Sustainability initiatives all eventually hit the same roadblock: getting everyone on board. If you are focused on reducing waste, you need people to recycle. If you are interested in climate education, you need people to come to your trainings. And if you want to manage your Scope 3 emissions, you need people to change the way they order supplies. No matter what you do, eventually you are going to have to get someone outside your sustainability team (which, let’s face it, is very likely to be just you) excited about making significant behavior change. Here’s what you need to know about doing that.
It’s not about you – it’s about them.
One of the hardest things about changing someone else’s behavior is thinking about the problem the way they do. If you are in charge of creating a sustainability-focused behavior change campaign, you are likely very well-educated about the climate and how to mitigate carbon emissions. At minimum, you are aware that these are important issues. But other people may not be thinking about them at all.
Which means you are talking about getting someone from never giving something a moment’s thought to taking repeated action on it. That’s a big ask. And the first step is learning how to get outside your head and think like they do.
Start where they are.
I have spent a lot of my career getting people to take an action they weren’t very excited about – even though it was something that was going to help them in the long run. But whatever the desired action is, the starting point is always with them. You have to meet your target audience where they are. Think of it this way, it is very unlikely that someone who never recycles is going to think about recycling the same way you do. Whether they have never given recycling a moment’s thought or whether they know about it but still don’t bother to do it, they are guaranteed to think about it very differently than you do.
To motivate them to make your desired change, you need your campaign to resonate with them. It needs to use messaging and imagery and metaphors that make sense to them. The technique I have used for many years is called “voice of customer” and it’s a method for pulling those words and ideas out of their heads and using them in your campaign. It’s an extremely effective method – and it all starts by centering your focus on your target audience.
Be incremental.
There are a lot of ways that behavior change campaigns can fail, but one of the big ones is trying to get people to go from never doing something to always doing something. This is a recipe for disaster. What works better is being incremental. Plot out the steps between where your target audience is and where you want them to be. Make sure you thoroughly understand what roadblocks they encounter – emotional or physical – at each step along the path. Then make sure your campaign has a strategy to get them over those hurdles.
Education is a big part of this. If people don’t buy into why a change is important, they aren’t going to make that change. Even if they do, they are likely to backslide quickly. So effective behavior change campaigns begin with education. And they address all the hurdles, so that it becomes easy for people to move, step by step, towards the end goal.
Embrace repetition.
Lasting change does not come from a single campaign. The message has to be repeated over and over again, and that’s true for each step of the path towards making the final desired behavior change. If they are starting from scratch, it will take multiple attempts to get them comfortable with even opening themselves up to hearing about the new direction. Then, it will take multiple attempts to get them to take a simple first step – perhaps reading an infographic or attending a webinar. This is how it goes, for each step until they are making the desired change.
And the repetition doesn’t end there because, once they are making that change, you need to keep the new behavior going. Positive reinforcement strategies have to be included in your behavior change campaign if you want the behaviors to continue long-term.
Behavior change requires a long game.
There is no quick fix for getting everyone across your organization to change their behavior. Each team will have their own unique challenges in making the change, and your strategy needs to address all of them. But if you start where your teams are and diligently reach out to them, your behavior change campaign will be successful.
Photo by Chris Lawton on Unsplash