Julie Dirksen is a leading figure in instructional design and learning science, focusing on making education engaging and effective. As the author of "Design For How People Learn," Julie has shaped modern educational practices. Her work, integrating behavioural science with design, is pivotal in enhancing learning outcomes across educational and corporate settings. Julie's influence extends globally, as she aids organisations in applying cognitive psychology principles to improve their learning strategies.
Julie on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliedirksen/
Back by popular demand, Julie Dirksen returns to the Product Agility Podcast, delving into the art of influence and how to shift mindsets effectively. A maestro in instructional design and learning science, Julie unpacks the intricate dance between knowledge and behaviour, offering listeners a masterclass in creating lasting change.
This episode explores the depths of learning strategies, behavioural economics, and the science behind motivation and change. Julie's insights provide a roadmap for anyone looking to influence outcomes, whether in education, business, or personal growth.
Key Highlights:
🔍 5:39 - The Root Of Miscommunication
🔍 18:31 - Winning The Opinion Battle: Strategies for Influence
🔍 20:24 - The Million-Dollar Motivation Dilemma
🔍 35:41 - Transitioning From Output To Outcome
🔍 52:21 - Essential Coaching Resources
Highlighted books:
Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman here
Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics" by Richard H. Thaler here
Don't miss Julie's actionable insights on shaping behaviour and decision-making processes. For those looking to dive deeper, Julie offers workshops that promise to revolutionise your approach to learning and influence.
Explore Julie Dirksen's Workshops.
Host Bio
Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.
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Ben Maynard
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Product Agility Podcast
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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
00:00:38
missing link between agile and product.
00:00:40
The purpose of this podcast is to share practical tips,
00:00:43
strategies and stories from world-class thought leaders and
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practitioners.
00:00:47
Why, I hear you ask.
00:00:49
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.
00:00:57
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
00:01:04
between agility and product is a deep-rooted belief that people
00:01:07
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
00:13:32
these big knockdown, drag out the gap charts or you know
00:13:35
whatever it is and I I Worked for a company many years ago
00:13:41
that did traditional P&P certification training, so I'm
00:13:44
very familiar with but the big, dense version of project
00:13:48
planning part of it is if that was the thing that gave you
00:13:51
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
00:14:00
make you feel like you were productive?
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Does the idea of launching into something without that kind of
00:14:05
roadmap feel insecure.
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The model that I lean heavily on the book is one from Susan
00:14:09
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
00:14:16
thing.
00:14:16
So if it's more of an agile, roadmap driven method for
00:14:20
project management, then are they capable of doing it?
00:14:23
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?
00:14:29
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?
00:14:34
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?
00:14:49
Then we look at social.
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If I seen somebody else do it, have I seen it modeled?
00:14:52
Have I experienced it myself with other people, if I do this,
00:14:56
what's the reaction of my environment, people in my social
00:14:59
environment gonna be?
00:14:59
Is my team gonna be on board?
00:15:01
Are they gonna fight me on this ?
00:15:02
All of these kinds of things.
00:15:04
And then we look at motivation and within motivation.
00:15:06
We want to look at things like are they confident?
00:15:09
Do they see this as an important skill?
00:15:10
Is this the goal that they have or are they resistant to it?
00:15:14
Do they have the perception that it will be useful to?
00:15:17
They have the perception that it's gonna actually fix some
00:15:19
significant problems for them?
00:15:20
Do they see it as part of their identity is to be good at this?
00:15:24
So are they capable of doing?
00:15:25
It is usually an infer in educational problem, right?
00:15:28
Our traditional tool set of how do you teach people things, how
00:15:30
do you develop skills, will work fit really nice into
00:15:33
capability.
00:15:33
But it's these other areas.
00:15:35
So what does the opportunity look like?
00:15:37
And then what are there?
00:15:39
What does their motivation look like?
00:15:41
That become Really important.
00:15:43
And if you're solving the wrong problem, if the problem is I
00:15:50
Don't feel confident that I can have the conversation to
00:15:54
negotiate safe sex practices with a partner, is different
00:15:59
than you're not gonna solve that with a motivation thing.
00:16:02
Like they're motivated, they just don't feel like they have
00:16:04
the capability or the confidence to do it and you're trying to
00:16:08
just tell them it's really important, that's not gonna fix
00:16:12
I don't feel confident.
00:16:13
The two things are just fundamentally a mismatch in
00:16:16
terms of problem and solution.
00:16:19
Ben Maynard: So where does the boundaries of your book, your
00:16:22
work, end?
00:16:23
Because, because there's some stuff which, like having people
00:16:28
learn something, is Enough.
00:16:30
But with that then, are we talking about things such as
00:16:33
persuasion, find a ways to motivate people.
00:16:35
If I think of Conversation that I had God Good kick myself, I
00:16:42
really come and do is with, a couple times in the past couple
00:16:45
of weeks, somebody saying that actually we believe in all of
00:16:49
this and we totally get it and we absolutely want it.
00:16:51
But until my boss's boss actually decides to measure us
00:16:57
on something other than just the output and the number of
00:17:01
widgets we produce, I just don't see the point in trying here
00:17:06
and then for me, like that Kind of implies there isn't so much
00:17:10
of a learning intervention, that that's just something else at
00:17:14
least of that.
00:17:14
That condit that bounded context there.
00:17:17
Julie Dirksen: Yeah, and so if we were doing a copy analysis
00:17:20
we're looking at that We'd say that's not a capability problem
00:17:22
and it's not a motivation problem.
00:17:23
It is most likely an opportunity problem and probably
00:17:26
what they would define is a physical opportunity in terms of
00:17:30
the way that the system set up, which is a little weird to say
00:17:33
that something like an incentive scheme is a physical
00:17:35
opportunity.
00:17:35
It's really more.
00:17:37
There's a mismatch in the system and so then when we start
00:17:40
looking at solutions for that, we might look at okay, we can't
00:17:44
sell this in a big way, but can we carve out some room for a
00:17:47
pilot project and maybe try to figure out what measures would
00:17:51
we say that we would compare If we were doing a pilot, to an
00:17:54
existing one?
00:17:55
Can we get enough line to do just a small pilot of testing
00:18:00
this out for something?
00:18:01
Very?
00:18:02
It's not going to interrupt all the deliverables and all the
00:18:05
widget stuff that's scheduled already, but we just want you to
00:18:08
give us a small enough thing that it's not scary To.
00:18:10
Okay, where we're gonna test this out, and then we'll be able
00:18:13
to come back and look at some of this data afterwards, right,
00:18:17
and say, hey, look, here's what we found out from this, and you
00:18:20
have to be prepared in those instances to be able to come
00:18:22
back and be like yeah, guess what, it didn't help on some of
00:18:25
these measures, but we did find this result or something like
00:18:28
that, because the the challenge often is, if you're putting your
00:18:35
opinion up against somebody else's opinion, that's whoever
00:18:38
is the check wins in those cases , and so what's?
00:18:41
Something that is Small enough that doesn't feel like a real
00:18:47
loss to them but is still moving you forward in some way.
00:18:51
Okay, would be a thing to look at there.
00:18:52
Ben Maynard: Yeah, trying to find that sweet spot.
00:18:54
Where is it?
00:18:55
There's enough value to show that it was worthwhile.
00:18:57
We're not so much that it's going to be too painful for them
00:19:00
.
00:19:00
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.
