How To Improve Yourself Everyday With Nudge Method
Author: Margie Meacham
As often happens in the learning profession, what most of us know as "nudge learning" has been adapted from its original purpose in a different domain to address L&D needs. In 2008, Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein's book Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness used the term to describe a way to make big changes in society by changing the behavior of a lot of people in small ways. The theory suggests that offering a series of choices, each leading a bit closer to the desired behavior, is more effective than trying to change complex human behavior all at once. Two fundamental assumptions of nudge theory are:
Human behavior isn’t based solely on logic, so we can’t change it by simply presenting facts.
People can’t be forced to change behavior. We can only give them options and make the behaviors we want them to engage in more appealing than the ones they are already engaging in.
One way to get people to eat healthier is to put things like fresh fruit and energy bars in vending machines instead of sugary snacks.
Today, nudge theory is used in self-improvement apps that help us lose weight, exercise more, plan for retirement, improve our credit scores, or learn a new language. Without realizing it, the self-improvement industry has changed our behavior, influencing us to seek out a new app every time we want to make a change in our lives. Just the fact that these apps are so popular shows how nudge learning works.
The Brain Science Behind Nudges
Nudge learning works because it leverages multiple things we know about how the brain learns:
Learner Choice: Malcolm Knowles first defined the adult learner’s need for self-direction. Nudge learning done right never tells the learner, “This is how you have to do things,” but rather, “Here’s a suggestion for you to try.”
The Spacing Effect: Ebbinhaus was the first person to notice that repeated actions need to be spaced out to change behavior in a way that lasts. Our brains are set up to remember new learning paths that we use often and forget those that we don't use very often. A series of short messages sent to a learner’s mobile phone or tablet can deliver the repeated content that is needed to convert short-term learning into longer-term retention.
Minimal Cognitive Load: We all know that a data dump is an ineffective means of delivering training, but sometimes it simply can’t be helped. If you combine a course with a lot of content with a nudge learning initiative, you can send reminders to learners in small, repetitive chunks while they are working. This will help them adopt and remember what they have learned.
Positive reinforcement: When we get a reward for doing something, the reward circuit in our brains is turned on. Repeated rewards build behavior patterns and make it more likely that we’ll do the same thing again. This reward can be a fun little animation that plays when a learner clicks on a suggested link, a chatbot that breaks into a celebratory dance when a task is complete, or a human coach recognizing even the tiniest bit of progress towards the goal.
Adding Nudge Learning to Your Toolbox
You don’t need an app to deliver nudge learning. Small messages meant to change behavior can also be sent in other ways, such as:
Suggestions from a friendly : chatbot— A training team at the United Nations is using my chatbot to remind learners to keep up with their development plans every time they log in.
Email reminders or calendar pop-ups— pop-ups— Turn those massive to-do lists for new hires into tiny steps and build automated email and calendar reminders to keep learners on track.
Post messages on posters, website banners, or other places where people can see them in the real or virtual workplace. Take a catchy line or slogan from a training program and plaster it everywhere you can. You may think people aren’t paying attention, but their brains are registering these messages unconsciously, and their impact builds over time with repeated exposures.
For example, when I wanted to get a sales team to use a new tool for gathering information about competitors, we put references to the information that tool could provide in regular updates and speeches from top sales leaders, such as "I was on ThoughtSpot this morning and saw this interesting trend."
Suggestions that are part of other ways to learn, like traditional e-learning, virtual learning, or teaching in a classroom: For a client who was having trouble getting people to act more inclusively, we looked at their whole training portfolio and made small changes to include more inclusive examples and images in everything from systems training to leadership, without pointing out the behavior we were trying to model.
Your nudge-learning program will work better if you give the information in different ways over a long period of time. Here are seven tips I’ve culled from building nudge learning programs for my clients:
1. Nudge learning works best in combination with other approaches. Don’t expect the nudge program to deliver the results you want all by itself. While self-improvement apps are effective for some, the dropout rate is high, which is fine if your business model is simply to sell app subscriptions and have enough users to give you positive reviews and social credibility. But if you want most of the people in your target group to change their behavior and keep it up, nudge learning works much better as a supplement to traditional learning than as a stand-alone solution.
2. Add social learning and gamification to amplify results. Since nudges are often sent through technology, they are easy to pair with dashboards or other ways to show how individuals and teams are doing. This gives people a sense of accomplishment and encourages healthy competition. Remember that this competition can be against oneself as well. For example, a chatbot can tell a learner how far along the learning path they are today and suggest a next step to help the learner advance.
3. Keep nudges brief, positive, and focused on a single suggested action. A nudge is not an opportunity to provide a summary of an entire course. It is a tiny whisper suggesting a single step that, if chosen, takes the learning forward. Longer messages will just be ignored, and they might even make people act worse.
4. Link nudges to corporate or individual goals. In the UN example, every time a learner logs on to the system, the chatbot reminds them of their own professional goals and encourages them to choose a new course or finish one that helps them reach those goals.
5. Build impact over time through repetition. Don’t expect a few nudges to get the job done. Behavior change is hard and takes place slowly, like an iceberg inching forward. Establish expectations that your nudge program is not a quick fix—but it can be a permanent one when used well.
6. Practice incremental improvement by studying the data. If your nudges are delivered in a digital environment, you’ll gain access to a wealth of data on learner behavior. Find out which nudges have the biggest effect on how learners act, and then keep making small changes based on what you've learned.
7. Ask the learners what they think. A good consultant always asks their clients if their services delivered the desired outcomes, and well-designed nudge programs can do the same thing. Increase learner engagement by adding a simple question, such as “Did this suggestion help?” Follow up a positive response with “When would you like me to remind you again?”
If you’ve been tasked with changing intractable human behavior, a gentle nudge just might get things moving in the right direction.
