This article is written by Faisal Naru who founded the work of the OECD on Behavioural Insights and is currently Head of Strategic Management and Coordination in the office of the Executive Director of the OECD.

In 2017, there were around 200 behavioural insights initiatives applying social and behavioural science in public policy on a regular basis. Whether this is with an internal capacity (team, unit, group, officer) or with external capacity (partnership with academia and other organisations). Fast forward three years and the number is over 400.

Although the field is still relatively young, some common learnings are relevant irrespective of where on the map these initiatives are located. My own experience of building such a capacity, running projects and experiments, and discussions with many of the initiatives that I am in regular contact with, point to some key lessons and insights.

Lesson 1: Manage Expectations

Behavioural insights (BI) is now a common term. However, that doesn’t mean everyone agrees what it means, what it entails, and what it can and should be used for. And this is often not only the first challenge for applying behavioural insights, but an ongoing effort to continually educate leaders, peers, stakeholders and clients on the limitations (it’s not a silver bullet!) as well as what it can do. This can also be difficult because of the need to get Institutional buy-in, especially when trying to kick start work, but getting off on the right foot and not overselling can help in the long run.

Lesson 2: Mainstream

In a previous article, I mentioned the danger of BI initiatives becoming siloed inside organisations, and thereby limiting their impact (e.g. at the end of a project or policy).

Mainstreaming the use of BI in organisations can take a number of forms. One is to create ways of operating that allows for knowledge and skills transfer to non-BI experts, and for them to gradually be able to initiate BI work themselves – and still work with the trained BI experts where it is necessary. The key is that BI experts shouldn’t do all of the work for them, but help the non-experts understand what they can do themselves and support with the specialists skills they have.

Once the tools and methodologies are established inside your team, you can later focus on partners

Another way of “mainstreaming” is to recruit behavioural scientists into non-BI roles, so that they can infuse their knowledge and training into the way that things are “normally done”. This can also be applied to other innovative skills that are increasingly required in today’s public and private organisations, such as design researchers, data scientists, etc.

I have found this modus operandi powerful inside my own organisation and it has helped improve our work and mainstream these techniques in the work that we do.

Lesson 3: Work with willing partners

A key component of “mainstreaming” is working with others outside of your immediate team. This has been the case for practically all of the BI initiatives across the world, and my advice to BI experts has been to find people in your organisation who are willing to work with you. This is especially important during the start-up phase of a BI venture, where there is pressure to deliver or timebound resources. Once the tools and methodologies are established inside your team, you can later focus on partners who are challenging. But the key is to first show some results and demonstrate the value-added that you bring and finding people you can run fast with is critical, especially at the beginning.

Lesson 4: Invest upfront

There is a common tendency, especially among more senior people in organisations who would like to apply BI (or have a BI initiative), to rush towards running trials and experiments and coming up with an intervention they can speak about.

Not having BI as part of an organisation’s toolkit would be like asking a mechanic to fix your car without certain tools

However, there is often less appreciation of the up-front investment in scoping, designing and setting up an experiment. There are two elements to this investment. The first is the science – the design of the intervention, the data to be collected and measured, the controls and the academic research and literature behind it. The second is the political capital (with a small p) – of navigating the institutional checks and balances, the ethics and accountability considerations. Investing the time in setting the BI initiative or project up is directly linked to the ultimate success of the initiative in the long term. But this is often underestimated and there are many great ideas that are discarded or shelved on the road to experimenting or implementation.

As the behavioural and social sciences are increasingly used in public policy, organisational strategies and project implementation, there will be more lessons to share. But not having BI as part of the organisation’s toolkit would be like asking a mechanic to fix your car without certain tools. It is not the only tool. But it is one of a suite of tools available to address the ever-complex and fast-changing challenges faced across the globe. — Faisal Naru

The opinions expressed and arguments employed are those of the author and not the organisation or its Members.

(Picture credit: Unsplash)