413. Empathy and Innovation: Behavioral Science Applications in Business w/ Dr. Melaina Vinski

Welcome to episode 413 of the Brainy Business Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Dr. Melena Vinsky, Behavioral Science Lead at IBM. 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.

Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business podcast. In today's conversation, I'm joined by Dr. Melena Vinsky. Melena is a behavioral science and behavior change specialist with over a decade of experience in the experimental study of cognitive neuroscience and human behavior and over eight years of experience crafting evidence based solutions on sustainability, stakeholder management, reputation risk issues management, operational model design and behavior change. As the former behavioral insights lead for PWC Canada and the current lead of behavioral science at IBM, Melena is recognized as a leading expert in weaving behavioral science within traditional problem solving paradigms to tackle some of the toughest challenges facing facing business and society. And yes, it is super weird and difficult to say and spell Melena instead of Molina for me. So apologies in advance if I mess that up at some point during the episode. I'm just not used to it. Really quickly before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show, notes for everything including my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in contact with Melina, a timestamp summary of the episode and more. It's all within the app you're listening to and at the brainy business.com 413. Now let's jump right in. Dr. Melaina Vinsky, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I'm so proud of me that I said that correctly. I believe.

Your name is what I have been called my entire life. I've always been a Molina which is.

Bizarre because I'm never Molina. When people first read by name they have so much trouble with it and so I find it fascinating that that's the go to for. For your name which having the just the extra A in there right to be like the I. You know I get it. It was bizarre for me. We'll. We'll have a little bit of your background but where we just met in person at the CBO Summit in Toronto in May of 2024 which was very exciting and it was super weird as people were talking about the you and the work that you were doing. And people are saying, and Melena this and that. And I feel like one. I never have someone in the room whose name is even close to mine. And so it's confusing for me there where I'm like, oh, oh, not me. Okay, got you, Got you. Right. But I feel like you were sit behind me more often than not. And so the gesturing was also in my direction.

Or how when we found out we were both celiac as well.

Yes.

Only one celiac free lunch. And I just thought they had spelled my name wrong. And you're like, no, no, no, that's my name. And I was like, are we.

I know. Are we. Are we the same?

It's sense of, like parallel universes right now that have just collided. And here we are.

I would be honored if we were the same person. I would be delighted by that. And to help everyone to understand why, obviously, can you share a little bit about your background and the work that you do?

Sure, I can. So I'll start sort of at the beginning. Ish. But I promise not too, too long here. But. So I'm a behavioral kid at heart, and by training, so did master's PhD in cognitive neuroscience. Fully thought that I would be an academic for life. Had my blazers with the elbow patches on. I thought, you know, I'm going to study the brain forever because it's the coolest thing and I'm obsessed. And I loved it. And I was in the middle of my PhD and during this time, I studied at a bunch of different institutes. I went and studied how changes in daylight savings affects our circadian rhythms and our capacity for cognition and attention. So I studied that. That at the University of Iceland. I spent a semester or two living in Germany at the Max Planck Institute studying mindfulness and meditation and our capacity for emotional regulation. So just had, like, the best time in grad school. Traveled all over the world, something like 50 different countries. Like, my friends used to always joke that I was in school because I just didn't like a schedule, love traveling, and didn't like paying taxes, which is not true the last one so much. But, you know, as you do when you sort of get a little bit older, I started wanting to figure out, okay, if I'm going to make, like, the. The full plunge into academia and go live that rocky life. I needed to know what the alternative was. Obviously, I had many jobs, but I never had, like, a real career job before. So I went in my last year of PhD during the summer, I applied to A bunch of different consultancies, basically saying, can I come work for you for the summer for free and cause I couldn't actually get any funding or pay because I was being funded by the government. And one consultancy consultancy took me up on the offer. It was a sustainability consultancy. And by like 4pm on my first Monday I was like, oh my God, I am meant to for the real world. Like I knew immediately that as much as I loved the theoretical and the sort of nonchalance of academia, I was meant to be pen to paper and meant to be living and breathing with people and solving real problems. So I did that for three years and then I moved over to PwC to lead their first behavioral science or behavioral science and behavioral economics practice both in Canada and globally where we expanded it to a number of different countries and was a fantastic, fantastic role. Had a lot of fun doing that, did that for five years and then about three and a half years ago moved over to IBM where I lead their behavioral science, their AI and analytics business for the first two years or sorry, first two and a half years of being there. And my new role currently is behavioral science and gen AI lead within financial services services. And one of the big reasons why I joined IBM was because behavioral science is so fun and you're able to create so much impact with these tiny little interventions and some broader level frameworks. But it's a whole other thing when you can start lifting the hood in technology and building behavioral science into the technology from the ground up. And IBM has provided an amazing platform to do that.

Yeah, I, everything you said, like I want to talk about that and I want to talk about that and I want to talk about that and I'm sure that the audience is feeling the same way. So let's just, we'll go ahead and take a step back and kind of talk through some of these, these aspects. So what's some of the most interesting when you're saying, you know, studying about mindfulness at Max Planck, like I mean that's amazing. Like what, what, what are some insights you have to share about our, our brains in that more kind of theoretical space? And what, what was like lighting you up as you're being driven around like you say 50 countries and all these different aspects. As you look back, is there anything that really ties that all together or you know, for you or otherwise?

Yeah, well it's clear that the 50 countries I had a backpack on my back with a notebook and was wearing Birkenstocks, had feathers woven into my hair and was often Sleeping in the forest or on the beach. So that was sort of unrelated to school. But I do like to say that, you know, that's where the thoughts percolated. You know, that's where the really good ideas came forth. And then by the time I got back to school, I was ready to tackle it all. And I think one of the interesting things is my PhD thesis was on mind wandering. It was on. My thesis was on the ebb and flow of conscious thought and how we have this power within our brains to sort of shut off the external world and live in fantasy and travel to the past and go to the future within our own minds, which is just this unbelievable capability that we know to only be true for humans. And so I kind of think of my whole academic experience as a bit of a whimsical adventure. And when I say the. When you ask me kind of what the things were, that resonated with me the most, I think when I was in Iceland and I was studying at the University of Iceland, and really looking at how the brain changes as the seasons change. Because one of the cool things about Iceland, obviously, is that daylight hours are very different there. So, you know, you have many days in the winter where you get no sunlight at all, and you get many days in the summer where you get no darkness. And so you can see what happens when your circadian rhythms are out of touch or unlocked from the actual way that the world is moving and the way that the. We're rotating around the sun. And that was one of the first times that I really understood the interlock between the natural world and how our bodies and our brains regulate. And I've always been a, you know, somebody who loves nature. You know, I love being barefoot in the grass. I need to do it at least like, once a day. And that, for me, was the first time where the science really matched what my heart had always felt, which is we are deeply interconnected and interlocked with the natural world. And that was a very cool experience, I would say, at the Max Planck, when I was studying meditation. One of the cool things is almost every morning we would go up to the rooftop and we would practice a different kind of meditation. That broadly there. There was a huge program on meditation and mindfulness. And it is there that I really learned the power of how the brain and your mindset can influence the actual regulatory mechanisms within the body. You know, you always. Dalai Lama and some of these other spiritual figures are, you know, deeply attuned to practitioners being able to regulate their body with their Mind, you think that's kind of cool, but maybe it's a little bit hokey, but that was the first time that I really learned about the interlock between the brain and the sort of our emotional experience and the ability to actually regulate systems within your body. If you do meditate and if you do take the time to breathe deeply, you do take the time to really set your mind in a particular frame, you can change your cognitive capacity and you can change your emotional regulation. And that was, that was powerful for me.

Yeah, well, hopefully powerful for everyone. I mean, what's the. Was there a certain type of meditation like you said, if you did a bunch of different kinds that. Do they work for different things or was it just this may work for you on your path to regulating your, you know, cognitive capacity and for someone else, it's another approach that works for them and regulating it kind of. What's the lesson there for people?

I think the biggest thing is everybody just needs to give it a try and give it a try more than once. And it's like any practice, the more you do it, the deeper the impact. And that's basically the research shows. But I mean, you have schools all over the world that instead of detention are now doing meditation practice. So these kids that have acted out in school rather than staying after and having to, you know, write a bunch of lines on a chalkboard or I don't know how detention works. Never had a detention.

Same, same Z's. Because we are the same person. We've. We've neither of us have ever had detention.

But I always, you know, only saw it in the movies. But there's a number of school boards that are instituting, you do meditation instead because it helps build emotional regulation, this ability to stop and breathe, recalibrate, reassess. And I think that's an amazing, you know, step in the right direction for education.

Oh yeah, I love that. And I think just even, you know, some positive focused attention instead of being thrown off on your own and where, you know, from what we know of detention being that like embarrassed state which is going to make. That can make things worse. So yeah, that's really interesting on the mind wandering piece I love. And so all of this, I have a favorite resort like a spa that I like to go to that I discovered from that a client brought me in to do. They were doing their whole, like management team at this amazing resort that. So I got to go be a part of that. And I've just started going there and I've been, let's Like, I want to put together, you know, the retreat sort of a thing. I did have a group of friends that we all went this last year. It's a place with no technology that's allowed, you know, while you're there. And so it's very much in that mindfulness, mind wandering, like time on your own, but also in groups if you're wanting that. And they have different activities and like you're saying the if, if you want to go on a hike, if you want to go look at some really cool plants or whatever you get to, or, or I've done like vision board there, I have it up on my wall and different, like art stuff and yoga or what, you know, whatever your jam is, they have all sorts of really cool stuff there. So on the mind wandering front for people in business, I find that, you know, if you don't take the time to step away from the regular, you know, of what you're always doing, then you don't have that space to come up with the creative things. And like, when I work on a book, let's say I end up taking a lot of time. I'll go away for like a week. I've done two weeks before. And it's just me and the, and the thing I'm working on and I've explained it, like when I have that much time with it, it almost becomes this like, tangible thing. And I can like see the chapters. I'm like moving the concepts around in a much more tactical way than when I'm just trying to throw it and like squeeze it in between stuff. And I think that like settled mind is part of it. I guess there's the question of like, does that line up with the, what you see in some of that research and, or like, what are your thoughts on mind wandering for other areas of business?

Well, first I think we should try and do like a life swap. Because the idea, going to an exec off site to speak at a spa, like, that's, that's what I'm working towards.

You know, it was pretty great.

But yeah, I mean, ultimately your experience is, is perfectly in line. I mean, creativity, creation of new and exciting things, being able to, you know, refine a more robust mental model to make projections about the future, to make sound decisions. All of these components take a lot of cognitive capacity, or what I like to call is a cognitive juice. And if you do not have the juice, if you don't have the full cup, then you aren't going to have the capacity to actually fulfill what is required to get to the completion on those things. And some of these things never have completion, but just to entertain them. And the brain is aligned with the body and that it needs play, it needs exercise, it needs the ability to just be free and do a spin or two, you know, not a barefoot in the grass again. You know, that'd be the second times that your podcast in 10 minutes. But these things are so critical for the enlightenment of the self and the brain and cognition and the emotional experience of what it means to be human. And I actually think this two concepts. One is you need slack, you need the space, you need the freedom to connect the dots. That's why all the best ideas happen in the shower, you know. But the second thing is a very real concept of task switching, which is we have this. And I don't know why we believe that that task switching is not a thing, why we have told ourselves this myth that we can just aimlessly switch between a million different tasks and it won't impede our ability to be focused on or resolve the task that we are working on at that moment in time. And even this notion that women are better task switchers than men or multitaskers than men, sure, maybe on a broad instrument level, but at the end, we still experience that, that effect as well. We still experience that cost. We probably just complain a lot less.

You know.

But these are two sort of like conflicting or really strong headwinds that you need to manage when you're trying to do something creatively or you're trying to do good work. And one of the things that we just really try to navigate consistently in in a corporate environment especially, is the concept of how do you build slack into your day to day where you are still able to meet on all your obligations and your accountabilities and your responsibilities when your calendar is not entirely your own, when you have so many dependencies on a million and one other people. And this is one of the things that I find kind of funny about like productivity podcasts. I mean, I listen to all of them because I love them, obviously. But you know, the podcasters are always talking about how they integrate these principles into their daily routine. But the majority of people who are listening don't have a type of schedule. As a podcaster, it's incredibly difficult to integrate into a life where most of it is out of your control.

Definitely. So from that I guess then have you found some like, as you've kind of culled all of that together for you, having a more corporate schedule, some tips or insights for how you've been able to make that work. The highlights, I guess from all the podcasts and things you're listening to, I.

Think honestly the biggest thing is I just spend a lot of time making sure that my cup is full. Because if you have a full cup, then you actually have the self advocacy to control what you can and to sort of push and control maybe things that are not like a little bit more difficult to. And so I have really strong boundaries about when I sign off and when I sign on. The times that I'm signed off, I'm with my little one and I'm filling my cup that way. I have very strong regiment routines around yoga practice and meditation and exercise. Exercise and spending time in nature and getting really good sleep and always making sure I have like a really good book that I'm reading. I'm just like a voracious reader and I feel like it gives you a whole other world to just like dip into at the end of the day and give you a bit of a different, a different perspective. And I find as long as I have a full cup or you know, some semblance of a full cup, if things get really crazy in the day, I'm still able to put some pieces together just because I have the capacity to do, to, to do so in those 15 minute windows or half hour windows that sometimes pop up.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I am going to be linking as you've been talking. I've had a couple of different books and conversations and pieces of research I've been thinking of because that's just what I'm doing all the time. One I'm linked, I'm going to link to the fun habit when Mike Rucker was on the show to talk about some of his work, which is super fun, you know. And then also Cassie Holmes, when she was on talking about Happier Hour, her book and that research and for people to know that, you know, in that way, that research found that between two and five hours of like time that's for you per day, that doesn't have to be like a five hour block or even a two hour block. Right. Like you're saying those 15 minutes of something that's filling you up in that positive way is where that two to five hours on average, you know, per day is going to help you to feel the most fulfilled and like happiest. More than that, we feel less happy, less than that and less happy. But so then like you said though, 15 minutes here and you know, another 15 minutes over there, whether it's Reading or time with family or whatnot, whatever that means for someone, if they can find. Find those little moments, they can add up in a really valuable way.

Yeah, and sometimes I've found it is about reframing the meetings that you are in or reframing the context that you're in that can help you think about it as an experience that is going to fill your cup or is going to fill. Fulfill you. You know, work are a classic example. Yes, it takes up half of your day. Yes, it's intensive because you're constantly talking. You are facilitating for multiple hours. It can be a little bit draining, but it's also an opportunity to play around and have a bunch of different people who think about the world differently around a table, coming up with a great idea and a pathway forward, prioritizing based on what matters, getting into debates, maybe having some uncomfortable conversations. And I found when I walk into those workshops and I'm able to say, all right, this is a chance for my brain to flex. This is a chance for me to be creative. This is a chance for me to really, like, think about the world differently and come out as somebody who thinks about things maybe a little differently that I don't find. I'm as drained at the end of those, because sometimes you just can't. You don't even get those 15 minutes. And so you have to be like, okay, where can I get it? You know, where I can flex my brain? Otherwise, definitely.

Yeah, I love that. All right, I could talk about this forever. So I'm forcing myself to, to move to the next aspect of cool stuff that you've been doing throughout your life and career. So I'm intrigued about what it was when you were having that moment. Like you said, so you were all in for academia. And, you know, day one, you said, jk, you know, actually, I want to be on this business and applied side. So what was it that helped you in that moment? And I know before we jumped on to the actual interview, you know, you're talking about, you know, for people that are looking to break into the field, that are kind of deciding on their own path. I know people ask me all the time, like, should I do a PhD, do I not need one? Do I want to work in academia? Do I want to be in business? How do I even navigate this? And so from your perspective, you know, how could you tell what was the right thing for you and whatnot? And how can you give that into advice for people that are kind of trying to figure it out?

I think for me it was just experimenting with things I didn't know. You know, making a choice on what you're going to do in your career. First of all, you can make multiple decisions over the span of your career. Nobody says you have to do one thing. I think sometimes we can get into a momentum and it can be a little bit slow, scary to explore alternatives. But for me, I, I knew that academia is, is, can be a little bit more of a bumpy ride. I was okay with it, but I needed to see what the other side was like. I thought, you know, this is my life. Why would I just continue down one path without even understanding the other side? And once I did make that change, and let's be serious, I did it in a very low risk way. I did it during the summer where usually we're all at conferences or writing up papers before the students come back and we can study their brains again. I did it without pay so they could take me on no problem. They were getting a free PhD. And then for my final year of my PhD, that's when it got hard because I worked full time consultancy and full time to finish my PhD. And that one was obviously a little bit tough. But I'd already made that decision. For me, the biggest thing that I love about the real world is being able to really see like the tangible results of the work that I've done. So in academia, one of the best parts about it is you can spend your time sitting around a table debating really interesting things and topics with your peers at the mechanistic level. So A equals B, D equals, you know, D equals F. And then maybe, you know, having some arguments about whether or not those true, you know, relations are, or those relations are true in context, A, B and C. And you know, you get into these different pools of philosophical thought about how the brain works and how behavior is created and the importance of context, of course, and that was interesting, but I think in the end I just enjoyed that part because it was, you know, intellectually stimulating. I personally find it a lot more stimulating to just take what we know with a grain of salt, accept the margin of error and then just go and try it in the real world and see what happens. And for me personally, I just get so much more fulfillment out of that. But what I will say is I've always kept a very close tethering to academia. I've always had very close partnerships with academic institutions since leaving. So much of my work relates right back to theory. I'm constantly citing, you know, papers and publications that provide A ground truth, if you will, for the problem that we're solving. And so as much as I left it, and as much as I'm happy that I did leave it, which, by the way, tomorrow is 10 years since I defended my PhD.

Wow, congratulations.

It's still, I think there's always an academic in you, even if you leave. Leave that. So I don't know if your question or not. I think for me the biggest thing was just you have to explore within your own facets of your life. And even the different jobs that I've taken there was always, I always had this, like, reason to learn more or to want to learn more. Like in academia, I was like, oh, I want to see what the rest of the world looks like. So I went and hopped over and then I was in a boutique and I was like, this is great. I'm learning fast, I'm learning furiously. It's small, so I can do a whole bunch of different jobs. And I was like, but now I want, like, corporate training. I'm coming into slate. I want to be like, regimented and like, really put through the process. And of course, had a very cool opportunity to do so. And, you know, that's why. And I wanted to lead a team and lead a capability and that's why I went to PwC. The reason I went to IBM was because I really wanted to learn about technology. So, like, as long as you're making jumps for a reason that is aligned with your purpose and your greater goal of like, intellectual curiosity and fulfillment, then I think you can never have any regrets. Right?

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. And I hope, I think it answers the question very well. And, you know, trying things out, just kind of see, see what you can and, and take that time, I think is really powerful for people to know that. It's like, if you needed the permission, you have it, right? Go try some things and that's great. Well, I would really love if you can share a little bit about, as you get into that applied stuff. And I know that there are some serious boundaries to what you can and can't talk about with the type of companies that you've worked with. So what I will say is you have some applied examples and what can you say about those things and just kind of let you go?

Okay. I think the, the way that I will think about that question is I've now been in the applied space for 10 years. You know, 2014, the applied behavioral space was in a very different state of maturity than it is today. You know, a lot of us were hitting the pavement hard trying to tell people that this stuff really matters for a long time before they would give us even any semblance of funding. And so maybe what I can do is say is speak a little bit to how I've seen that evolve and maybe where we should be going. And then I could a little bit about in terms of some of the work that our team focuses on and you know, some of the use cases that we typically tend to, tend to try and solve for. So what I would say is one of the amazing things about behavioral science is that you have this unbelievable ability to take a pre existing experience or pre existing workflow. Do some appear like very small, you know, quote unquote, like tinkering to optimize with a little sprinkle of behavioral science. And you get these amazing big impacts. And that gave us a foot in the door that opened a wedge where senior executives were able to look at us and say, hmm, we are in an economically constrained environment. We are unable to spend much right now. We are looking for easy quick wins. Let's try this out. And that garnered us the ability to flood the market and get a bunch of different use cases, case studies, build community, you know, and that just snowballs into more and more funding and more ability to get more practitioners in the market. And then you hit a state of maturity which we are in right now, where we have a few different problems or headwinds that we're facing. You know, we've got the issue of a replication crisis or you know, heterogeneity revolution where we're finding that those quick wins were quick wins in a very small space. And that when you actually try to scale those MVPs to broad based system solutions, you're not seeing the impact that you would expect to see. And of course that's the case. There is no such thing as a silver bullet. And there is no one toolkit that scales perfectly across an enterprise without running into some hiccups or the requirement for further validation from other stakeholder groups. That's just, that's the nature of how this works. And it's, you know, every maturity model that every consultancy has ever built has predicted that this would happen. And we also obviously have a flooding of practitioners now in the market. And so there's less of a premium to be paid on the demand for those skills and skill sets and more of a required advocacy for why it's actually a critical skill to even have around the table. And so I think where we are really focusing or Where I have been focusing a lot of attention in the last five years, I would say of my career is how do we take those frameworks that we all know and love in behavioral, applied behavioral science? The yes, you have the very tactical nudge based or interaction based toolkit, but then you also have your orchestration toolkit where you're using, using theories of the brain and behavior to guide strategic decision making within an organization. So we are focused on upfront, how do you build accelerators and tools that guide strategy? So how do you make good and sound trade off decisions for funding and investment and balance on risk with an understanding of how your strategy is going to get the outcomes that you expect? If you require a certain amount of engagement, if you are trying to prevent a certain amount of attrition, if you are trying to create or create a certain amount of adoption, what are the models of those behaviors that you can build into the strategic analytics that then allow you to make a more realistic projection and assessment or forecast for what the future is going to look like? We then have taken those tools and woven them in the entire implementation process so that you're always working on the same fundamental framework to guide some of that decisioning throughout the life cycle of an engagement and implementation in your operations. And I think that's where the real interesting work is being done. I think, you know, yes, we're behavioral scientists. Yes, we can do some interesting stuff. Yes, we have a valuable lens, of course we do. To be human centric, you, you do have to have that lens. But we are just one voice around the table. We are not more important than any other voice. And I think the sooner we all collectively just agree to that notion, I think the better all of us will be able to move upstream into more high value, value add activities.

Yeah, I definitely see that and I think it's, it's such a great holistic approach that I would expect based on the conversation we've been having here. Right. Like you said, it's, it's one of many important voices at the table. And as, as we're looking at problems, that diversity of opinion, diversity of thought is so valuable across the board. So as you consider a problem, you know something, a project, you know, where you're, you, you're tasked with something to the extent that you can share. Right. What does that sort of look like in your approach? Whether it's at IBM or other like with your clients, there are other works that you've done.

Yeah, so because I lead, our teams are cross functional the way that we Approach a problem, especially the types of problems that you have in where they are big and they're meaty and there's a lot of money on the table, there's a lot of risk on the table. And because they have long durations, there's a lot of area and opportunity for things to go wrong. One of the first things that we do is we get all of the important stakeholders around the table and we do a pre mortem. And the reason we do a pre mortem is because you have all sorts of. Because we are a very optimistic species and because we tend to overestimate the likelihood of positive and underestimate the likelihood or proportion or probability of negative events. When you do a pre morm exercise, you are sort of doing a mental flip or cognitive flexibility exercise where you are assuming that everything went wrong and you're doing a bit of a scenario modeling exercise to account and plan for if those issues were to arise. Because problem is, when you start a big, meaty, complex project and you're planning, you just assume everything's going to go well and you have kind of like the standard risk mitigation templates and frameworks that are there. But if you start saying no, it's going to fail, it completely flips the brain around and it gives you all these other scenarios that wouldn't have come up otherwise. So I think in general that's a, that's a great way to start any kind of project because you'll be thinking about it differently, I think, in terms of other ways that we tend to solve the problems. Obviously, we have a number of core frameworks that we use and standardized approaches that we use that are highly integrative across a variety of different skill sets. So upfront, you typically need your really core strategic thinkers or the behavioral science folks around that team are really trying to quantify the likelihood of change. And by that I just mean when you're devising a strategy and you're building out a business case for some kind of implementation, in that implementation you have a line item that speaks to some level of adoption or engagement or whatever. It might be a required change that will occur from a stakeholder's perspective. And we actually go in and we actually model the likelihood of change and what would be required to achieve that change. And I think that's a very powerful tool. When we get into the actual feature prioritization and planning component. It's how do we prioritize features and functionalities that are going to drive that change rather than just, you know, what's flashy or what we think will be adopted. It's really using those metrics and those levers to drive that change and change that and inform that prioritization. When you get into the actual design of those features and functionalities. Obviously we have a very rich toolkit on which we can redesign and work with our UX and UI partners to make that happen. We work with the developers to make sure that they have the right information that is required for them to make that design come to life. And then on the actual measurement and monitoring of progress, we have frameworks that are built up based on the model of engagement or adoption that was used initially on the strategic phase so that you can make sure you're on the right track. And if you're finding that some of your metrics are slipping, you have a very good foundational framework on which to optimize. And I would say one thing that I wanted to mention when you were sort of asking me about the way that we work and I was talking about, you know, kind of the, the state of affairs in behavioral science, like one thing that I just think is so important for us as practitioners is to bring some very serious empathy to the room. Because I think if you are somebody who works in behavioral science, you know that the, that everybody is a good person. It's just at some point in time something maybe happened. Some point in time there was a constriction of growth and that led to certain attributes or traits that become more prominent in that individual or that there are certain contexts that create certain levels of elevated anxiety and stress that creates a downstream impact of, you know, all like a plethora of different types of behaviors that you would expect. And you would be surprised at how many instances we are talking about models of stress and anxiety and heightened intensity of emotion on how we need to redesign a process or redesign an experience flow. And the type of impact that you can have is incredible.

Yeah, that's great. I love going like you said, to that stress, anxiety and knowing just even very simple research on how cognitive function is impacted when you're imagining a fifteen hundred dollar emergency versus the $150 emergency and how people have a hard time making decisions. And we think, okay, so if we're overloading them with lots of think about the problem and stuff, that's not going to help them in this positive way. But we can be. But in that like system one, system two problem, right. We think it should help to kind of scare them into change, but that just isn't the right way.

Way. And there are some problems, I mean, in the space that I work, you know, I primarily work in financial services. So with the big banks, you know, most of that is you're dealing with people who are very stressed financially or are trying to meet a goal and are not able to, or in the inflationary environment, environment we are in, are not able to meet their goals of homeownership or, you know, being able to go on that trip that they want to go on. And in the insurance space, it is fraught with emotion. People have been in car accidents, they are off on short term or long term disability, they've had a death of a loved one. They are, it's that entire industry needs to have a big cushion for people to fall on where you are balancing what the organization needs and what the business needs from a data perspective in order for them to do their calculations that are required and for them to of course make decisions from a policy perspective, but also just making sure that you're getting, you're giving the client what they need at that moment in time and not asking too much of them. You know, a classic example is when people have been in a car accident and they're on the side of the road and you call to your insurer and your insurer is asking you 101 questions, right? And you're looking at your bumper in the middle of the highway or maybe you have a young child who is crying. You will have no recollection of that call because we know that restriction of the working memory capacity in times of stress and auditory processing is like a third of visual processing. You basically don't retain any of it anyway. That, that's just not the time and the place, right? You need to get information, you need to get to make sure it's not a fraudulent claim and that you can initiate what's required in the back end so that you can initiate the policy. And then you give them very clear next steps about where they can find that information to follow up. And we did this one client where just auto basically doing an automated next step email and truncating that first call to be basically just about empathy and ensuring that the information was correct. We reduced the number of calls that went into the contact center by 98% with the company like, you know, $5 million in that first year just because.

It'S, you know, no big deal.

Thing where the, you know, the way that I sort of talked to the executives about this was, you know, you're on the side of the road. How do you solve this problem. And they went into like all of these plus plus plus plus plus plus plus. And the answer is no, we subtract. The brain will not be able to have capacity for it. The human will not have capacity for it. For it. That's. And they won't remember any of it anyway.

Right. Right. So if we can strip it down to what's most important. And I love, like you said, that the empathy. Right. This was a traumatic moment for this person. They're feeling that still in the moment. And if you were in a car accident, do you want to answer a bunch of random questions like your grandmother's maiden name and all these sorts of things, or is there something else we can be doing to make that a helpful place for them? That's amazing. I love that. And I think, you know, we'll definitely have to have a future conversation because, well, we know we'll have future conversations, but I think it'd be fun to have. We could talk more on a future episode. I'm sure there'll be lots of listeners that'll say, I want to hear more about all these different aspects as we close out. Do you have a. Any go to whether it's specific research studies that you have found that have been helpful as you're having conversations about some of these aspects to help people to understand the importance of empathy or time pressure, stress or whatnot. And. Or do you have some favorite journals that you. That are your go to if you're doing a literature review phase?

Yeah, I, I think my answer would have maybe been different a couple years ago. I think a couple years ago I would have told you podcasts are like one of the best ways to just inherently build your toolkit. Right. So obviously you have an amazing one here. I always loved Hidden Brain, for example, is another one. I always love Freakonomics. And then I would always say Harvard Business Review is fantastic for, for if you are at the intersection between business and behavior because they have a fantastic psycholog, psychology or behavioral insights slant on a lot of their articles. And then really like, you know, publications, it comes down to the problem that you're solving. And so, you know, it can. It can be vast and it can be varied. But some books that have really just like changed the way that I think about what it means to be human are people who are not in a practicing space like we are. But do you know who Gabor Mate is?

I don't think so. Well, maybe. Yeah. Tell more.

He's the author of the Myth of Normal. That's his Most recent book he has, he's a number of books, but he just goes deep into the science of Big T and Little T trauma. And why such essential reading for anybody who deals in the space of human and human experience is because it builds this deeply holistic understanding of thinking about a human as this like, organism that moves through life and impact of all, you know, just the circumstances of life and what that means on a neurological level, what it means on a biological level, what it means on a cellular level, and how when any time you walk into a room with clients or anytime you're designing something, you just, you have to hold so much space for the individual that is coming through. Segments are important. They give you broad brushstroke, you know, understanding of the demographics that you're serving for and maybe some of their behavioral patterns and how you can, you know, optimize for that. But I've just found it's, it's been an amazing lens to make me better at my job.

Oh, I love that.

I think it's Seven and a Half Lessons of the Brain. It's a super quick read. And I again, had defended my PhD 10 years ago, and I still read neuroscience articles all the time. I still read neuroscience books because it's important to keep my skills fresh. But the Seven and a Half Lessons of the Brain are like, it challenged so much of what I had learned and gave me a very good understanding of, you know, what do we know about the brain today?

Perfect. Well, we will definitely link to both of those books in the show. Notes for everyone to go check out, along with some of the other things I mentioned, of course. And for everyone who is so excited to learn more and follow you, get in contact, you know, what's, what's their best path to be doing that.

I'm on LinkedIn, so you guys can probably link in my LinkedIn profile and I always answer messages there. I'm also launching a newsletter which is called the Behavioral Science or Behavioral Science Strategy Briefing. And it's just a weekly newsletter that comes in your inbox on Monday mornings. Super, super light touch. It has one article that has an interesting finding. We document some of those findings, give you some, you know, two or three bullets on how it applies to the everyday, and then provides you with a bunch of prompts that you can explore within a generative AI platform to further understand how that applies to the context of your, you know, daily work life. And there's an email there that people can always respond to me and so wonderful.

Well, we will of course be linking to that newsletter and your LinkedIn in the show notes so everyone can go follow and connect and all the things and so Melena, thank you so much for joining me today. It was a lot of fun to chat with you.

Thank you for having me.

Thank you again to Melaina Vinsky for joining me on the show today. What got your brain buzzing in today's conversation? For me, I was absolutely fascinated by Melena's background and the research she did during her PhD. The value of mind wandering and getting space and distance from problems and projects to better solve them is something I love to talk about. As you heard, I've experienced this again and again in the way I write books, design courses, build out frameworks, and just do overall strategic planning for the Brainy business. Taking that time to slow down and remove distractions allows me to live with the work in a concentrated way that lets me focus on it for a couple days and then move on to the next thing with confidence. My TEDx talk gives more detail about this process and while the video isn't out at the time I'm recording this episode, hopefully it will be very shortly after and we're going to put links to it all over the Brainy Business website. Don't you worry. In short, there is a lot of power in focusing on and completing one thing at a time and then moving on to your next most important thing. If you try to do too many things at once, you can waste all your time productively procrastinating and never actually complete anything. And no one wants that. As we close out the show, don't forget about those show notes, which include links to my top related past episodes and books, ways to connect with myself and Melena, a timestamp summary of the episode, and more. It's all waiting for you in the app you're listening to and@the brainybusiness.com 413 and thank you again to Dr. Melena Vinsky for joining me on the show today. It was a delight to chat with and learn from you. Join me Tuesday for another Brainy episode of the Brainy Business Podcast. It's going to be a lot of fun. You don'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. Molina offers virtual strategy sessions, workshops and other services to help businesses be more brain friendly. For more free resources, visit thebrainybusiness.com.