Three Steps To Creating Behavioural Change In Your Business

Digital transformation isn’t just about digital. The biggest challenge with any business change is changing the behaviours of the people involved.

Digital transformation is not just about digital. Yes, making sure you invest in IT projects that are effective is a core part of the process, but too many CMOs miss one of the biggest challenges that comes with any major change: human behaviour.

CMOs must ensure that business change also means behavioural change. Your people need to know how to change their working practices, so that they can deliver the best customer experience.

One major high-profile example was the BBC’s DMI initiative. The corporation invested £100 million into modernising its production and archiving methods, with the aim of moving the BBC towards a fully digital and tapeless production workflow. Its failure came down to a lack of effective governance of the project, not fully including senior broadcasting and programme-making staff in that governance, and failing to hold regular and effective project reviews during the development phase.

Without this extra layer of human involvement, the project was a failure. Too much focus was placed on the end IT project, rather than engaging with those that the process would affect the most.

To succeed in changing behaviour, you must consciously create a business environment that is open to change; one that draws on external influences and empowers teams to experiment, within a culture where experimental “failure” isn’t penalised.

To achieve meaningful digital transformation, the behavioural change process can be broken down into three steps:

1. Inspiration

The CMO is the cultural catalyst, the direction-setter. You personally need to embrace a culture that liberates and inspires in equal measure. Open the doors to diverse businesses and creative business people from both within and way beyond your sector or immediate problem. Be at events such as SXSW, Pioneers, or Silicon Beach, which will drive your understanding of the latest digital strategy and behavioural theory, and where you can see how and where it has been applied to real-life business problems on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. From executive briefings to team away-days, the most successful way to encourage behavioural change is to demonstrate those behaviours at play.

2. Invention

Create environments that encourage experimental and creative behaviours. Doing beats talking, so let people roll their sleeves up and encourage maker culture. Hack-days, rapid prototyping, nimble and agile workstreams, and explorations help to bring ideas to life. Get them in front of stakeholders and customers to generate feedback and data in order to optimise or inform other projects. Design in-browser and assess on devices.

Consider remuneration models. If your staff’s bonuses are based on replicating what was acceptable last year, how will you drive change? Critically, now more than ever you must give everyone a voice to break smug consensus thinking. No viewpoint is too big, no opinion too small.

Encourage participation and proactivity. Take teams beyond the limits of their scheduled projects and remember to celebrate pioneering spirit and positive failures in equal measure.

3. Incubation

New ideas require new behaviours. It’s important to co-define the structural, organisational, and process change needed to embrace new opportunities within your business. Look at problems and opportunities customer-first because only by understanding your consumer’s behaviours—within and beyond the browser—will you understand the behavioural business change required to meet these needs.

Business pressures don’t always allow for calmly defined linear processes. However, as custodians of the brand experience, CMOs are in the best position to direct the resources and the ambitions of the brand in a way that puts the customer at the centre of the picture.

CMOs can draw on the experience of all stakeholders to inspire and experiment, iterating and testing within an upbeat and professionally curious business and creative environment. Through doing, not saying, they can be the ones who create behavioural change.