Behavior Change 101: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability

Developer Tea

This episode delves into a powerful model for encouraging behaviour change, applicable to both managing others and self-improvement, by focusing on three critical factors: Trigger, Incentive, and Ability. It challenges common, ineffective management approaches and provides insights into fostering new habits and desired actions by making the 'right' thing the 'easy' thing.

• Uncover why naive management approaches, such as mandating rules or blaming individuals, are ineffective at solving underlying behavioural problems or creating new, lasting habits.
• Learn about the Trigger, Incentive, and Ability model, a set of principles that can be applied to encourage specific actions in others or to facilitate self-betterment and incorporate new behaviours into your own life.
• Understand that Incentives are the critical factor in deciding what actions to pursue, driven by the question, "what's in it for me?". It's crucial for incentives to be clear and understood; an unclear incentive is effectively no incentive at all. Beneficial incentives tend to be more effective from a scientific standpoint.
• Discover the importance of a clear Trigger, which is the cross point or moment at which a decision to act is made. Assuming triggers will be self-generated is often a flawed management practice, especially when encouraging new behaviours.
• Explore how Ability goes beyond just skill, encompassing clarity on how to do something and the reduction of friction and variability in the desired behaviour. The goal is to reduce cognitive overload and make the desired action the easiest option, thereby facilitating habit formation.
• Realise the interconnection between Ability and Incentive, as a lack of clarity in how to perform a task (Ability) can make the incentive unclear because the reward for completion becomes uncertain.
• Learn that the investment in encouraging behaviour change should focus on creating a better trigger, a better (and clearer) incentive, and higher ability (lower friction, higher skill) to ensure people engage in the desired behaviour.

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