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Join the Nerds!
Welcome to the funtastic world of the Fabulous Learning Nerds! Scott Schuette and Daniel Coonrod and Zeta Gardner are Learning Executives with over 50 years’ experience between them. Together they share new ideas, learning tools, approaches and technology that increase learner engagement and impact. All while having FUN! To participate in the show and community please contact them at learningnerdscast@gmail.com
The nerds are all about creating a community of learning, innovation and growth amongst educational professionals: Instructors, facilitators, instructional designers, learning and development professionals, trainers, leadership development professionals, learning metric gurus, sales enablement wizards and more. So, if you want to learn, connect, grow and have a good time doing it, The Fabulous Learning Nerds Podcast is for YOU!
Scott (00:01.294)
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of your Fabulous Learning Nerds. I'm Scott Trudy, your host, and with me, my co -host, with the most, you love him, Dan Coonrod.
Scott (00:13.635)
Dan!
Daniel (00:14.92)
Scott! Co -host with the most.
Scott (00:18.03)
Co -host with the most, you know what that's from,
Daniel (00:22.353)
Is that from Beetlejuice? What's it from?
Scott (00:23.766)
No, close though. You know, I'm your host, your ghost host with the most that would be the Haunted Mansion. So there it is. no, you're right. The ghost with the most is Beetlejuice. I was incorrect, but I was thinking Haunted Mansion when I said co -host with the most, but either one works. As matter of fact, they probably are pretty aligned and Beetlejuice probably does spend a good deal of time at the Haunted Mansion. I pee regardless.
Daniel (00:27.334)
Same decade at least.
Daniel (00:32.787)
God
Daniel (00:51.41)
That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah?
Scott (00:53.452)
Yep, yep, does. So and how are you today, Dan?
Daniel (00:58.615)
I am fair to Midland.
Daniel (01:04.7)
But I want to call out real quick as we talk about ghosts, Beetlejuice and haunted houses, I just want to tell everybody, our audience, you have a shirt that I want so badly now that says October forever. I absolutely love that shirt.
Scott (01:04.91)
That's good to hear.
Scott (01:20.654)
I can make that happen. It's from the Halloween T -shirt company, everybody. can get the shirt at the Halloween T -shirt company. Not easy to remember. Hard to forget. Halloween T -shirt company. We're recording in August. And the new phrase that I've heard is it's Og -tober now because all the spooky stuff is out, which is great. And I'm loving it. So thanks that you love my shirt. Speaking of things that we love.
Daniel (01:33.18)
Ha ha ha!
Scott (01:49.486)
Our Duchess of Design is with us today. Zeta's in the house, everybody.
Scott (02:03.202)
Zera.
Zeta (02:04.444)
Hello.
Scott (02:06.06)
Now, do you need an October Forever shirt as well?
Zeta (02:09.286)
yeah, I have my Witches Brew coffee cup right now. I think it would go with it so well. Cheers, by the way.
Scott (02:15.234)
I got my Haunted Mansion coffee mug as well. It's one of those really nice ones.
Daniel (02:21.458)
Where does he get those wonderful toys?
Zeta (02:21.865)
I love it.
Zeta (03:24.382)
I'm doing pretty good, doing pretty good. But I think there's a word.
That is a little bit better than that. Excellent is exactly what today is like.
Daniel (03:29.672)
You
Scott (03:36.504)
Okay cool, what have you been working on?
Zeta (03:36.574)
Very, very cool. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I've been doing a lot of graphic design this week, which has been really, really fun getting back to my roots. And a little bit of prep work. Cooler weather has come in this week. So I've been out and about in the yard. It's been really, really nice. Yeah. It's no longer 90.
Scott (03:54.456)
Yes, yes, and you sent me a
Scott (03:59.342)
Yeah, I'm kind of done with the 90s, although I'm down in Florida. We've got a few more weeks of 90, which is all right. That's totally OK. No, no, no, it's totally fine. Hey, folks, I'm super excited about this week. We actually have a really exciting topic and a really amazing guest. And we're going to learn all about him in a little segment that we call What's Your Deal?
Daniel (04:03.005)
Zeta (04:04.752)
so sorry.
Scott (04:27.81)
Gary!
Gary (04:29.267)
Hello, good morning.
Scott (04:31.32)
Good morning! Hey, what's your deal, my friend?
Gary (04:34.977)
Well, I've been in this game of innovation and design and behavior change for about 27 years. So I'm an old fart. I've been around the block, but I started my career designing gambling machines for the French mafia. That isn't until Interpol came. Yeah.
Scott (04:51.822)
All right, you're going to have to explain that you've you've started your career making gambling machines
Daniel (04:52.796)
You
Gary (04:59.071)
designing gambling machines. So yeah, so it is what it is. Those slot machines that you've seen people play those flashing lights and noises and all that kind of stuff. People sat down and spending all their money away. Yeah, that's how I started my career. I was young, naive, really well paid job. And then we didn't know it was for the French Mafia. But then one day Interpol came and said, Hey, everyone, you better go home. And then we only realized
When we saw the news, that was the French mafia. We thought it was a legit job. But the really good thing is at least we got our last salary. We got our last month's pay. That's good.
Daniel (05:38.292)
Ha!
Scott (05:40.888)
That's fantastic!
Daniel (05:41.158)
I mean, know, that's good.
Scott (05:44.758)
Yeah, so it wasn't a complete waste. That is fantastic. So how do we transition from that amazing story, by the way, you should feel great that you've got a story like that. All of us should have some kind of interesting story like that. It makes life more fun. So that's great. So how do we transition then from what you were doing into getting into learning and development?
Gary (06:11.165)
Yeah, so I mean, that was my that was my very first job, right? So was basically taking design and psychology and going, right, you know, we want to make the world a better place. I clearly started on the wrong foot. But then I jumped. I started working for the British government. I can't talk about that project. But after leaving that project, I then started to focus a lot more on creating more fun and goodness in this world. I started to work for Disney.
Daniel (06:25.059)
Hahaha
Gary (06:41.025)
So had a team of designers and we were trying to make really exciting experiences for, you know, the younger generation. And then I had my first child and then my world, my mind just imploded, exploded, whatever it happened. And I said, you know what? I can do better. And so I decided, you know what? I'm going to quit my job. I had a great job. It was cool designing so many toys. got to see all those movies before they even got released.
So we had this secret cinema in London, you no one's allowed in with any technology and they've got this, you know, the guy with a camera staring at you with their night vision goggles to make sure you're not pulling any tech out. But we got to design all these great toys. But I thought, you know what, I'd like to work in healthcare. And so I then found the opportunity to work as a researcher in a hospital in an emergency ward. So if you've ever seen any of those TV shows where there's
you know, people screaming and shouting and the bodies are coming off the ambulances. I did that. Admittedly, psychologically, I wasn't prepared for that and I needed a little bit of therapy after it, but I realized, you know, that same stuff, the same mechanics can be used to make behavior change for good. And then I started working for lots of other brands. And then I started to work, including with learning and development officers and saying, hey,
You know, what about culture change? How do we help our teams do whatever it is, X, Y, Z? You know, we get a lot of resistance or we don't know how to do it. And then I realized, hang on. This stuff that I know is perfectly applicable for what you guys are trying to do. It's the same thing. It's behavior change.
Scott (08:29.814)
Love it. Really important topic. Really important to like say almost everyone in this audience. And so my ears are perked everybody. So without further ado, let's go ahead and dive into our topic of the week.
Scott (08:49.358)
Okay, topic for the week is, hey, how to know your team's why so you can design the how. The why and the how, really important stuff. But before we get into that, I have one quick question for you, Gary.
Scott (09:09.09)
Yeah, so what? Like, why is this important?
Gary (09:13.311)
Why is important to know the why? Yeah, I mean, if you know what's driving your team, then it's so much easier to carry their story, not your story. Like we think of corporates, we think of these big cultures, right? And it's about the message of the brand, right? What's our vision? But you know, within that, there are these subcultures, these teams, they work on them by themselves or in small groups. They've got their own culture. They've got their own why.
And understanding their why and actually be okay that they have a slightly different why is fine. But to not recognize it and to ignore it or not even know about it at all is to actually try to force everybody with the same why. And that's like, wait a minute, you know, I might be here passionate about my job for one reason, but someone else might be absolutely just as passionate, but for another reason, but taking the time to know that.
is everything.
Daniel (10:15.698)
I love that. I absolutely love that. I had the opportunity I've talked about before to lead a team and it was a team that just got sprung up. were like, okay, starting today, this team is a thing, go. And one of the very first things I realized I had to do was to craft what was the narrative this team had? Why were they around? Basically I had to out this team's why, because without it, like I would go to meetings and people would be like, what are you doing here?
I'm like, I'm here for this team. And they'd be like, what do they do? Like, OK. But then that never got any traction, never got any push. And so I can't stress just how important and how much that resonates. Yeah, 100%.
Scott (11:02.04)
So let's go to the beginning here. We're talking primarily about we've got the how and the why and all is great. So let's start with behavior change. How does that work and how do we bring that to fruition?
Gary (11:17.227)
So behavior change isn't as complex as people think. There are a couple of concepts and actually they're not hard to learn and actually anyone after this can go YouTube or whatever it is and learn more about, for example, two particular subjects. One is the work by Dr. BJ Frog, who was actually a teacher of mine at Stanford University. So he has the Frog behavior model.
And in that model, understand that for every single behavior that any human being does, whether it's looking at the phone, making a coffee, everything has three ingredients. You need the right motivation, the right ability, like can you do it? And a trigger or a prompt to say, hey, do this. And if one of those ingredients is missing, you cannot do a behavior. It's impossible, it cannot exist. So if you know that, just three ingredients,
Already you can look at any situation, even if you're dealing with your kids or a difficult work colleague, you say, well, what's going on here? Well, let's break it down into those three components. That's one thing. Another thing is imagine you've got a group who are very resistant to change, right? To behavior change. Well, you could try a nudge theory. And I like to think of nudge theory. We all understand the word nudge, right? Just tip people in a little bit of a direction. And I think nudge theory is really underrated.
because we hear about, say you've got a new CEO coming into the company with this big vision. amazing, great. But that big vision might be such a contrast to the current ways of working that it creates this huge resistance. Think of it as a river and this river and you want to just change 90 degrees, the whole river. Well, what's all that force? If all the people are the water, what's going to happen? They're going to just collide and hit and get damaged.
But if you say, no, let's nudge the river, let's just turn it slightly one degree and then a bit further down the line, another one degree, another one degree. And it's those little nudges that before you know it, the river has turned around 180 degrees, right? It's that mindset. So just those two things alone, if anybody just says, wanna learn those two things alone, they're gonna see huge improvements.
Zeta (13:40.582)
Makes a lot of sense because if you're off, like especially when mathematics and you're trying to get, a rocket into space, if you're off just like a percentage of a degree, you're way off course, right? But all it is is just a percentage of a degree. It's not like a huge shift. It's a little nudge. Yeah, that makes sense. I love that.
Gary (14:00.149)
Yeah, exactly. But sadly, the reality is we have a new visionary comes in, or maybe just a new person comes in, they just want to shake things up. But that shaking things up is more likely to have conflict, staff leaving, and all these other things happening because you've shaken things up. Sometimes shaking things up is not it. If you can make behavior change happen and no one even realized it, that's smooth. That's really smooth.
Zeta (14:28.978)
That's nudge theory. That's definitely something I'm going to look into. Yes. Love it.
Gary (14:31.371)
That's nudge theory. But there's two ways people use nudge theory for the wrong reasons. The key about nudge theory is people have to feel that they had an option. Like they had free will, they had control. Yeah, look, we recommend it, for example, the classic example, you want, say, people in your company to eat more healthy food. Well, if you put it at eye level, instead of a fridge in the far corner, that's a nudge. It's very small, very simple, but at least it's there.
It's now easier for me to do and I can see it. It's there right in front of me as opposed to hidden. It's these little things. I thought I actually had this idea today. I was in the elevator in my building block and I was just looking at the buttons and this guy got in and he went to the first floor and I just thought, man, you could have walked that. Now I've got to wait for the doors to open and close and they're like, you know, and I suddenly thought, hey,
Scott (15:11.276)
Mm.
Gary (15:30.065)
Why don't, just an idea, right? You put little stickers like green or with a little word, a character walking by the number one, and it's got like a little green thing saying easy. So one, two, three is easy, four, five, six, you know, and you work like that. These things, you think they're silly and they won't work, but rule number one, humans, we're irrational people, right? Humans are irrational, but our behaviors, our decisions are predominantly irrational.
but these little nudges, they work. I just haven't seen it in an elevator yet.
Daniel (16:07.004)
That's awesome. You you talk about like these little nudges and stuff like that. as I'm like, whenever I'm designing courses and I'm getting down to like the nitty gritty and I'm thinking like, okay, like what iconography am I going to use as a trigger? I don't think I'm thinking about it that in depth, but I think similar things are happening. And you're right. You'd be surprised like how often it's the little things that like make people trigger those actions that you want to see. I love it. That's awesome.
You, No, go ahead.
Zeta (16:36.314)
And to piggyback on that, just to piggyback on that really quick, when it comes to those nudges, it's not just making things easier, it's also removing obstacles. Like you said, putting stuff at eye level rather than behind closed doors, you're making it easier, you're removing obstacles, and that makes it much more simple for us as humans. Sorry, Dan.
Gary (16:59.616)
Yeah.
Daniel (17:01.352)
No, you're fine.
Scott (17:01.56)
So humans are irrational, love it, couldn't agree with you more. My experience and my frustration from a leadership perspective and also from a learning and development perspective is that my experience has been you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. So here's this process or this tool or this platform that's going to make your job easier and better.
And we want to test it out. And here you go. And the resistance for people, even if I've talked to them and given them the whole whiff, I'm like, why is it important? And this is really great. And you're going to love it. The resistance from, eh, this isn't the way I'm used to things. So I'm going to go do the things that I'm used to versus trying something new that is actually better for me is super high. Like, so we are all allergic to change. We are. We're just allergic to it.
So how do we make an effective nudge? Like going back to your example of I've got healthy food in front of me, right, at eye level, but I also know there's a refrigerator full of cold pizza in the corner. I'm going for the pizza, man. I'm going for that, I love that pizza, especially if it's cold, right? So how do we make those nudges really more effective or is there a step around the buy -in part of it?
Daniel (18:18.024)
You
Scott (18:28.568)
that can encourage that behavior so we can incrementally get where we want to get to.
Gary (18:35.073)
So there's a couple of things at play here. So one, you gotta get rid of the pizza. I have a sensitivity to sugar and chocolate, .e., i .e., when I say sensitivity, I mean, I love it. It's my week, my kryptonite, you know? My kids, they wanna buy some chocolate biscuits and before they've had the first one, it's all gone. And I'm like, I'm sorry, kids. Like, I love you lots, but those biscuits, those cookies, I couldn't help myself. So when I, you know, so.
The rule is we don't buy cookies anymore. We just, because you can't trust myself and you got to understand because even though I know health wise, it's not a good move. The pizza, it's not a good move, but when it's there and it smells delicious and everything, you're asking too much of any human being, you know, why it shouldn't be torture. So for example, if you want kids to eat more vegetables, there's this classic case study.
it's done lots of times where they say, what you do is you don't say to the kids, hey, you've got to eat your greens and it'll make you healthy, right? Because they go, I am healthy, I don't get it. So what you do is you just leave the greens there a little bit, you know, or maybe you mix it in a little bit. So it's hard for them to dodge it. So they end up eating the greens and then they get used to it and the behavior has changed and they now eat greens. I have friends who on their kids, since they were born, were given things like tuna and
strange vegetables and really exotic stuff since birth and just like, yeah, this is normal. This is just what we eat. The kids were like, okay. But if I now go to my kids and say, try this, it's a super food. They were like, yeah, you're not selling it to me. You know?
Daniel (20:19.322)
Haha
Gary (20:22.143)
Yeah, so again, it's that small stuff, make it so easy. You've got to remove all the hard unhealthy stuff. You've to just remove it. And I know it's a hard call and it hurts, but you could just, it's what you've got to do.
Scott (20:34.424)
People will riot without their pizza though. That's my thing. And so I hear you and I think it's a great example and I love it.
Yeah, that's a great, great part of it.
Gary (20:49.109)
So can I just add that there's another part that's actually about priming. So now this is a bit more advanced. I'm not saying everybody tries this. So this was done a few experiments by Daniel Kahneman and from the world of behavioral economics and says things like, we make these associations. if I, I'm not sure, I'm brainstorming on the fly here, okay? I'm thinking about the pizza. How do we get you to stop eating pizza? One, okay, you don't have it in the fridge.
Two, delete the delivery app. Three, take a different route home so you don't drive past the pizza place. These sort of things do work. They're inconveniences, but they do work. But then you're gonna prime the person and to make these associations. So could say, so there's an experiment done. If I say to you banana or pizza, you might say, nice.
But if I say pizza, vomit, suddenly for a split second, your brain goes, sorry, what? Vomit? And that your brain is now making this strange but very small association between pizza and vomit. And every time I say pizza and vomit, part of your subconscious is starting to have this perception of pizza and vomit. Ooh, I don't know if I like pizza anymore. And this stuff works, it sounds stupid.
You go, this cannot work, but it does. There are experiments even on voting in politics. If you want people to vote more left, have the voting polls, have the voting, yeah, polls or booths in schools. If you want them to vote more conservative, have them in churches. These things work. And you're like, how's that possible? If I say to you, if I want more people to vote, if I say to you, it doesn't matter about politics or even in the company, right?
If I say, hey, we're all going to vote for a a new whatever, a new thing in the company. If I say to you, will you vote? And you say, yes, you are now more likely to vote because you're going to be consistent with who you are. This is now, I know I'm jumping around a little bit, but this is now Chialdini's work about persuasion. So we tend to, so that's what people do is they, you know, they go around and say, are you going to vote?
Gary (23:16.639)
You were thinking you were on the fence going, yeah, I don't know. But now you said, yeah, you're now more likely to vote. if I say, so if I say Daniel, you, so if I say Dan, so Daniel says I need to stop pizza for a week. So I say, okay. So then I just literally go back to Daniel and say, okay, Daniel, you said you're to stop pizza for a week. Is that true? You're going to stop pizza for a week. And Daniel says, yes. And because of that,
Daniel (23:24.998)
This is so awesome.
Gary (23:46.709)
He's now more likely to be successful just because of that one question.
Zeta (23:53.374)
Hmm.
Daniel (23:53.668)
in training, you know, like when I'm building a deck, I'm building an experience, like I'm always thinking about that end, that call to action, where I look at like my class, if I'm facilitating or if I'm building material as I'm writing it in, building this call to action where my whole goal is to get exactly what you're talking about, is to get my learners to say, yes, is to get my learners to interact with the trainer or the material in some way where they're going to say yes, they're gonna say that to help.
build that connection for exactly that purpose. Like, hey, I know that if I get you to say yes, or if I get you to promise me you'll do something when you leave the training, the chances of you turning that this new behavior into a habit are going to increase. And I love how you describe it because, you know, obviously like learning and psychology and, you know, like building these experiences and persuasion, they all go hand in hand, but.
Just that throughput. And obviously, I've been talking about pizza. I can't promise I'm not gonna eat pizza, Gary. That's probably gonna happen this week.
Gary (25:02.763)
Well, you're likely Daniel to be consistent with your statements. that's expect pizza. But actually, then you mentioned something really interesting. So you talk about your course, right? And you want them as, you know, maybe at the end of the course or the end of the class or whatever, you say, okay, I want you to do something. Like you say the call to action, I want you to do something. You can literally have it as a slide saying, will you do this? You know, yes in big and
Daniel (25:07.014)
Yeah.
Yeah
Gary (25:32.327)
no in small without a highlighted button. And if they can literally see the word yes, that already has an impact. It's crazy. Sometimes we just have to mentally say yes, and we've already said yes. Another thing I do actually for training, because I also teach consumer behavior at different universities, right? And so I'm very versed in the challenges that teaching
and getting people to uphold this information has. And you think about how quickly people forget all your hard effort, all your content. And it's so quickly, 24 hours later, 80 % of it is forgotten. That's the forgetting curve, right? And you say, okay, so what are we going to do? Well, at the end of every lecture, I say to my students, what's the one thing
Zeta (26:18.378)
It is.
Gary (26:28.641)
And I literally ask every single one, what's the one thing you were going to remember from this class? I haven't invented something with that statement. There are many teachers out there who've asked that, but the magic behind it is it's actually a memory rehearsal and it therefore acts as a memory enhancer. So they're going to reinforce hopefully a keyword. And the good thing is if you've got six, 10, 20, sometimes I have like 50 students, but basically they end up giving a whole summary of the whole class.
and everybody gets to hear it. So they're more likely to remember the entire class as a consequence.
Daniel (27:06.312)
It's awesome.
Scott (27:07.022)
End of class review. What did we learn today? Going around the room, right? Little harder to do, but you still can do it in, you know, in a virtual setting. And a CBL like, hey, what are some of the key learnings you have? Check the boxes, just making and checking those boxes. Really, really cool stuff. I remember when I was doing sales training, I would have everybody sign a commitment sheet that you were going to commit to the things that we had taught you today.
and everybody signed it, which seems kind of authoritarian, right? Some people didn't want to sign it, but your name's on it. And then we put it up in the break room. So everybody saw that they had all made those commitments. But what was really important was that follow -up part of it. So you've got that public display of commitments. That's cool. Hopefully there's some self policing going on, which is also cool. But it's that follow -up like, hey, you guys using what I taught you? Because the reality is we don't have that follow -up.
You talk about that 80%, right? Then it just becomes flavor of the month training. And I can't tell you how many times I've designed those kinds of trainings and also been part of those kinds of trainings where, hey, I've just learned something and we never follow up and it's gone. So if you really want to have that behavior change, really think you need to have the follow up.
Gary (28:25.889)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Totally agree with you.
Scott (28:30.03)
Cool. Talk to us a little bit about habits by design.
Zeta (28:30.792)
Yeah.
Gary (28:35.521)
Hmm. Yeah, so I've, I actually do. I've given over the years lots of different workshops on how to design your own habits. Right? Because people will say, I want to have, especially after a holiday or end of year celebrations, you're going a little excessive, you know, and you go, okay, at end of this holiday, where I have literally eaten 20 kilos of something every day, I should probably start exercising a bit more.
I need a little bit more healthy. These are the classics, right? And so I help people. So I've done lots of workshops on these and helping people understand, you know, you can design your own habit if you just know the basics and it's not hard. And half of it I've actually just taught in this chat today. If you understand the three ingredients, every time you say, okay, I want to design this habit, as in I want to go, I want to go...
I want to climb the stairs more in my office building. Okay. So I want to make that into a habit. Okay. So it starts off with the first thing being the word after I, the reason why it starts with the word after I, this is actually quite, and actually when I worked for NASA, NASA was a client of mine many years ago. and I worked with, I think about 15 engineers and they wanted to understand how habit design worked.
So they could accelerate and automate some of their own habits, right? Their own behaviors. Turn a behavior into a habit, make it part of their routine. And you say, well, you start with the word after I. So before you're gonna do any behavior that you wanna do, you need to understand that there's an after I. What's the behavior happens just before this new behavior? And you say, okay, after I arrive at my office building,
I open the front door to it or whatever, maybe I go through a machine or something and I'm through and I'm stood in front of the elevator. That's the after I. I will take the stairs. But just that sentence alone, what it does, the after I, is it acts as a trigger because you'll think of any routine as like a string and along that string are lots of little beads and each bead is a behavior.
Gary (31:03.777)
So you've got tens of thousands every day, but that bead, in that routine, your brain is a perfect routine designed machine. That's why we like to think we're lazy. It's like, it's not that we're strictly lazy. It's just, we get comfortable in our routines. You know, that's the program we've just designed. So now we want to hijack it. We want to hack it. So we need to say after I, and then we insert the new behavior. You go climb these stairs. Great. And when you get to the top,
It doesn't matter if it's one stair, a thousand stairs. It doesn't matter what the deal is. As long as you celebrate, you must celebrate and people don't celebrate the behavior. So when we design, when we do habit design, it's all about that. And so, and if people go, yeah, but I felt, and I've worked with people, for example, I worked with patients who were recovering from cancer treatment.
right from chemotherapy. And one of the things about chemotherapy is as the doctors say, you're going to keep your muscle density up. You got to go out and exercise. Yeah. Anyone who's undergone chemotherapy, the last thing they're thinking about is going for a jog.
Daniel (32:17.962)
Ha!
Gary (32:19.041)
So what I did was them when I worked with them was to say, okay, behavior change. The doctor says you got to do this. It's good for you. Okay, great tick. But what's the minimum behavior you could do that gets you in the right direction? Do remember that nudging? So what's the minimum that 1 % that we can do that gets you closer to go for a swim? And they say might say, make my gym bag. Okay, so
When are gonna make your gym back? Well, when I wake up. So after I wake up, I'm gonna make my gym back. And then what you're gonna do? Celebrate it. Because once you celebrate it, what do you think happens?
what happens when you've just celebrated something.
Daniel (33:05.074)
Yeah. I mean, like, yeah.
Zeta (33:06.076)
It's the reward mechanism, you get dopamine, yeah. All right.
Scott (33:06.839)
You want to do more?
Gary (33:08.737)
Yeah, you want it more and you go, you know what, maybe I'm going to make it to the swimming pool today. So you want to achieve the big goal, make sure you've achieved the small goal. It's that 1%. Yeah.
Daniel (33:15.144)
That's awesome.
Scott (33:21.954)
You bring up a really good point on the whole celebration part of it. it, for me, if I want to nudge people in the behaviors, that celebration thing is really important. Cause there may be things that I want people to do more of. Nothing makes them want to do more of it than when I say, my gosh, that was great. Thank you for that behavior. And then when they do it again, like, thank you so much for that behavior. That's really important. So we're going to help me out. And eventually that behavior becomes habit all because I just nudged them with the positive stuff. Dan.
Gary (33:46.101)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Daniel (33:52.232)
was gonna say, as we were talking about teams and organizations, you're talking about changing behavior just for cancer patients. what are some, we've talked about nudging, but what are some barriers that you sometimes run across? barriers to nudging, barriers to setting those goals.
Gary (34:14.825)
Right. So that's really, that's a really interesting question because I say it's interesting because actually it's layered. So the reason why I say that is, and you could think of it from like a game kind of thing in your office or in your team, there are different kinds of players and different players like different kinds of games. So you put in a nudge, you design a nudge and that might work really well for one type of player.
or one type of character in your team or your company. But the others go, yeah, that's not gonna work for me, my friend. And so you start to get the resistance or they think, wait, this is manipulation. wait, what? And they don't understand. And you have to understand that now I'm gonna go. I know it sounds like I'm just giving you, that's the thing of a university lecturer. You can't help but put on your professor hat for a moment, but.
Daniel (35:10.151)
Ha
Gary (35:11.317)
This is about self -determination theory at work. So you have about, you have these different types of motivation. So you're saying, okay, some people are motivated by say the emotions, the team, the community, we're in it together. are some people who go, I couldn't give a crap about anyone else. I'm not in it together. I'm in it for another reason. Some people are in it and you need to communicate them not from let's this just.
do this together, some people need to say, why we're doing this? Why is this important? And actually, Scott, you mentioned that before, about that saying, hey, this behavior is really important because of this. That's really good. And that then becomes a habit. And you have to understand that that will work. For example, I've got two kids and I have to speak to them differently. One, what's the rational? Why are we doing this? What's the outcome? And the other one just goes, we're doing this together. I don't care what it is as long as we're in a team.
And you need to understand that and understand that the nudge is saying, okay, who's this going to work with? How do I do a nudge that's going to work with the different players, the different characters? And that's why I say it's led. It's not quite as easy as it sounds because it takes a bit of effort to figure that out.
Zeta (36:27.518)
So coming full circle, knowing your teams why helps you design their how because you have to speak directly to them and one size fits all won't work and all. Yeah, love it, love it.
Scott (36:28.022)
Awesome stuff.
Gary (36:39.073)
Exactly. Exactly.
Scott (36:43.64)
Great stuff. feel like I've got a master's now in behavior change. Really great stuff, Gary. So as we begin to wrap things up today, could you do us a favor, like, let our audience know what are some key things that they should remember for the things that you've talked
Gary (37:01.067)
So behavior change isn't hard. If you think of behavior and the people you're working with as being like water in a river, and you think the only way you're gonna change the direction of a river is slowly and not with a hard right angle. If you can start with that, then you're gonna start from a good place. If you think about there are different characters and each character or player.
likes to play a different kind of game. So if you do design a nudge that helps them change in a direction, think about them, not you. Don't design one size fits all. And like Zeta mentioned, unknowing their why tells you half the answer in the first place. So if you take the time to figure out their why, the how becomes more more obvious. You don't need to be a genius. You don't have to be an Einstein to know to design the how as long as you take the time.
to know their why.
Daniel (38:02.236)
of that.
Scott (38:06.574)
Gary, thank you so much. Great stuff, great summary there. Could you do us a favor? Could you let our audience know how they could connect from you and get more wisdom?
Gary (38:17.407)
Yeah. The website is called what drives them .com. So what drives them .com and there they can find out from free master classes all the way down to proper diplomas on behavior design and consumer psychology. And they're going to get the full pack there. And they can also find me on LinkedIn, just type in Gary van Brookhoven and they'll find me probably complaining about something.
and certainly talking a lot about behavior change.
Daniel (38:47.147)
You
Scott (38:49.624)
Well, I'm certain that a lot of our audience members are going to look you up because it's really great stuff that they had to share today. And I appreciate you. We appreciate you for being with us and helping everybody do a better job at making people better with great behavior change. So that's awesome. Daniel San, could you do me a favor? Could you let everybody know what the nerds are up to and how they can get a hold of us?