188. Behavioral Blueprint, including COM-B and MOVE models with Elina Halonen

Welcome to episode 188 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. Today's episode is a great conversation with Alina Hallinan. Ready?

Let's get started.

You are listening to the Brainy Business podcast where we dig into the psychology of why people buy and help you incorporate behavioral economics into your business, making it more brain friendly. Now here's your host, Melina Palmer.

Palmer hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast. Today I am very excited to introduce you to Elena Hallinan, a behavioral insights strategist who has worked in the space for 15 years and co founded a London based insights consultancy working with global brands on branding, communications and product and service development projects. Her company is called Square Peg Insight. She has expertise in behavioral analysis and design, consumer insights and market research, cultural understanding desk research and trends, branding and market strategy and more. Today on the show we talk a little about the combi and move models as well as Alina pre committing to us all that she is going to write a book called the Behavioral Blueprint. And we talk a lot about being accountable to goals and how to achieve book writing tactics and lots of good things in here. So do stay tuned for our conversation, especially if you have some goals that you are looking to commit to and stick to here this year and beyond.

And so Alina has asked us all.

To hold her accountable to that. And you can use the links in the show notes to connect to her on Twitter and LinkedIn to help with that. Those links as well as ways that you can connect with Alina and find.

Past episodes and books and things related.

To what we talk about today are all within the app you're listening to or@the brainybusiness.com188 now let's jump right in. Alina Hallinan, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. I've been listening to your show for a while, so yay, very exciting.

I love it and as I am sure, I feel like so many people I've been bringing onto the show are people I've had connections to on LinkedIn which is a good sign of, you know, using LinkedIn properly. But as you said, we've been connected there and chatting back and forth, you know, commenting on various posts or whatnot for years. I don't even remember a time where I didn't know your name but this is our first time actually speaking and you know, seeing each Other while we're on video here doing our recording. And so would love for you, you to go ahead and tell the listeners a little bit about you and your background and how you found yourself in this amazing world of behavioral science.

Sure. So just sort of, you know, to introduce myself, I tend to call myself a behavioral insight strategist. And the reason I do that, I mean I work, I run my own business so I can describe myself however I want to, but because I'm Behavioral Insights, because I focus on that end of the process of sort of working out why people do what they do and less on the design and actually sort of testing or testing products or services and so on, I focus on the beginning and strategies because I tend to also work more on those types of projects that have to do with, you know, like how to use those behavioral insights to design strategy. So that's, that's kind of. I titled myself like many people who work on the applied side on behavioral science, my current work is influenced by the industry that I was in before I shifted or transferred to working more on behavioral science or before it became a big part of my work life. I worked in consumer insights or market research, depends on how you want to call it. Since 2006 and then in 2012 I co founded one of the UK's first agencies to specialize in behavioral science or applying behavioral science in that industry. I did that for eight years and then for the last couple of years I've worked as an independent consultant and I work with various research agencies and other consultancies as the behavioral insights or behavioral science specialist. That's pretty much what I do. But I've been around this area for a long time. I think 2012 was 2011. 2012 was when I think Behavioral Insights Team in the UK was just founded around that time, if I remember correctly. And 2012 is, hopefully my memory is right, is when Daniel Kahneman got the Nobel Prize. So it's been a long time and I've seen a lot of changes, a lot of changes in the field as well.

Yeah, absolutely. So as far as I'm just out of curiosity's sake, I guess what sort of interests and I know there are a lot of people that listen to the show that will reach out from and say I'm in Peru or Japan or South Africa or wherever and there's not much happening in behavioral science here yet, so what do I do? I'm the first person, at least that they know of. And so kind of the idea of kind of getting things going, moving that big rock, getting it started up the hill can feel a bit monumental and difficult. And so, you know, starting the first behavioral insights kind of organization connection in the UK is a pretty big deal. Like you, what you did 10 years ago essentially then people are maybe looking to do in their own areas now. Do you have any like advice or you know, how that maybe a little bit of the story of how that even came about in a world where people weren't really doing much publicly in the behavioral sciences yet.

Yeah, I mean first, first is kind of, you know, the less positive mess like good luck with that. It's hard work. It's really, it is really hard work. It had its benefits. Of course there's, when you're the, you know, one of the first doing it, it, there's less competition, right. But at the same time you lack the legitimacy that you get when more people come into the market. So then the whole profession gets more, feels more legitimate and you can kind of, you know, point to that like, look, everyone else is doing this and this is a real thing and you know, you should, you should spend your money on this if you're selling those services. So there are, you know, there's benefits to both. But I would say that it back then it was a lot about my work, was a lot about educating the market. And what that meant was doing conference talks, like submitting talk ideas through various industry conferences. Depending on what it is that you, what your background is. Some people come from, let's say banking or management consultancy. Find a niche where you can build awareness and raise awareness for what you do. Some areas are easier than others. If the idea of bringing in psychology is, infusing psychology into what you do is very, very novel. Sometimes that is easier. Whereas market research is an area where some people would say, well we've always been using psychology, we've always been doing this, yes or no, you know, in different ways. I would say first thing is that you need to find a way to educate the market and that can, that, that depends where you are. It is hard work and it will. My advice would be patience. Don't, don't give up, don't give up hope that it will happen. It has happened pretty much in like every market I've been looking at. It does, you know, it does move on. And 10 years ago when we started the business, it was kind of, it was a little bit off the wall idea. We came up with this, we met through, through a mutual friend and then we did a bit of academic project together and then we Were just sort of like joking around and thought of this name of irrational agency. And a little bit later we thought, that's such a good name. We can't let that go to waste. You know, we should really do something about this. And that's how we decided to set up an agency, which is probably the weirdest way to decide to kind of, you know, start a business. But that's kind of the short version of the story. And it started off as a more of a lifestyle business in the sense that we'll. We'll. We'll see if this works. We'll see if this becomes something. And clearly, 10 years later, it has, you know, it has taken off. It wasn't clear 10 years ago. Will it by now? I think it's fairly safe to say that it will take off everywhere. It will just take time. So patience and creativity, you'll need a lot of creativity to promote yourself, promote what we do. And also not always just promoting yourself, but doing sort of more selflessly offering to do free talks and things like that while you wait for the buyers to kind of catch on to that. So it's not necessarily. I don't know if that's a positive message, but that's, that's what it was like. And it just, it does take a lot of blood, sweat and tears to kind of make that happen. When you do, you can look back and say you're one of the best. So there's always that. Yes.

Well, that's, I mean, very similarly in the. When I started the podcast, it was because. So I had spent, you know, 10 years looking for a program in Behave. What I learned was behavioral economics over time and having universities tell me that's not a thing that doesn't exist. Sorry for you. Here in the States, actually, they said I could create my own program if I wanted to. Just like. Well, don't know that I want to pay you a bunch of money if I already know what I need to learn. That silly. Yeah. So I, you know, just was working and kind of always keeping one eye or ear out for something that came up. And then people from the center for Advanced Hindsight were speaking and found out with PayPal Economics and found myself the first online master's program in it that I was able to do and jumped right in. And then all the things that were so obvious to me about how it applied to businesses and communication and marketing and brand strategy and hr, just all of it just like nobody was talking about it yet. And as a. I started doing a lot of Talks, including, you know, marketing, marketing stuff, because that was what my background was in. And incorporating the behavioral science piece. And then, you know, podcast came from that mostly as a tool to help people to see what they even needed versus me having to convince everybody why this was important for them. Yeah, and being the first, one of the first. I'm still not 100% sure on that with the podcast, but like, you know, in the, in the world, in the space made it that people were finding it before anything else. And, and I give the exact same advice of like, if you pick what you're going to do, you have to be like all, all, all in on that thing. Like, I knew I was going to do the podcast for. I committed to an entire year of weekly episodes before I could decide if it didn't work or not. And I think if you're looking to start, have your agency be rooted in this, you have to commit potentially for even longer than that to know that you're going to be working to include that in what you do and be really dedicated to that. So anyway, thank you for that insight.

Yeah, no, no, I agree. And it's also at that, you know, when you are one of the first doing it and you are mostly talking to people who don't know what you, what you're offering, don't even know why it's, you know, why they would benefit from it, there is an element that sometimes it can feel a bit soul destroying because you know that it's valuable, you've seen it, but it's, it's hard to sometimes put it in a, in a succinct way. At some point in time, there were moments where I wished I did something that automatically that already had a demand for. Like my, my husband is a background in software developer. There is always demand for software developers. It's like your expertise is like there's an existing demand for that and that just, that makes your life a bit easier. But unfortunately, this is what I'm good at and this is pretty much the only thing I'm so, you know, so passionately interested in that I'm stuck with this. You know, I can't, I can't move to something like it doesn't matter if that has more demand automatically. I just can't do it. It's who I am. I, it's, it's my profession and it's also. But you know, I think about behavior pretty much 24 7. If I'm not thinking about human behavior, why people do what they do, I think about dogs and animals. I'm really interested in canine cycle, canine behavior and also other animals and so on. So it's just who I am. But yeah, I'm a bit like you that I, I came to this so early that there weren't any Master's programs like 10 years ago. I remember that, that when the first ones popped up maybe 2014, I think 2014, 15 in the UK because those students started coming to the. What was these London Behavioral Economics Network drinks that we'd set up this sort of monthly drinks and they started coming to those. And I think since 2016 it started, it's kind of gone. It was sort of a, you know, a very slow burner start and then the, the curve sort of like, like L shaped like or not L shaped like hockey stick shape. It started just much, you know, growing exponentially. When, when people came out of those courses and those master's degrees, what we, what I did instead was because I'm from Finland, master's degrees are free in Finland. Our education is completely free. So my first degrees were, yeah, my first degrees were in marketing and within marketing as. So it was always about consumer behavior. So even though I wasn't doing it, doing it or it wasn't called that, it was all about consumer behavior and linguistics and things like that. And then I've done other degrees after with that on linguistic anthropology. So again connection between behavior and language and so on. And I did a third master's in cross cultural psychology. So I've kind of skirted around. But by the time, by the time there's master screens appeared, I'd already learned all the things that they had in those masters. Like I needed something else. I solved that actually back in 2011, 2012 by going to a lot of conferences. So I came to the US probably three times a year to go to an academic conference and just sat there, you know, good 20 talks a day at least and sit, do that for three days and you're, you know, you pick up quite a lot of stuff when you do that and it's during that time probably cost as much as a master's degree and took about as much time, but it didn't result in anything that you can hand out as a, you know, as a certificate. But I learned different things. Like I could, I, you know, I went for drinks and dinners and with lots of people who are now, they were then PhD students and now they're assistant professors and professors. And I saw a lot of the, you know, behind the scenes of academia, hero science academia, which gave Me a different perspective to people who sort of approached it from just the books. And that's kind of, that's the shop front and there's a lot, there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes and it changes how you look at the work as well. Right.

Yeah, well. And I'm a big advocate for the networking side of things and kind of like you're saying with patience it's a. I think all of business is a long game anyway.

Right. It's.

So I always, while we're talking here it's end of the year and I have, you know, I always do an episode on reciprocity and something on, you know, generosity and you know, just trying to. There's so much that comes from giving freely and knowing that in some way it'll come back as a benefit to you might, you know, it's just worth it, I guess, just, you know, being good humans.

Yeah, I absolutely agree and I actually, when you ask for advice on the. Those people who are starting in the countries that behavioral science isn't a big deal yet I would actually advise give generously, give away information generously. If you're doing a conference talk, don't make it salesy or article. Make it something that is useful for people that adds value and that's. That kind of the, that's the other way that I've always tried to present my like do my LinkedIn and everything. Make sure that you're something that adds value to people's feeds rather than someone who just promotes themselves because no one wants to see that, you know, but you will want to hear from people who add something. So that's a, you know, that's a way to, to promote yourself, your, your skills and your knowledge in, in context where not everyone knows what you do yet.

For sure.

For sure. Yeah, that's, it's, it's fun to see how those things come back. I just was connected with someone that I knew from a like a executive leadership training program thing I was in like 10 plus years ago and you know, guy from there that I sort of talked to connected on LinkedIn. But then we reconnected and something I had posted like two or three years ago, he was saying how he, I don't remember him, he didn't comment on it on LinkedIn but went and told like everybody in his company it was something they wanted to work on and it resulted in being recommended to come speak at a conference and like all these sorts of things that happened from something, you know, so long ago that.

That has happened to me as well. That someone who I have no idea. I don't know who they are. Someone's just like, oh, someone. A new client comes to me as like, oh, how did you hear about me? Oh, someone saw you at a conference and that might have been six months ago. And I thought nothing came out of that and whatever that was a waste of time. It wasn't because it will just come back to you at a different time or something. So definitely reciprocity and there's often a long time frame for the returns. Right?

Yeah. Well, that's not to say that we can't charge for our services as we should, but especially as you're getting started, free is of course, free is good.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, definitely.

And speaking of services, let's talk a little bit about what you do.

Oh yes.

So I know you talked a little bit about why you call yourself a behavioral insights strategist, but can you tell a little bit more? I mean, do you have a project? I always love the ones when you can talk about all the way through, I guess to where it's like someone came to me with this problem that is something that you probably have a problem that is similar to this. I came up with this unconventional solution which led to whatever those are always my favorite. That being said, I love all stories and examples, so take it away.

Sure. So I, I made a conscious choice after spending seven years focused on one message and one business that I want to try different things before I sort of, you know, before I settle on something for the next 10 years or or so on. So I've kind of. If you look at my LinkedIn, it might look a bit strange, but it, I like to call it sort of like a portfolio career and doing, doing a couple of different things and they feed each other in terms of ideas. But the most part of what I do is that I work with micro research agencies and that's, you know, that's often because I understand the work they do and I understand how to fit into it. But they don't necessarily have the behavioral science expertise. And I can bring that in and kind of complement them in the parts that they don't have. Typically what that means is that Marker Research Agency will come to me. They either they already, they usually they haven't pitched for the project yet and they'll come to me. We'll discuss the, you know, how we might solve the client's problem. The client might have. The end client might be someone like a big newspaper client I worked with someone Here in Netherlands. And they wanted to understand how to shift, basically shift people up the purchase funnel. That's how they, they framed it, that they want to convert more people into using the site, regularly logging in and then finally converting them to paying customer as well. And so we worked on the proposal together, designed the research together and then we meet the client together. Often I'm usually part of those and we sort of collaboratively design discussion guides, questionnaires, whatever the research project requires. And if necessary, it's not always part of a project, but I might do a desk review or of either the client's existing data, actually I'll talk about that in a moment. Or I might do a little bit of research audit on scientific literature and then possibly work with the analysis of the qualitative or quantitative data from the project. And then together we kind of put together a presentation or a workshop or both. And it could also have a bit of training for the client. That tends to happen quite often because they're not familiar with behavioural science. And to be honest, there are different ways of talking about behavioral science depending on, on what it is that you're. You're doing. One size does not fit all. And yeah, the desk reviews are actually also a big part of what I do it. And what I mean by that is that many market big microsearch clients, as in big global companies, let's say not, not specifically people I've worked for. But you get the picture that you might have like Nestle or Unilever or you know, someone like that, they will have, or they already have lots and lots and lots of research data that they've commissioned over the years and in different countries, but they haven't necessarily been done through the lens of behavioral science lens. So when we do a project we think about the target behavior, what it is that what is the business objective, and then work backwards to what behaviors they want to change or influence. Because that should really always be the focus of a project that I'm involved in because that's what I bring into the game. It's very hard to kind of help with changing, you know, expertise and advice on behavior change if we have not determined a behavior. And then I, I often look through or audit their existing research and insights to see what do we already know and sort of reorganize it, pick up things that are relevant for the, you know, build a sort of psychological behavioral landscape. And that's actually what I, when we first started talking about this, that I'm developing this, I don't know I'm not sure what format it will be when. When this comes out, but I've called it the behavioral blueprint because it's not mapping. It's a more of a snapshot in time, and it's sort of a process that I go through. I've put together different frameworks, and I've been using it for years now, but to formalize it and kind of put it out there in public, that having a structure and framework of how to look through data, tons and tons of. Tons of data, and then make sense of it and actually distill it into a format that tells us where the gaps are. What do we not know? What do we need to know, and what do we do with it? So that's most often what I do in my daily life. Cool.

So with the behavioral blueprint, is that thinking it could be a book, or is it a. I know you don't know.

It is meant to be a book. It is meant to be a book, but you know how long those things take to write and. And, yeah, but, you know, we'll see. I will start from. From something else. It's. It's kind of. I have a tendency, so my. The way my mind works is that I want to look at kind of everything, kind of take a big, big perspective.

And.

And I think I. I can also overthink it when it comes to writing a book. But let's see. Let's see. Hope so. And maybe I'll try to make a public commitment here and, like, it will. It will be one. It will be one.

I think it will.

Yeah. There's a start, but it takes a long time, and life gets in the way, but I think it will be. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for kind of, you know, laying that trap for me. And. Yeah, I will. I will. I will remember this in the, you know, acknowledgements that. Thank you, Melina, for making me do this.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. And I will say, happy to be. I know one of the hardest parts about doing a book, it's a weird thing, but is asking for endorsement blurbs is the worst.

I have heard that quite hard. Yeah.

Reaching out to people you really respect and say, like, will you please tell me how ugly my baby is and maybe say some nice things about it.

Yeah.

No fun at all.

I think writing is even harder. So I'll start with that. And then I was like, yeah, I'll just worry about that when we get there.

I was like, just.

That will be. That will be a. You know, I'll remind myself that how good problem that is to have when I get there.

Well, I was just gonna say I know that there are many, many people you could ask. Know that you, you've already like whatever. I'm happy to do one for you because I'm sure it will be amazing. First one in the bag for when that comes. So and the, and for the world in like for in framing and thinking about things. You know, it doesn't have to take a long time. I wrote the bulk of my first book in two and a half months that came out and I'm working on the next one already and I think I have a shorter timeline so it is a terrifying thing. But you can do it.

I think I. What's your secret? How do you, you know. Please don't say it's between 6, 5 and 6 in the morning because that's not going to happen.

No, I definitely. There's a reason I did that episode on survivorship bias. That's not a true. Not everybody who gets up early is productive and not everyone who sleeps in isn't. Right.

Yes. Well, yeah, I have a. I found a later life. I found a good reason for that. I, I had a. Got my ADHD diagnosis three years ago. So now I know that there is actually there is a connection to sleep cycles and things like that. So there's, you know, I've always been more of a, you know, night owl. So that kind of like if I'm awake at 5 o' clock, that would be because I've been up all night, not because I've gone up early. And I can't think of anything worse than, you know, get up early between, you know, five and seven and write for two hours. Like no, absolutely not. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's not gonna happen. So any other tips? Any other tips? How did you manage it in two and a half months? I want to know.

Well, for one. No, I'm also, I would say I'm most productive in those late night times, right. When I can just like sit, have my noise canceling headphones and just sit. Be in and not worry about other people and things. Some of the tips for book writing. Not that this is what we were planning to talk about today, but why not? Right?

No. But here we are. Here we are.

So one is so breaking it down and you just get started, right. And be okay with knowing you're going to have some scattered brain stuff. And that's. I actually funny enough so the publisher that just gave me green light on my Second book last week from where we're talking now, which. And actually, I'll probably be almost done with the book by the time that this episode comes out.

Impressing.

But I started working on it just this week, you know, really getting my thoughts out. So one is you have so much that you've already talked about or where you've done presentations on this. Like you said, you've been doing this for a long time. And so if you break it down into saying, like, what might the chapters look like? And then what content do I already have that fits that information and start segmenting it in. One of the things that I found with the first book, so my publisher gave me, they said for word count, you know, do between 35,000 and 50,000 words was the goal. And that I think it's because most people, it's hard for them to get up to 35,000 words. I was like, you know, brevity isn't really a friend of mine. So. Yeah, but. So as I started pulling in podcast episodes just from episodes I had already done into the chapters I knew I wanted to create when I was just posting those in getting rid of fluff, just like meat of episodes, I had about 200,000 words together without, like, stories and weaving things in, just concept stuff. So you actually probably already have a lot more content than you realize. And then if you're starting from a place of editing it down to fit what you might want it to say, it can help you then work on, you know, weaving things together.

Yeah, that sounds like very, very solid advice. My stumbling block is I. My. My brain looks for novelty. So as soon as I've written something, I'm bored of it and I feel like, you know, it's like it's. It's gone. It's gone for me. So I forget that I've written a lot of stuff because, like, wow, that's boring now. You know, moving on and must always find more, which is, you know, which is something that has, you know, that tendency has helped me a lot in developing as a. As a practitioner is that I am quite literally always curious. I'm always reading more and more and more. It can be exhausting. And I've kind of learned to filter it a little bit better. Like, do I really need to. Do I. Do I need to know this? It's interesting, but I'm probably not going to use it. Okay. Parking that and keeping that in somewhere aside in case I need it. I'm. My. My alias is kind of like. Or used to be, like, Information magpie, because that's kind of what I am. My, My, my laptops and tablets are, are bursting with, you know, with books and papers and everything. And it's like, I will read this one day. One day I will read this. I don't know what they say that is, but, you know, one day. One day I will definitely read this. So. Yeah, but that's very. I will keep that in mind. That Just, Just get on with it and, and look at what you already have and start from that.

That's.

I, I will take. I will actually, I will make a promise that I will have something to show you when the episode comes out. I don't know, maybe not, maybe not the world, but I'll show you something exciting.

I am looking forward to it. And you know, just doing one little thing a day is enough too, of like grabbing one article to place somewhere that you wrote or, you know, something can help get those goals.

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, I think I have. The other thing I'd always want to talk about and I have wanted to write a book about is how to bring in cultural psychology into behavior change. Because it's something that is becoming increasingly important when, like you said at the beginning, we've talked about that there are more and more people applying behavioral science and doing behavior change in various countries around the world. Yet 95 of the insights that we're. We're basing all this on are from weird countries, and most of it is from the US which is not a problem in itself, but it's, you know, it's not necessarily representative and we don't necessarily always know what is and what isn't. So I have had some thoughts on that. But that's, you know, that's another. That's a, That's a very nebulous topic that can easily sprawl. So maybe that'll be, maybe that'll be the book too. Like, let's start with, start with the, you know, the one that I have more material for already.

Yeah, well, with that, I guess. So we can go one of two ways. We have. Choose your own adventure of the episode here.

Excellent.

So one would be if you want to tell a little bit of what are some of the things in your behavioral blueprint, like the couple, like, main things people should know that they should always do or that you would keep in mind when you're working on projects, a couple of those ideas could be. One other direction would be if you have a great story of, you know, a study or research that you've done. From a client or something that you want to share about, which I know they're sort of getting to the same place, but I feel like they come from different approaches. So whatever's most appealing to you.

I. I think I'll go with the first one partly because it does apply to a lot of the things I do. And the other one is because I'm terrible with anecdotes. So, you know, I start a story and I forget where I'm going and there's some details. And so I will go with the, with the more theoretical one that's. That's probably easier, but I. Yeah. So the way that I started to think about it, I realized that what seemed really the behavioral blueprint is that what seemed. Well, it started off in a project once upon a time where I was. I just needed to get my head around it. And I realized that I had an intuitive process of looking at things in a certain way that I'll start from. You know, what is the business outcome you want to see? Let's work backwards to the behaviors and then in a, you know, in a logical order, start thinking about the barriers to that behavior, what might be standing in the way, but also things like characterize the behavior like it's often that stage is missing and I hadn't realized quite how often until I started thinking about it. That is a behavior. Is it a, you know, size up Your challenge is kind of probably the first chapter that in the book is that you need before you start approaching the behavioral change challenge, you need to size it up and understand, you know, is this a one off or a continuous behavior? Is it simple or complex? Because one off behaviors are easier to change than complex behaviors that require multiple steps. If you have simple ones, let's say, you know, converting someone to a purchase that's relatively simple and then, you know, sign up process can be complex or something else or one off behaviors are obviously easier. Continuous behaviors when you don't have control of the environment, totally different. Yet that is something we don't often talk about when, when we tell, you know, talk about case studies and talk about behavior change. So that's kind of, you know, that would be my. That's always my first step is like, what kind of what is our, you know, what's the situation? What are, what are we up against here? And then assess what the difficulty of the challenge is. Then I'll start from like, what is the person's, you know, what's their. What's their decision making landscape? Like, are they. When they're doing this, this behavior that we're interested in that they do something we don't want them to do, or we want them to do something else, what is it like for them? What might be the most salient constraints? Like, is it, is it situational, is it like time pressure, is it cognitive load? Could it potentially be something like social norms or where might they, what kind of influence are there, where are they, you know, are they busy, all that kind of stuff and then, then moving on very, in a very structured way, sort of. I'm a, I'm a big fan of the combi model. I don't know if you, you. Yeah, everyone knows combi model these days. I've, I've just, you know, when I started using it maybe five, six years ago, it was kind of like what a weird academic thing. And now it's everywhere. I just did one call yesterday that was a discussion about it and I'm doing another two in a couple of weeks because I just asked, does anyone have experiences of playing it? And lots of people said yes. I'm really interested in hearing more about this. So suddenly I'm doing calls about combi, like I'm some combi guru. I'm not. That's the people who wrote the book, but here we are. But I tend to use that as a structure to kind of then think about does a person have the capability to do what they want to do, what we want them to do, what's the opportunity or the environment and then the motivation. But I add other things into, I kind of combine elements from other frameworks and to build into that. But on top of that, I think one thing that's been missing from. It's not just, you know, copying and pasting things or other people's stuff, but there is a huge amount of context that behavioral science, applied behavioral science often ignores. Not just the context of the immediate decision making environment or the choice environment that we talk about a lot. You know, choice architecture and so on. But because of the academic background and heritage or where the disciplines come from, they don't usually address things like cultural values or cultural attitudes or meanings that people might, you know, cultural meanings that you might have. So those are also things that you, you have to bring in. And there's actually quite an interesting paper that I saw a little while ago. It's introduced this idea of like move framework and I was really pleased to see that, that it's, it's actually those ideas are, are coming in now that the move framework was that you need to think about the meanings that people give to different behaviors and different things. They're, you know, they're observations and their, you know, different viewpoints and also the experiences that people might have had. So all those types of things that kind of like context for the individual. That's not always something that we, we think about. And, and then adding on to that some more practical ways of how do you assess which barriers to address? And there are different ways depending on what context you're. You're doing it. But really that's the behavior, the behavioral blueprint. The idea is that it helps. It should kind of hold someone by the hand, by their hand to, to go through and really interrogate what is, what does it want to change? What do we know about this? What do we not know? Because sometimes that, you know, sometimes you know a lot. And, but without checklist, it can seem like a lot of information to you. Like, where do I start? What do I do? What order do I put this in? Where does it fit in? And actually giving names to some of those things and putting it in, giving it a place, then the picture starts to become clearer. And that's kind of, you know, that's, that's more my kind of book, more of quite practical and logical and structured. I'm. That, I don't know, for a long time I thought, like, I wish I was a storyteller. Like, like, you know, like, Rory Sutherland is very good with telling stories and anecdotes. I'm just not like that. You know, it's. This is not, this is not who I am. I'm. Maybe, maybe it's. I don't know what it is, but I'm just much more like, yes, but let's follow this, you know, process logically. In my normal life, I'm not very organized, you know, like, I'm not like, my house isn't done by a ruler. But when I'm doing, you know, when I'm analyzing things or trying to understand something, I like to follow, just make it logical. And that's why combi and a behavior change wheel really appealed to me because it, it follows, you know, you start from the problem, analyze the barriers, and then you develop solutions to interventions to the problems that you've identified. And not just like, jump to, you know, oh, here's a cool idea. Let's do this intervention. Like, yes, but does it, does it actually solve the problem that you started with, you want to solve? So I don't know. I. Even now, as I say, it seems so obvious to me, you know, it seems so, like, is it. You know, that's kind of what held me back from writing. It's like, isn't this just obvious? But then every once in a while I realize, like, oh, no, no, no, it isn't. It isn't necessarily to everyone. So, yeah, I guess I should just, Yeah, I don't know.

Do it. Do it.

Yeah, it's just so. It's so. It's so natural for me to do it. And I would do it without, you know, even without the, you know, writing it out formally. But I realized when I was working with other people and other agencies that, that it did come to them. You know, it was. It was not natural to them to think that way. So that's how I started creating, like, formalizing it and realizing, oh, actually there is a lot more that, you know, is under. Underneath this. So, yeah, that's. That's pretty much. I don't know where I was going with that. I forgot your question out. We're. We've got it past. Yeah, that's kind of what it is. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, that's. So, for one, we are like the most kindred of spirits, which is, I think, why we've connected over LinkedIn for all these years. And so I'm all about practical stuff. That's where my book has apply it sections at the end and things of each chapter and an extra workbook with ways to walk through it. And it's very. While it does have the choose your own adventure style to it versus, like, at least for this book, 1, 2, 3, 4, you know, step from that first book, definitely having it like, think about this and then think about that and then think about this is really helpful for a lot of people as you're just getting started when you're not sure and having, you know, a mix of models, a mix of questions, a mix of things to come in and pitfalls and, you know, benefits. And also, I will say, you know, the audience, I think maybe is sick of me talking about context because I think I. Every single episode, I'm like, yes, context.

It's so important.

Yeah, it's one of my, like, top, top, top things. And so I'm going to be linking to the episode I did on. What problem are you solving? You know, talking about this. That's where most people go wrong.

Yeah, absolutely. And I, I think solving the wrong problem is very. Is very common and it's very. Also very human in some ways. I don't think. Like, for, for me, the behavioral blueprint isn't necessarily just people who are first starting out. It's in the sense that I use it now for myself to make sure that, that I'm not, I'm debiasing myself. I'm all too aware of the decision errors that can creep into your own thinking and you can kind of get, you know, fall in love with your own ideas and your initial thoughts about something. So that's, you know, because I know that and I talked about that for four years in my previous role. I talked that, talked about that to clients and so on and how to debias yourself as a researcher and so on. So it's something that is very, it's very important to me that I'm always like, try to hold myself to a really high standard in that and kind of interrogate my ideas and like, am I just, is that just confirmation bias? Am I, am I just persuading myself about this? And I'm, I'm actually quite a. You know, it's, it's probably sometimes quite annoying because I don't. I kind of. Yeah, I'm quite hard on myself in those types of things. But yeah, so that, for me that framework is. The idea is that you don't have to use everything, but at least there's like a, you know, there's a process that you can go, yep, that's useful, that isn't useful, but at least you've considered it. Or that isn't relevant here, but you have considered it and you can confidently say that's definitely not going to kind of. You reduce. You know, it's kind of a. I guess it's a bit like managing the risk of solving the wrong problem. So I think that's probably a good way to, Good way to put it. I. I wrote, you know, I have actually wrote a bit of a ranty blog post about this some months ago when Netflix brought out the. Their new feature the Play Something. It still irritates me every time I see it because it's kind of maybe it is me, but for, for me it's, it doesn't solve the right problem. It's. It was just like when I read articles about the why they've done it. It just looked like an illustration of what confirmation bias looks like, an egocentric bias in, in some ways that it's like, you know, of course the VP of Netflix will think that they're, you know, the problem is surely that there's so much good stuff to watch that you can't possibly decide that is. That's definitely the problem. Okay. It's not, it's not necessarily for everyone. I'm. It's just interesting that if you solve the wrong problem, it's not, it's not a trivial thing because in this case they will spend a lot of money solving problems. Solving this problem, does it actually solve anything for users or customers? Open question. To whom does it, you know, how many people does it solve, solve the problem for? So and I, we had a conversation about this like related conversation some months ago in some, I think it was some panel discussion or something. Do you behavioral science practitioners need to care about the replication crisis and the replicability and all that kind of stuff? And some people feel that, that basically no, because we can just try things and see what, you know, throw things against the wall and see what fits sticks and not fit sticks. And I think that's that I, I disagree with that because everything that you do has an opportunity cost. And if you do the, if you just try things out, everything you try has a cost. You could have done something else and you might wasted resources and certainly wasted your clients resources. So I think we need to be pretty sure that we're solving the right problem first. Because everything else, everything is built on that. It's like the foundation of everything we do. It doesn't matter how good you are designing interventions and whatever, if you solve the wrong problem, it's not what the client wants. So yeah, I don't know how we got to that either.

You know, it doesn't, that's, it's because it's fun, because it's good to get there. Yeah, I think really important stuff and I haven't talked about much about the replication crisis here on the show and you know, thoughts on that. But I think similarly in that the.

Over assumption of generalizability and not considering.

Context is a big reason why things aren't replicating properly.

Absolutely. Yes, absolutely. There are lots of factors in that whole area. A small part of that is the, you know, the actual issues in academia. But that's a side point. The reason that things might not apply the same way in another con, you know, in another situation when you're applying it, is that the original, maybe the cultural context was different, maybe it's how the experiment was set up. Hardly any experiment ever is the same as your particular context, your commercial or public sector context that you're applying it in. And the thing is that humans are multiply determined. It's not like we're all, you know, we're not all the same. What kind of gets missed often Is that when we. We have to be careful how we talk about how we represent behavioral science research and the experiments done, and when we talk about single experiments, it makes for a great story, but at the same time, it's zoomed a little bit too closely in because it's too specific. So it is. Yeah, it's. There's so much else that can be going on for someone that you don't capture in the. In a lab experiment. And also, there's always multiple things going on for someone, not just, you know, it's not just some. You know, sometimes what looks. I actually says what looks irrational is because we just don't understand their logic. And that's kind of. That's. That is the point for me, using behavioral sciences to empathize with the person whose behavior we're trying to change. Do not judge them. I mean, hardly most people would think to say that they're judging it, but when we say that something is irrational, we are judging it. We're saying that's kind of wrong and you should be doing something else, maybe. Should they? You know, they probably have a reason to do it, good reason to them. We need to understand that logic empathetically and kind of putting ourselves in their shoes before we try to change that. If we're just like, you're kind of in the wrong because we want you to do something else or we know better than you. It's just how I want to approach it. But, you know, that's. That's something that comes from. It's kind of a spun out of the background of behavioral economics that as a discipline came as a, you know, a reaction or counterpoint to traditional economics. And the irrationality is actually the, you know, the concept of rationality from economics. But normal human beings don't necessarily behave like that anyway, so what is irrational? It's like, well, everyone has their own logic. And that's rational to you. Right. Even if it's not rational to someone else. But who am I to say that, you know, that's. Yeah. Anyway, I think. I think that that's always been a. Guiding or like a North Star for me, that it has to be about empathy. Even though it's sometimes really hard to understand people who are very different from you. I think being a. Having worked as a market researcher and interviewed people, lots of different types of people, you never know what your project will bring to you. It kind of taught me humility. I remember many, many years ago on a. One project was for an online gambling company or betting company. Betting Company is the former word. And it was about high value betters. Why they are in quotation marks lapsing. I remember I had some reservations about that, but we were a new business and it was like, well, yeah, yeah, let's see. And I had friends who were like, oh, you know, are you sure that's safe to go? And you know, speak to these people in person and like interview them. Had a lot of prejudices and actually what I found when I, you know, checked my ego at the door and my, you know, my prejudices at the door I met there were the loveliest people that I have, some of the loveliest people I've ever interviewed. And you know, there was. What you think of as high value better is there wasn't, it wasn't like, you know, someone's friends are, you know, house and, house and mortgage or you know, mortgage and kids college fund on, on, I don't know, horses or something else or football. It was, sometimes it was multi general generational families who watched football together and it was their part of enhancing, you know, their way of enhancing the viewing experience or it was like, well, I used to go to the races with my dad, my granddad. And it's just, you know, someone said it very well, which will never, I'll never forget that they didn't understand why their hobby, their way of enjoying life was judged and stigmatized. When women can go and spend 500 or 500 pounds in a single afternoon, Saturday afternoon, on shopping, you know, shoes and bags and clothes that they might never wear. And no one stigmatizes that. No one judges that. But you, you know, you judge someone who wants to do that with, you know, do something else with it. And I thought that is an excellent point that there are just some ways of spending money that are socially acceptable and that we've decided there are and some that aren't. And I, I didn't really have a good reply to that. So after that, you know, that was, that was a good 10 years ago and it really, that was a very memorable experience to. I would never, I would never have thought that's one of the most memorable experiences of my career. But just to teach me that, never assume, never assume that you know better why someone does something because you don't, you, you don't, you know.

Yeah, it shows the importance of being curious and, and looking around and you know, I talk about being a curious questioner and just, yes, why is that? And having genuine interest in other people. And like I said, I, I can tell you and I are Very much on the same wavelength on many, many things. And I know we could talk for another three years or so, but for the sake of your own time and not taking it all up, I think we have to close. But if you can let the audience know, for everyone who now is so excited to learn more about you and to connect about a project, to pre order their copies of the behavioral blueprint.

That'S not yet written. I was going to, Yeah, I was going to say hold me accountable to that. Yes, exactly. Well, you can find some of my writing on my own website. So squarepig insight.com you can find me on LinkedIn. I post. Well, I'll probably post more again there in the coming months, but it's been a bit quiet recently. So LinkedIn, Alina Halonen, you'll find me there. And on Twitter, I'm squarepeg mind, so you can find me in those places. And yeah, I will welcome anyone who kind of comes and say hello, where is that book? You said, you said you have something like, oh, that's good, that'll keep me. That'll keep me going.

Okay, so in addition to me following up audience, it is your mission to make this book happen. Go. We won't say harass, but go.

I was gonna say harass. I was gonna say harass. I encourage, I encourage it. Go. Go.

Ping Alina and ask about behavioral blueprint. Where is our book? We want it.

I need it now. Yeah, there is a. I, I read something a little while ago. I think it was one of these productivity books. Yes, it should say something. What are you withholding from the world by not starting your project? And I thought, oh, that's really, that's really clever that, you know, maybe there, you know, maybe it is genuinely that it, you know, I need to think a bit less from my own perspective of thinking of it as, you know, I must write this excellent, you know, this perfect book to like just get it done because it might actually genuinely help someone and take that perspective a bit. Like, you know, you might want to think about the conference talk. Like it's not about you, it's about the audience. Like what are you giving to them? And what, what if something you say today will make a difference for someone? So I think I'll take my own old advice that's quite a bit handy that talking to you as surfaced it. But yeah, think about, you know, could it help someone else rather than being it being about me. So I find that, you know, removing your ego from a process often helps in a lot of things. So see clearly love it well and.

It brings our reciprocity peace full circle. Everything coming full circle here at the end. And we'll be linking to you know where to find you in the show notes so everybody can go find and ping you and ask for their books. And just to say thank you again Alina for joining me. It was a lot of fun.

You're welcome. It was fun. Thank you.

Thank you again to Elena Hallinan for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? I'm hopeful that you were intrigued by some of the models that Alina talked about, Combi and Move as a couple of the main examples in the show notes, there are links for you with more information, including a training Alina did on comb, as well as links to more information on both of those models. In case you weren't able to jot it down during the conversation or just want to make sure that you got everything correct, here is a quick summary of what those acronyms stand for. Com B which is C O M dash B is for capability, opportunity, motivation and behavior. That's Com B. And then move is for meanings, observations, viewpoints and experiences. As I said, there are links for you in the show notes@the brainy business.com188 with more information on both of those models as well as links to related past episodes, episodes of the show like those on framing, survivorship, bias, pre commitment, my interview with Amy Bucher, which also discussed the Combi model, and more. You'll also find links to related books and ways to contact Alina in those show notes, including her Twitter where you can reach out to ask how the behavioral blueprint book is going. She is square peg mind on Twitter and be sure to tag me as well. I'm the brainy bizarre B I Z so we can all be part of that conversation. Thank you again to Elena Hallinan for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Next week, Yale's Dr. Zoe Chance is here sharing about her new book, Influence is your superpower. It's going to be a lot of fun. You won't want to miss it. Until then, thanks again for listening and learning with me and remember to be thoughtful.

Thank you for listening to the Brainy Business podcast. Melina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.