we've talked recently on this show about behavior change about changing your own behaviors this is usually relevant at the beginning of january if you're trying to change your behaviors listen to this episode because we're going to talk about how not every type of behavior change is the same now interestingly i'm not focusing today on you changing your behaviors but instead you identifying which of these types of behavior change are relevant for a given scenario over the course of your career you will likely need to implement some kind of behavior change for yourself and you will likely need to be a part an influence a factor in someone else's behavioral change this is especially true if you become a manager a manager is often trying to help other people change in ways that benefit them and the organization that they are a part of and it's quite common that managers need to influence other people to change as well but which type of change is dependent on what kind of circumstance you are in we're going to talk about the different types of changes in today's episode first we're going to talk about today's episode speaking of change one of the changes you might want to make in your new year is to remove the pain the struggle the fear from your releases and something that can help you do that is split split is the feature management and experimentation platform a release should be exactly that a moment of relief and escape from slow painful deployments that hold back product engineers you can free your teams and your features with split by attaching insightful data to feature flags split helps you quickly deploy measure and learn the impact of every feature you release which means you can turn up what works turn off what doesn't and give software innovation the room to run wild now you can safely deliver features up to 50 times faster and finally take a breath split feature management and experimentation what a release always like puns in our ads reimagine software delivery and start your free trial and create your first feature flag at split.io slash developer t that's split.io slash developer t thanks again to split not all behavior change is equal however in a given instance the outcomes might be evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution evolution only a framework. This is actually more like a sliding scale, a continuum. On one end of the scale is compliance. This kind of behavior change is perhaps the least sustainable because at the end of the day, compliance is about somebody doing something because they have no other choice or at the very least because the alternative is much worse. But usually compliance is associated with doing something that you don't really want to do, but you sort of have to. In other words, you're choosing between two things that you don't want. The reason this is on one end of the spectrum and that same end of the spectrum is not something like mindless behavior or autonomous behavior is because it is the most fragile in the sense that someone may actually be motivated to stop doing that thing. That behavior change is fragile or non-sustainable at the very least because if given the opportunity, if that person could escape the need for the compliance, they may not do the thing you're asking them to do. The second type of behavior change is direct reward or direct incentive behavior change. This kind of behavior is something that someone is doing for a direct payout or a direct reward. They may have a neutral position towards the behavior itself. Instead, they are doing it purely in a transactional sense. This one is less fragile, than the previous one, because the person doesn't necessarily want to stop doing the thing. They're not actively against doing it, but they are only doing it in response to some incentive. Now, the threats to this kind of behavior change is simply that if the incentive is exceeded by some other behavior that they are neutral towards, they're likely to change their behavior to that other neutral behavior. In other words, if I can do the same job elsewhere and get paid more, then why wouldn't I? Another threat to this kind of behavior is the threat of the incentive. If I can do the same job elsewhere and get paid more, is simple adaptation. If a given person is receiving a particular incentive over time, that same incentive becomes less attractive. In other words, that person has adapted to that incentive and it's less rewarding than it was before, even though the incentive itself didn't change and neither did the behavior. It should be noted that technically we're including both positive and negative incentives here, but negative incentives kind of edged back towards the territory of compliance. So, if a person is receiving a particular incentive over time, depending on how severe that negative incentive is. Once again, you can see how this is a continuum. The third type of behavior change is identification. This kind of behavior change is behavior associated with something that you identify with. In other words, you may want to do that thing. You may want to be the kind of person that does that thing. It may align with the values that you desire to display to the world. You may want to be the kind of person that does that thing. You may want to be the kind of person that does that thing. You may want to be the kind of person that does that thing. You can think about identification as a signal about what you care about. The final type of behavior change, which is quite similar to the third type, is internalization. Internalization means that the behavior is a fundamental part of your identity. You can see how this overlaps in some ways with the third type, identification, but the critical difference here is that not doing this behavior or cutting this behavior out would be painful, whereas with identification, cutting the behavior out may not be painful, but doing the behavior has some social reward. In other words, you want to do the thing when you're identifying. You must do the thing when you are internalizing. You'll notice that this continuum is essentially the lowest level of buy-in or self-motivation with compliance, all the way up to the highest level of motivation. The highest level of self-buy-in with internalization. Here's the important thing to note. From the outside looking in, somebody performing the behaviors along this spectrum, the behaviors themselves may look exactly the same. Set aside the idea that motivation may improve the quality of some behavior. If a given person participates in exactly the same behavior, it doesn't really change from the outside looking in which type of these behavior changes they are responding to. And for what it's worth, we're not just talking about changes, although that is the critical kind of center of the discussion. We're also just talking about behavior in general, motivations for any kind of behavior. But if your intent is to change someone else's behavior, you should be careful about which of these models you're trying to encourage. The highest level of buy-in is, in theory, the most sustainable kind of behavior. But many times it's functional to use behaviors along this entire continuum. No matter how hard I wish I didn't have to do it, I have to prepare for taxes. This is a compliance behavior that I participate in. There's no sense in trying to make paying taxes a core part of my identity. And so that would be wasted energy, particularly on behalf of, say, the IRS. Many organizational leaders that I've talked to about creating change in their organization, or in particular, creating behavioral change, trying to get their teams to start doing something more consistently, they very often are frustrated that the team members are not doing this out of their own volition. They're frustrated that the team is not doing what they want to do. They're using their intuition to choose what to do. And this frustration leads them to believe that the behavior change requires that level of buy-in, that kind of intuitive response to the environment. But the truth is, this is often a heavy investment. It may simply be that these teammates don't really have any incentive. Or maybe they don't realize that these behaviors are something that they can identify with. Simple adjustments in the behavior change process can be a big help. And I'm going to talk about some of the things that I've talked about in this video. And I'm going to The mid-range of this continuum are likely to be more effective than trying to shoot for the end ranges. In other words, those same executives often believe that the only parts of the continuum that exist are the ends. Either somebody internalizes how they should behave, or we have to force it through some kind of compliance, threats of firing, etc. There is a lot to be gained in exploring the mid-range of buy-in, particularly when it comes to the end-range. The mid-range of the continuum is What kinds of incentives could we provide? Could we improve our incentive system or clarify it so that the incentive system is more effective? Could we be clearer about our values and how this particular work is serving those values? Maybe our engineers will buy in better by identifying with our values and understanding that the work is furthering the values themselves. Instead of sitting back and hoping that your engineers choose the right kinds of behaviors to internalize, it might make sense to explore whether your incentive systems or whether your value systems are effective at all. Maybe you don't have an incentive system. Maybe it's not clear why I should even try to internalize this behavior. Of course, there are things that do fit on those two ends. Taxes. Like we mentioned already. But then on the other end, things like treating our coworkers with kindness and respect. Those are things that you hope your engineers will internalize rather than just telling them that you'll pay them to be kind. Ultimately, behavior change is not a singular simple thing. And there are not just two options. There's a whole continuum of buy-in. I encourage you to explore that continuum as you consider. Consider any behavior change. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. Thank you again to Split for sponsoring today's episode. Head over to split.io slash developer T to get started with your first free feature flags. That's a tongue twister. That's split.io slash developer T. You can get started delivering your software up to 50 times faster with Split. If you enjoyed this episode, if you want to take this conversation further, kind of do the after show with us on developer T, head over to split.io slash developer T. developer T.com slash discord. This is a totally free community. We will always be free. I'm much less active on Twitter these days. Discord is kind of my chosen interaction platform. So please join us over there. We have a book club in that community. We are likely to continue investing more in the discord community and all of the various things that discord enables. I have yet to actually explore that fully. So hopefully this year will be a. A big year of growth in that community. I encourage you to join it so that you're not just listening to this podcast and then wondering how you apply it. You can go come and talk about those strategies, strategies with that community. There is developer T.com slash discord. Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, enjoy your tea. Bye.