Owain Service - Think Small: The Surprisingly Simple Ways to Reach Big Goals

First published in Great Britain in 2017

by Michael OMara Books Limited

9 Lion Yard

Tremadoc Road

London SW4 7NQ

Copyright Owain Service and Rory Gallagher 2017

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-632-4 in hardback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-764-2 in trade paperback print format

ISBN: 978-1-78243-634-8 in ebook format

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Group image Skynesher/iStock

From Owain

To Sophie and Dylan

From Rory

To Elaine

From Owain and Rory

To our friends and colleagues at the Behavioural Insights Team

CONTENTS

Think small to reach big

A ll of us from prime ministers, to parents, to public servants often find ourselves in situations in which we are trying to help someone achieve something. It may be our friends and colleagues, our kids or our clients. Sometimes its ourselves.

Its a curious and wonderful thing about the human condition that we are often a mystery to ourselves. We really do intend to live more healthily, to not get irritable with those we love and to achieve the goals that we set for ourselves. But the world is full of temptations, distractions and other pressures. Furthermore, our heads and our lives are already full of well-worn pathways and habits. As soon as our minds are distracted, as they inevitably will be, we find ourselves back on a path we had meant to leave, our alternative goal receding into the distance.

The Behavioural Insights Team, or Nudge Unit as many soon called it, was established by the UK government in 2010. Its soft motto was formed by the words in the Coalition Agreement that brought it into being: Shunning the bureaucratic levers of the past and finding intelligent ways to encourage, support and enable people to make

Whatever you think of the success or failure of that particular it is hard to disagree with the basic idea that, in principle, its good to encourage, support and enable people to make better choices for themselves. As parents, friends and colleagues, we do it all the time. The question is, could we do it better? In particular, could we use the insights from the last fifty years of behavioural science to arm ourselves, and those around us, with a better set of techniques and skills to follow through on choices made, and achieve the things we want to?

I think the answer is yes and this is exactly what this book sets out to do. I also think that putting these tools into the hands of everyone is important. I have always felt strongly that the work of the Behavioural Insights Team, and psychology more generally, should be open. This is not just in the interests of institutional transparency, but because this is a body of knowledge that should be democratized, or open to all.

Behavioural scaffolding

Building new skills and habits, or achieving our (behavioural) goals in life, involves very much the same art and logic that is required for building a structure. From a simple arch to the Statue of Liberty, building structures requires much planning and careful construction. When its all complete its easy to forget the delicate stages and phases it went through to get there.

If any structure is to survive, be it behavioural or physical, it needs strong foundations, and to be wisely placed, to take the weight and stresses it will be subject to. As you start to build, its cement and structure will be weak. To succeed, you will need scaffolding to support its initially delicate joints and links. You will need to keep on building the scaffolding too, protecting your structure from the wind and rain as you go. But do it right, and the time will come when the scaffolding and covers can be dismantled. Your building will stand tall and strong on its own, serving its purpose, whatever that may be.

In this book, Owain and Rory have taken the lessons of the wider psychological literature, and of the Behavioural Insights Team itself, and turned them into the steel poles and joints that you will need to build behavioural scaffolding of your own. Just like steel scaffolding, it takes a certain skill and plan to put it together. Look at scaffolding when you pass it next and admire the techniques used to make it strong enough to support the mightiest of structures. It is braced and connected with a quiet beauty and certainly not randomly scrambled together. This book seeks to give you those same skills, as well as the components you need for your project.

One of things I hope youll find as you read Think Small is not just that youll succeed in some goal that is important to you or someone you are trying to help but also that you will acquire a set of skills that you will subsequently find helpful in many areas of your life. This is certainly

Its sometimes remarked that our kids dont come with manuals neither do we. Its a part of the human condition that our minds and behaviours are complex and multifaceted. Our instincts only take us so far in trying to figure out what drives what we do, how best to shape it, or how our best-made plans can be blown off course by forces and habits within ourselves as much as around us. Hopefully this book will help you to succeed in something that is important to you, or someone close to you.

I also hope it will help the many people in public services and other professions whose job it is to help others achieve their goals. Teachers, doctors, social workers you are the army of good-natured nudgers whose skills and hard work help the rest of us learn more and live better. If this book, and the research that stands behind it, can help you to do your work even a little better, then it is among the most important things the Behavioural Insights Team has yet done.

Good luck nudge well and wisely!

David Halpern

Chief Executive, Behavioural Insights Team

The Job Centre

is sitting in a job centre in Essex, on the outskirts of London, waiting for his appointment. Paul is twenty-four, has had a few brushes with the law and has never managed to hold down a job. In the past, that didnt matter. Hed usually found work pretty easily, bouncing between a range of formal and informal jobs. But times have changed. It is May 2011, in the middle of what has become known as the Great Recession, and the employers that would have taken him on in the past are much more cautious now. Paul hasnt had a job for seven months and things are becoming very difficult for him hes got a young daughter to support and is starting to fall behind on his rent. Hes desperate to find a job, so has swallowed his pride and reached out to the job centre for help.

Across the desk from Paul is Melissa. She has spent years helping people to find work, but has become increasingly frustrated by the system. She spends her days assisting jobseekers to fill out endless numbers of forms. Forms to calculate your income; forms to get you onto the benefits system; even forms to confirm you are who you say you are on the other forms. Over the previous year, Melissa had seen hundreds of peoples motivation and confidence slowly drain away. She wanted to do more to help, but often felt like she was battling the system, the economy and sometimes even the people she was trying to help.