training.

00:25:07
We're brought in to lead something and educate people,

00:25:10
and the system just isn't set up for you to be able to succeed.

00:25:14
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, absolutely, and one of the things that I

00:25:17
think is really important is making sure that you're treating

00:25:20
If our learner is this person like a software engineer or

00:25:23
something like that we're trying to teach them something Then

00:25:26
you need to consider who their other audiences are.

00:25:28
Else needs to be who else is where we get into social

00:25:31
opportunity.

00:25:32
If this person has these constraints on them and has

00:25:36
these pressures and has the incentives and all these kinds

00:25:38
of things, who are all the Players around it?

00:25:40
Because if we're gonna need to change the Product manager or

00:25:45
we're gonna need to change the stakeholder, we're gonna need to

00:25:47
change these then you should be considering these people as

00:25:49
audiences for what you're doing as well.

00:25:52
One of the biggest complaints I hear from a lot of people who do

00:25:55
training and organizations and workforce training and things

00:25:58
like that Is that managers don't reinforce the training.

00:26:01
Once people go back to the office or the floor or do

00:26:04
whatever it is, it's okay.

00:26:06
Then you need to treat the managers as your secondary

00:26:08
audience.

00:26:09
What are they?

00:26:10
You're very busy people.

00:26:11
They got a lot going on.

00:26:12
How can you support them Doing the right thing to support their

00:26:16
workers?

00:26:17
Is it about giving them a better toolkit?

00:26:19
Is it about being honest with Stakeholders about how much time

00:26:23
is gonna take for the managers to reinforce this behavior, is

00:26:26
about setting expectations For what their responsibilities look

00:26:30
like to reinforce this behavior , because a lot of times they

00:26:32
aren't taken into account at all .

00:26:34
Right, we do an audience analysis with the workforce and

00:26:37
we create this training product.

00:26:38
We send it out there, but nobody even goes and talks to

00:26:40
the managers about how.

00:26:42
What does it need?

00:26:42
What is it gonna look like to reinforce this thing that

00:26:45
they're learning and training so that it's going out there, and

00:26:48
how can you support that audience?

00:26:49
They need their own training.

00:26:50
Do they need resources?

00:26:51
Do they need time?

00:26:53
What's it gonna take?

00:26:54
Ben Maynard: basically, yeah it's so difficult to know where

00:26:56
to draw the boundaries, though.

00:26:57
How big and complex do you want to make stuff before?

00:27:01
it comes out manageable.

00:27:01
Well, that just isn't the budget to do that.

00:27:04
I'm thinking of the quote in your book where being able to

00:27:07
focus so that you're not ignoring things, but you're

00:27:09
trying to simplify stuff enough so that it makes sense.

00:27:11
So it's again that Peter Senghi talks about this in the fifth

00:27:13
discipline doesn't is that?

00:27:14
We love to break things down because it's big and complex and

00:27:16
we just can't handle it.

00:27:17
So we break it down to simplify it.

00:27:19
But then we missed the boost, that holistic Perspective, and

00:27:23
it's.

00:27:23
How do you then create a holistic perspective?

00:27:25
And I recall a who was it?

00:27:28
It was a tech lead I was talking to in an organization

00:27:31
and with their product manager, actually, and the challenge that

00:27:36
they were facing was we know we need to serve this audience

00:27:40
with what we are producing and we know that there are three or

00:27:45
four or five audiences beyond that who also need to be

00:27:48
satisfied and we can deliver something we think is gonna work

00:27:51
.

00:27:51
But we think it's gonna work for the sixth tier.

00:27:54
But then we don't know about the sixth tier until probably like

00:27:57
two, three years Probably, until after it would when

00:28:00
everything's run through and you see if that Hypotheses we had

00:28:04
about a very large thing being really vague.

00:28:06
So I want to mention who is about a really large thing,

00:28:09
whether that actually pays off.

00:28:10
So what do we do?

00:28:10
I always said to you have an opportunity to say who is the

00:28:13
ultimate person you're going to serve.

00:28:14
But you also have to appreciate that in your context right now.

00:28:18
Hey, what's the boundary you can draw which means that you

00:28:21
can sleep well at night but also declare some success when you

00:28:24
get it?

00:28:24
And it's how do you know where to draw those boundaries?

00:28:27
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, because once you start looking at the

00:28:29
entire system, it gets over real me really quickly.

00:28:32
I have a talk that I do on systems thinking 101 for

00:28:35
learning and development people and and I showed this big, huge

00:28:38
Systems map and I'm like, okay, if we're just focusing on this

00:28:41
one little teeny tiny behavior it's a little teeny tiny dot in

00:28:44
this big map how do you ever feel like you're getting at it?

00:28:47
And that's why the quote that you're referencing, which is

00:28:49
from John Cutler, who talks about how, like, we're always

00:28:53
balancing this right, if you're trying to Accommodate the system

00:28:57
, it's too complex and it's too overwhelming.

00:28:58
But if you really focus tightly on a behavior, sometimes you're

00:29:01
ignoring really important outside consideration.

00:29:04
So if your goal is to improve plastic waste in the ocean,

00:29:08
right, you could focus very tightly on the behavior of

00:29:12
people sorting their plastics right at the you know point of

00:29:15
household recycling.

00:29:16
But of course the problem is way bigger than that.

00:29:19
Right, the problem is what kind of plastics are manufacturers

00:29:22
making?

00:29:22
What, once people sort these things?

00:29:24
Where does this stuff go and what's actually happening to it?

00:29:26
And is there a market for post-consumer Plastics or is

00:29:30
there?

00:29:30
Are there good places for this to get done?

00:29:32
Is it economically viable all of these kinds of things, and at

00:29:37
a certain point you need to.

00:29:39
Obviously, people who are operating at a policy level have

00:29:42
to consider all these things and really have to look at

00:29:44
different things that they're dealing with.

00:29:45
But at a certain point you can't design an intervention in

00:29:50
One year with a budget of X that's going to fix the system.

00:29:54
So you have to pick an entry point and kind of work.

00:29:57
From there you might be able to say, look, in order for us to

00:30:00
feel like we're actually accomplishing something, we need

00:30:02
to have a few and a few places where we're impacting how this

00:30:06
works within the community.

00:30:07
So it might be the education for the consumer who's sorting

00:30:10
the recycling, but it might also be we got to look at which

00:30:13
vendors we're using for the plastics recycling once it

00:30:16
leaves the household and gets Collected, or something along

00:30:18
those lines.

00:30:19
There's an example in I think it was a nudge that people really

00:30:22
love, which is this idea of like defaults.

00:30:24
People are more likely to accept a default Selection and

00:30:28
they talked about organ donation .

00:30:29
It was looking at the rate of organ donation, people signing

00:30:32
up to be organ donors in different countries and the

00:30:35
places where the box was checked and you could uncheck it if you

00:30:38
wanted to, but the box was pre-checked Would have organ

00:30:41
donation enrollment rates of like 80 plus percent, and the

00:30:44
countries where you had to click the box it was empty and you

00:30:48
had to click it to say you wanted to be an organ donor.

00:30:50
They organ donation rates were only about 20 to 30 percent, and

00:30:53
people love this example because it's magical.

00:30:55
Hey, just use defaults and it's gonna fix everything.

00:30:58
The truth is, organ donation is a complex system itself, and if

00:31:01
you really want to improve the situation for organ donation,

00:31:04
it's more than just is this default box selected.

00:31:07
If your particular problem is, we've got a finely honed organ

00:31:11
donation system set up, we just can't seem to get enough people

00:31:14
to sign up for it.

00:31:14
Maybe that default thing is gonna help with that problem.

00:31:18
But even there we're really have to ask the question of

00:31:23
ultimately, the people that really make decisions About

00:31:26
posthumous organ donation are the family, and so if your

00:31:29
solution isn't is an encompassing some kind of

00:31:32
intervention for the family, then it doesn't matter what box

00:31:35
they checked.

00:31:36
Ben Maynard: I love the fact you've got a system thinking for

00:31:39
.

00:31:41
Julie Dirksen: System thinking 101 kind of thing yeah.

00:31:43
Ben Maynard: Yeah, I'd love to talk to you about doing that,

00:31:45
doing something like that with you, because it's it's one of my

00:31:48
hobbies that's sad to admit, and I think I'm an avicet it too

00:31:53
.

00:31:53
I've been using it for I Know Eight or nine years now, I think

00:31:58
, and it plays a large part in kind of a lot of what I do, like

00:32:01
systems mapping, and I think there's a huge amount of benefit

00:32:04
into just Talking through potential cause and effect and

00:32:08
looking at behaviors and looking at motivations and trying to

00:32:10
map out a broader system, particularly in the

00:32:12
organizations I work with, where it's Ordinarily it's product

00:32:16
development.

00:32:16
In large organizations that haven't really Excelled at

00:32:19
product development because they've been very much kind of

00:32:21
agile e-tech firms, they're trying to move towards a much

00:32:24
more of a product mindset and I systems, systems mapping,

00:32:30
systems, modeling Whatever we, whatever I choose to cause it in

00:32:32
any given day.

00:32:33
It's such a lovely way for people to come up with

00:32:35
hypothetical cause and effect models and then to run

00:32:38
experiments against to say we want that behavior to change.

00:32:41
Did this with one organization where we mapped out developer

00:32:45
behaviors To the motivations and looked at the level of training

00:32:49
and face-to-face training versus non face-to-face training

00:32:51
and the level of pressure coming from product on them.

00:32:53
It actually came out with something which they were able

00:32:56
to.

00:32:56
Then they did this before they flew out to India and if you and

00:33:00
Someone that was involved in a story might be listening to this

00:33:03
, so high coffee if you're hard, if you're listening, you know

00:33:06
they use that some of the ideas that are generated from that to

00:33:08
go to help the developers get better and I think that's a

00:33:12
lovely way of modeling all through for behavior change or

00:33:15
figuring out who you train and how you train and how you get

00:33:17
people working Better together.

00:33:19
I will be launching some workshops.

00:33:22
Oh great on it to just help people understand a very basics

00:33:25
of it, and but how you use that to generate experiments which

00:33:28
you can then go in the experiments to learn, to learn

00:33:30
more about the system rather than to try and achieve the

00:33:33
specific goals.

00:33:35
Julie Dirksen: One of the things I occasionally comment on is

00:33:37
the fact that there's two characteristics that I always

00:33:39
see you with difficult behavior change Problems.

00:33:41
One is competing priorities, and I think that's just the

00:33:44
world we live in.

00:33:44
Everybody's got 37 different things.

00:33:47
They should do with any every minute of every day, and in

00:33:49
order to get on the list, you can't come in at 36.

00:33:53
You got to come in in like the top five or it's still never

00:33:56
going to happen, because we most of us don't ever get down to

00:33:58
the bottom of the list.

00:33:59
We just keep turning through top items or things that are

00:34:02
easy.

00:34:03
One of those two, but the other one I think that is more

00:34:06
relevant and is very much.

00:34:07
I think a systems issue is delayed or absent.

00:34:09
Feedback is Is present in pretty much every behavior

00:34:13
change problem.

00:34:14
I've ever seen delayed feedbacks, part of it too.

00:34:16
Right, if I don't put on sunscreen today, that could

00:34:19
cause me problems in like 10 or 15 years, but I'm not gonna get

00:34:23
sunburned, probably because I'm sitting in the shade and things

00:34:26
like that.

00:34:27
I should probably still have sunscreen on.

00:34:28
Ben Maynard: I think you want to go put some on Julia's fun.

00:34:30
I think we can.

00:34:31
We can put the podcast wait, yeah, thanks.

00:34:34
Julie Dirksen: But it is one of these things where, like, the

00:34:36
behavior today is not gonna have any immediate consequence and

00:34:40
intellectually I know that there is going to be a consequence

00:34:43
down the road.

00:34:43
I'm visiting my, I'm visiting my folks right now and my dad

00:34:46
just had some surgery to remove a spot on his face last week and

00:34:50
I know, genetically the precedent is there.

00:34:52
Is that enough to change my behavior?

00:34:54
That intellectual knowledge some days, yes, some days.

00:34:57
Ben Maynard: Yeah, I gotta Gonna try and be brief Not one of my

00:35:02
fortes, I think.

00:35:04
I don't know if I feel like a I'm trying to channel.

00:35:07
Julie Dirksen: Peter.

00:35:07
Ben Maynard: Senghi or something , but I think it was in the

00:35:09
fifth discipline where he spoke about learning the piano and

00:35:13
they say they like delayed feedback or absolute feedback,

00:35:15
because imagine sitting in front of a piano and you're there and

00:35:18
you're reading the music and you're pushing the keys, but

00:35:20
it's gonna take two weeks you to hear it.

00:35:22
Yeah, it's Very difficult to learn and the feedbacks laid

00:35:28
like that.

00:35:28
But then it's also this we are really terrible at thinking

00:35:31
further ahead and that's why I think systems mapping can be

00:35:32
really useful, because it's never gonna be.

00:35:34
It's not looking for accuracy here, but at least we put a bit

00:35:37
more rigor of thought into the potential unintended

00:35:39
consequences into the future.

00:35:41
And I think this is where there's two examples.

00:35:43
One is around organizations where they Of all, very much

00:35:48
output driven the product teams really want to be outcome driven

00:35:52
, but they are part of actually they said they've got a, they

00:35:54
said bosses, boss, but also that's part of a much larger

00:35:57
organization and they simply cannot influence up.

00:36:00
They just want to know what stuff, how many things, you're

00:36:03
putting out, when are they gonna be out, and actually To tell

00:36:07
them the.

00:36:07
For the product people I've been involved in these

00:36:09
conversations, I've been around it.

00:36:11
It's a hard challenge.

00:36:12
But for those product people to say, look, if we actually look

00:36:15
at user behavior and we create hypotheses and we actually can

00:36:19
we increase, change user behavior in this way by this

00:36:23
much, we think it will come to another point but yeah, whatever

00:36:25
, how many things and what date?

00:36:27
Yeah, actually to see that payoff is going to be really

00:36:32
Slow, because in these types of organizations where you're an

00:36:35
old kind of tech firm You're going to one was a more modern

00:36:38
product organization often the speed at which you can get your

00:36:41
products into the customer sounds Isn't actually that quick

00:36:44
and they matter stuff it's already been promised is already

00:36:46
quite long.

00:36:47
So actually, the absence of feedback on this lovely idea of

00:36:51
delaying that it was gonna be very hard to convince people of

00:36:54
that.

00:36:54
And then the slightly more personal one is just around

00:36:56
mental health.

00:36:57
Yeah, it's something that I manage, have managed, sometimes

00:37:03
really badly, often really badly , sometimes not too badly.

00:37:07
But for the last 20, god, yeah, 20 plus 20 plus 20 years now.

00:37:12
And I always say to myself, if I'm not doing the work like I'm

00:37:18
done and if I'm not spending every day doing a bit of work to

00:37:23
stave off the real lows, then it will get me.

00:37:28
But I still don't do the work some days and I can still hear

00:37:31
myself saying do the work.

00:37:32
And I still don't do the work because right now today isn't a

00:37:34
problem, I'm too busy, because it's something really important

00:37:36
I feel I have to do, but then give it a week or two and I'll

00:37:40
absolutely pay the price for not doing the work, yeah yeah.

00:37:44
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, very different examples where human

00:37:48
and what you probably have almost certainly gotten better

00:37:51
at over the years is recognizing when it's starting to downhill

00:37:55
slide a little bit.

00:37:56
And so hopefully, even if you sometimes can't prevent yourself

00:37:59
from from engaging in a little bit of a downhill slide, you

00:38:02
arrest it a lot sooner than you used to.

00:38:03
You recognize okay, this is going badly, I need to do

00:38:06
something Otherwise.

00:38:08
I know, I know the painful position that I've been in the

00:38:10
past when I don't do that and when we look at it

00:38:13
organizationally.

00:38:14
So you have you at least shortened your feedback loop on

00:38:18
that one a little bit, like you don't let it go quite as far,

00:38:20
maybe, or something like that.

00:38:21
Yeah, so we all organizationally, I think,

00:38:24
absolutely pay your same gaze, 100% relevant in this.

00:38:27
And I didn't remember the.

00:38:28
It's been a while since I've read the fifth one, so I didn't

00:38:30
remember the piano example, but now I'm going to go look it up

00:38:32
because that's beautiful.

00:38:33
Ben Maynard: That's perfect.

00:38:33
I think it's from there.

00:38:35
If it's not, I will find out where I got it from.

00:38:36
I'm pretty certain.

00:38:37
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, yeah yeah, he does definitely talk about

00:38:40
the key uses, those models of typical system Things, and one

00:38:43
of them is absolutely that delay loop and stuff like that where

00:38:46
it comes in, and I think that is 100% the most common scenario

00:38:50
that I've seen in in some of these kinds of things.

00:38:53
And some of this stuff is about know that forcing yourself to

00:38:56
do a thing or forcing other people to do a thing is usually

00:39:00
not a great strategy.

00:39:02
And I'm working with Michelle Segar.

00:39:04
She's out of the University of Michigan, she does exercise,

00:39:06
motivation and even though, again, like doing the work for

00:39:10
mental health stuff, doing their physical health stuff is good,

00:39:13
but as long as you're forcing yourself to do something, you

00:39:16
don't like motivation, the history of the motivation for

00:39:20
that is not great, and so a big part of what she does when she

00:39:23
works with people is reframing it.

00:39:24
This isn't something I have to do, this is something I get to

00:39:27
do.

00:39:27
It's not a chore, it's a gift I get to give myself and figuring

00:39:31
out exercise you actually like to do and some of those kinds of

00:39:34
things as opposed to you're going to, you're going to unless

00:39:38
there's something else that's very strongly motivating you.

00:39:41
You're going to be very bad at forcing yourself to do things

00:39:43
that you hate and so trying to figure out how to reframe it.

00:39:46
We were talking a little bit about, like marketing stuff.

00:39:48
I'm trying to reframe my relationship with marketing from

00:39:52
something that I currently hate doing to something that you

00:39:55
know.

00:39:55
I'm trying to figure out how do I make it a gift that I either

00:39:58
give to myself or to the people in my audience, or something in

00:40:01
terms of things that are genuinely helpful to them, that

00:40:04
I'm sharing, as opposed to I'm trying to promote myself Like

00:40:07
I'm trying to promote myself.

00:40:08
Framing is one I really struggle with.

00:40:10
I'm very bad at it, but I like to share things.

00:40:13
I like to help other people.

00:40:14
How can I reframe this in a way that I don't feel like it's

00:40:18
just ingenuous, but that it's a sincere way to do it?

00:40:22
So I haven't quite mastered this one yet, but I'm trying to

00:40:25
reframe my relationship with marketing my own materials and

00:40:29
services so that it's not something that I'm dreading

00:40:32
doing the same time.

00:40:34
The whole issue of some days.

00:40:36
You just don't feel up to it.

00:40:37
That's okay.

00:40:38
What we've seen a lot in behavioral stuff is where it

00:40:42
turns into a spiral.

00:40:43
Right, I haven't smoked for X number of days.

00:40:46
I smoked today.

00:40:46
Now it doesn't matter, I'm just going to throw my hands up and

00:40:49
smoke again.

00:40:50
And there were.

00:40:51
I was working with somebody who's a smoking cessation expert

00:40:54
and she had a whole thing where she's a few laps wait at least

00:40:58
a couple of weeks before you try to do it again.

00:41:00
Just few laps, more than once.

00:41:01
I don't think it was just a single lapse.

00:41:03
There is actually nothing about a single lapse that says you're

00:41:07
on a downhill slide.

00:41:08
But that is our perception, right?

00:41:10
I was trying to really hard to do the thing and now I failed,

00:41:13
and so now I'm just going to throw my hands and give up.

00:41:15
So reframing that is, oh, didn't work today, let's try

00:41:20
again tomorrow.

00:41:20
That is going to be a better attitude for prolonging the

00:41:25
behavior as opposed to now.

00:41:26
There's no point.

00:41:27
And so the streak thing and holding tight to a streak it can

00:41:31
help with motivation, but at the same time it has some issues

00:41:34
with it If it all goes wrong.

00:41:35
We're getting into some weeds on that one.

00:41:38
Ben Maynard: Yeah, I know I mean , if I bring it back, I suppose

00:41:40
a little bit is that.

00:41:42
It's interesting to mention the smoking cessation because that

00:41:45
is in the UK when they had a big push that many years ago they

00:41:49
used the trans theoretical model for that.

00:41:52
Julie Dirksen: Oh yeah.

00:41:53
Ben Maynard: So they either procrastinate, declare a trans

00:41:55
theoretical model of change.

00:41:56
What I really liked about that was and I think this is so true

00:41:58
for anybody that is trying to change themselves or is working

00:42:01
with people and trying to get them on their journey, whether

00:42:03
it is what I mentioned earlier on about outcomes over outputs

00:42:06
or, I know, trying not to take estimates as commitments or not

00:42:10
doing estimates at all or different ways, doing

00:42:12
roadmapping and so they have a granular project plan, or

00:42:14
anything like this is that we all too often mistake changing

00:42:18
for change.

00:42:20
Julie Dirksen: Yeah.

00:42:21
Ben Maynard: And that actually you begin to change.

00:42:23
If then you are changing and it's that maintenance period

00:42:26
then of trying to really embed those, either for you to embed

00:42:30
those new papers or for you to support other people in those

00:42:32
papers, that's where not the hard work is, because that's

00:42:34
when you enter into your laps and when you go back and then

00:42:38
you have to when you start again .

00:42:39
That being able to contemplate that the reason you were started

00:42:44
, that change in the first place is still valid, I think,

00:42:47
diminishes for some people after you've had a few failures.

00:42:49
Actually, the motivation wanes when you just think, oh, do you

00:42:52
know what?

00:42:52
Maybe I'm really don't think this is so much of a problem.

00:42:55
Maybe I think the solution which has been presented isn't

00:42:58
really solving anything.

00:43:00
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, so to.

00:43:01
By the way, smoking cessation is absolutely not my area and it

00:43:04
has an extra level of complication in the physical

00:43:07
addictive piece of it and so 100% don't speak to.

00:43:12
It's a complex area, but the protest can decrement.

00:43:15
It looks at the idea that there's you have a mode of pre

00:43:17
contemplation.

00:43:18
It's changing, isn't really on your radar.

00:43:20
So if we apply it to smoking, you're not really thinking about

00:43:22
quitting contemplation.

00:43:24
I'm starting to think about it, preparing, as I'm actually

00:43:26
taking some steps to get ready to do it, and then there's an

00:43:29
action phase where I'm actually doing the thing, I'm trying to

00:43:32
quit smoking, and then maintenance is where you can

00:43:37
lower your vigilance a little and just maintain, and so

00:43:40
protest can decrement.

00:43:41
I think is a good model.

00:43:42
I actually use a slightly different one, a little bit more

00:43:44
in the book, which is it comes from some risk risk assessment

00:43:48
ladders and they did it for smoking cessation.

00:43:50
There's a research word on that and I think also texting while

00:43:52
driving or something like that.

00:43:53
But it, but I did the generalized version, which sort

00:43:56
of says hey, where are people along the path?

00:43:58
So if number one might be, they don't know about the behavior

00:44:02
at all.

00:44:02
So if the behavior is not using , in this case it's a negative

00:44:06
behavior, but ever but not using estimates, or am I saying that

00:44:09
right?

00:44:09
You were just talking about it, okay, not.

00:44:11
You say estimates, right, so they don't know about it at all

00:44:14
or what the benefits are, why it's important or even really

00:44:16
what it looks like.

00:44:17
So there is an education function there.

00:44:19
That's clearly something where we've got an education gap and I

00:44:22
can educate you about this.

00:44:23
But then we look at it.

00:44:24
Maybe they understand the behavior, but they aren't

00:44:26
convinced.

00:44:27
They're like I don't think that's going to work with my

00:44:29
team or whatever.

00:44:30
So then we start to move into more of a persuasion piece, and

00:44:33
so we might do things like here let me show you some examples of

00:44:36
how this is worked, or let me see if there's a trusted social

00:44:39
source who can talk to you about their experience, or let me

00:44:42
show you the benefits.

00:44:43
If you don't understand, let me show you, let me formulate it

00:44:46
some way.

00:44:46
That and looks into persuasion, and so it might be that they

00:44:50
aren't convinced, or it might be that they're convinced, but it

00:44:53
doesn't seem like a priority to them, because 37 things, right,

00:44:57
that you have to do all the time , and we're still doing

00:44:59
persuasion, but we're not persuading you that it's good.

00:45:02
We're persuading you that you should bump it up the list,

00:45:04
right, then it might move into okay, I'm ready, but now I'm not

00:45:09
feeling, like the idea of doing this feels going without a net

00:45:12
and that's too scary.

00:45:14
And so then it becomes how do I support you?

00:45:16
Or how do I create an environment where you can do

00:45:18
this in a little way so it's less scary?

00:45:20
Or how do I give you some social support or somebody to

00:45:23
coach or guide you on this, or something like that?

00:45:25
How do I help you with that anxiety piece, as opposed to how

00:45:29
do I persuade you?

00:45:30
What kind of support is going to make you feel comfortable

00:45:32
jumping into this?

00:45:34
And then it might move into okay , we've been doing it a little

00:45:37
bit.

00:45:37
I could expand it, but again I'm just feeling overwhelmed and

00:45:41
busy and this feels like too much.

00:45:42
So it might be about some kind of practical support at that

00:45:44
point, like how do we carve out some time for you to do this

00:45:47
thing?

00:45:47
Or it might be about like okay, I'm doing this, but I don't

00:45:50
feel like I'm doing it quite right and I'm not nailing it

00:45:53
like we're trying, and so then it might be about coaching, or

00:45:56
it might be about some tips or hints that can help you, or some

00:45:59
resources that can be just in time when you bump into a

00:46:01
situation and things like that, and then once we move into, okay

00:46:05
, I need, I did this, it worked, I'm in, but I'm still swimming

00:46:09
upstream here in the organization.

00:46:11
So then it might be about social support, or it might be about

00:46:13
some kind of accountability thing, or it might be about goal

00:46:16
setting to make sure that you're continuing to invest in

00:46:18
the behavior.

00:46:19
And so the point of it is at every step we move down here,

00:46:23
what's helpful at that point probably changes a little bit

00:46:26
right.

00:46:26
Here it's just information, here's maybe it's more

00:46:29
persuasion.

00:46:30
Here it might be coaching or practical assistance or

00:46:33
something to ways to scaffold it so that you're not having to

00:46:36
make the big jump right away.

00:46:37
Here it might be something around habit formation or

00:46:40
feedback or kind of accountability or support or

00:46:43
something like that.

00:46:43
And so one of the big difficulties we have is when

00:46:47
we're coming in with more information when really what

00:46:49
they needed was a little bit of social support.

00:46:52
Ben Maynard: Missing each other there.

00:46:53
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, yeah, and there's a lot of that going on,

00:46:55
right, and the truth is no people move through this at

00:46:58
different rate.

00:46:58
Not everybody hits every single step, and so is it about having

00:47:02
a whole kind of flush of resources that can meet people

00:47:07
where they are at the right time , or is it about something where

00:47:10
we're constantly doing a check in and finding, okay, how are

00:47:14
you doing great, what do you need?

00:47:15
Here's a set of things that we can apply to this right, but

00:47:18
it's not about telling people that are more emphatically that

00:47:21
it's good If they're already convinced that it's good, and

00:47:23
the problem is it just seems scary, right?

00:47:25
Those kinds of things don't always fit together.

00:47:28
Ben Maynard: And I suppose as somebody that is helping people

00:47:30
on this journey, building trust and being able to put a

00:47:34
relationship with people to help them on the journey but I

00:47:38
suppose it's also then understanding your own

00:47:40
weaknesses.

00:47:40
If you're brilliant in parting knowledge but a terrible coach,

00:47:45
Then I say this is where actually there is an interplay

00:47:49
between different actors and this is where I suppose you end

00:47:51
up acting more as a group to shift people on this kind of

00:47:54
learning and behavior change aspect, rather than just as a

00:47:57
solo person in this.

00:47:59
And have you seen that group effect before?

00:48:02
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, absolutely.

00:48:03
The community piece is often huge around these things, and so

00:48:07
communities are the right metaphor, for community is much

00:48:11
more of a garden than it is a machine.

00:48:12
You don't just plug it in and turn it on.

00:48:14
You have to grow it and develop it, and there's definitely

00:48:17
practices around how to do that.

00:48:18
But that social support can make a huge difference.

00:48:21
For example, one of the behaviors I'm trying to be

00:48:23
better at in all of the work that I do is is my accessibility

00:48:28
for digital materials.

00:48:29
So do all my images have alt text?

00:48:32
If for anything I'm publishing online, do I'm paying attention

00:48:35
to that?

00:48:35
We've paid a lot of attention to the alt text for all the

00:48:37
images in the book to try to make sure that they were good

00:48:40
and useful to somebody who's using assistive technology to

00:48:44
read it.

00:48:44
But I will absolutely say that my social circle makes a big

00:48:49
difference in terms of how much effort I'm willing to put into

00:48:51
it, because I believe in it absolutely.

00:48:53
But honestly, I also know that if I don't do a good job on this

00:48:57
and somebody sees it, I'm probably going to hear about it

00:49:00
from somebody.

00:49:01
There's a colleague of mine and I showed her the cover of the

00:49:03
book and she said, oh, that green that has bad color.

00:49:06
Green is a tough one to color contrast.

00:49:08
And so that's spending down a whole spiral for a day and a

00:49:10
half trying to figure out if the color of the font against the

00:49:13
background on the color had enough contrast.

00:49:15
And the problem is I'm actually good at this there's very clear

00:49:18
guidelines for digital, but once you move into print it's

00:49:21
different and it's hard to figure out.

00:49:23
And so I ultimately had to rely on the artist for the book

00:49:28
cover, who had their own guidelines that they were

00:49:30
working from, and they said, no, it's fine.

00:49:31
And I was like, ok, I hope that's true, but you know, like

00:49:35
at a certain point you can't, you can't.

00:49:37
You got to really wish them control to.

00:49:39
Ben Maynard: I know idea, rather you than me.

00:49:42
I think we've began for an hour more or less, and I think maybe

00:49:49
we should bring the conversation to a close, as much

00:49:50
as it pains me to save.

00:49:52
I don't know when we spoke last time.

00:49:53
I think it almost hit two hours .

00:49:56
Julie Dirksen: Oh yeah.

00:49:57
Ben Maynard: But I was going to say that perhaps we can get

00:49:59
together again and maybe do a live stream or something similar

00:50:05
.

00:50:05
Julie Dirksen: That'd be fun yeah yeah, a bit different.

00:50:07
Ben Maynard: I'd love to do something around systems

00:50:09
thinking with you.

00:50:10
And audience participation because I'm really passionate

00:50:15
and the one thing I pretty said we can both do is really nerd

00:50:17
out on the topic.

00:50:19
Julie Dirksen: So yeah, sure, yeah, absolutely, and now I'm

00:50:22
always happy to do that.

00:50:23
And then live streams are fun because you can usually get like

00:50:25
good audience questions and things like that.

00:50:28
Ben Maynard: So many audience questions we did one on.

00:50:30
We've been trying we're doing at least one a month.

00:50:32
Make ramp up more.

00:50:34
Through my company.

00:50:34
She even the questions we get a brilliant.

00:50:37
And whenever we start a live stream like oh, here's all the

00:50:40
topics we're going to cover, and we get made not even halfway

00:50:43
through and someone's oh, but what about this?

00:50:45
And you're like, oh, wow, man, you go down that rabbit home and

00:50:48
all more questions come in and that's that's the joy of it.

00:50:50
It's that participation of it as well.

00:50:52
So, yeah, I will get a date in with you and we'll make it

00:50:57
happen.

00:50:57
Great, That'd be great.

00:50:58
Now, if people, first of all everyone go to where do you get

00:51:02
the most money?

00:51:03
Where people buy the book, Is it not Amazon?

00:51:05
Take it.

00:51:07
Julie Dirksen: I it's hard to tell from royalty statements

00:51:09
Speaking of delayed or absent feedback.

00:51:10
Royalty statements are not great, so I don't worry about

00:51:13
that too much.

00:51:14
If people are in the US, the best place is usually the

00:51:16
publisher website, which is peach pitcom, because they

00:51:20
usually have the best pricing and then they often have coupon

00:51:23
codes and also they do free shipping and things like that.

00:51:25
I don't think that works quite as well for international, super

00:51:28
international.

00:51:29
If it's Amazon or whatever, it's usually as good an answer

00:51:32
as any.

00:51:32
I literally cannot tell the difference between what I get

00:51:35
paid from different outlets, so it's irrelevant to me.

00:51:38
But if they go to usable learning dot com slash elephants

00:51:41
, they'll get links to post to the major.

00:51:44
It's got a US bias because that's still most of my audience

00:51:47
.

00:51:47
But you can, you know, you can translate it for your own

00:51:50
availability.

00:51:50
This should be available most places.

00:51:52
So awesome.

00:51:53
Ben Maynard: I got mine from in the UK.

00:51:54
I want one on Amazon and I.

00:51:58
We were going to record this before and I thought the

00:52:02
shipping went wrong.

00:52:02
It's because I didn't actually complete checkout, because I'm

00:52:05
an idiot.

00:52:07
Julie Dirksen: So yeah, yeah happened the other day.

00:52:09
Ben Maynard: Yeah, I get so distracted by things.

00:52:11
Normally important stuff, but it is a fantastic book and

00:52:17
design for how people learn.

00:52:19
Julie Dirksen: Still back there, still back there, always up

00:52:21
there, yeah.

00:52:22
Ben Maynard: Two fantastic books that, if you are in, if you are

00:52:24
coach, if you're a trainer, if you're a leader, if you're

00:52:27
interested in helping people change and really making sure

00:52:30
people will call what you say, then I urge you to check up both

00:52:33
books.

00:52:34
As I said, the gaps in the first book I use whenever I can

00:52:38
do because I find it is the cleanest way for me to

00:52:41
articulate what I can bring to an organizational party, given

00:52:45
the boundaries that I'm being given by them.

00:52:47
Yeah, I think it's a wonderful resources.

00:52:49
So thank you very much for writing, for writing those books

00:52:52
, and thank you so much for taking this time with me today.

00:52:56
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, absolutely, and if people are interested,

00:52:58
I'm doing a virtual workshop on kind of the whole model for

00:53:02
designing for behavior change and then yeah, otherwise people

00:53:06
can find me at my website and consulting workshops

00:53:10
presentations all the things.

00:53:12
Ben Maynard: Give Julie work.

00:53:13
I like people coming to podcasts because if you've got

00:53:16
good stuff, let's make sure people know about the good stuff

00:53:19
.

00:53:19
Yeah, exactly, we'll make sure that your work drop is on the

00:53:22
show notes and we'll get that in some of our promotional stuff

00:53:25
and our marketing side of things .

00:53:26
We'll get a date in for a live stream, julie, and we will talk

00:53:29
about systems thinking and systems mapping and stuff like

00:53:31
that.

00:53:32
So be sure everyone to check out Sheave on LinkedIn to follow

00:53:35
us LinkedIn.

00:53:36
That'll be in the show notes as well, and let's try to close

00:53:40
Everyone.

00:53:40
Julie Dirksen: Thank you so much for listening.

00:53:41
Yeah, I hope everyone enjoyed it.

00:53:43
Ben Maynard: Have you enjoyed it , Julie?

00:53:45
Julie Dirksen: I very much enjoyed it.

00:53:46
I always enjoyed talking to you sir.

00:53:47
Ben Maynard: Yeah, such fun, until you need to write another

00:53:49
book now so I can get you back, ok.

00:53:51
Done OK thank you everyone.

00:53:54
Thank you guys, julie yeah.