Behavioral Grooves Podcast

Priming is a technique whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus without conscious guidance or intention. In other words, it’s a subconscious influence on our behavior. And it’s powerful. In this grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss the power of priming and how the socks you wear can influence your day. We discussed how replicability of many studies has been a challenge for several research projects; however, the effects of priming are no less robust. We talked about the amazing research that Gary Latham, PhD and his colleagues conducted on how a watermark on a tip sheet had dramatic effects on the results achieved. Amazing stuff. CONTEST ALERT! If you’d like a free pair of Einstein “Today I am smart!” priming socks, share this episode on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook with: #IWANTSOCKS. We’ll pick randomly to identify 3 winners and we’ll be in touch by the end of the September. Behavioral Grooves 

Goals are as common and as misunderstood as mobile phones. We think we know how to use them, but we don’t get it right every time. And if we were asked to explain how they work, we’d be clueless. In this grooving session, Kurt and Tim discuss the magic of goals and how to best utilize them. We discuss some goal-setting studies – both published and unpublished – and some fundamental reasons why goals are important. We also get into some complementary research on the illusionary progress to goal and the goal gradient theory, both linked to the work of Ran Kivetz, from Columbia University. It’s a quick discussion of some important applications of how to make goals work better for YOU! CONTEST ALERT! And as a special thank-you, we’re going to select a single listener to be our special guest on a future podcast. To let us know you’re interested in being our special guest, use #IWANTTOBEYOURSPECIALGUEST when you forward this episode on LinkedIn, Twitter or Facebook and we’ll select a winner by the end of September.

Ruchir Sehra is an entrepreneur, cardio physiologist, MBA and a curious and caring human being. Our interview with Ruchir was set in the discussion of Resonea, Inc’s new product, Drowzle. This phone-based app analyzes sleep patterns in the comfort of their own homes, without electrodes and invasive cameras – just a microphone.   We found this behavioral approach very interesting and our conversation reflected it. We discussed the behavioral effects of current sleep technology and how making a cpap machine look more like a Darth Vader mask might increase usage because it had some style!   Sadly, sleep apnea is a hub disease for a variety of conditions including obesity and erectile dysfunction and the behavioral implications include poor job performance, absenteeism, ineffective decision making and hazardous driving, among others. Ruchir is focused on helping people with sleep apnea whether they know it or not.  It’s difficult to be an engaged employee if you’re tired all day.   Our discussion with Ruchir offe

Dan Hill, PhD, researcher, author and founder of Sensory Logic, shares his wit, wisdom and insights into behavioral sciences in our interview. Dan's work is in facial coding - a diagnostic methodology that connects emotions to the expressions of the 42 facial muscles. It is a fascinating field and might cause you to think about what you're saying with your face, not just your words. Our conversation flowed from Rembrandt to the Minnesota Timberwolves to Haiku to Happiness ("Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length," according to Woody Allen.) We also discussed how emotions are undervalued in corporations today and how effectively we detect genuine, or disingenuous, emotions in other people's faces. Charles Darwin believed. as Dan noted, that emotions are critical to human survival, otherwise they would have been weeded out through evolution.  Dan has authored 6 books and has two new titles releasing on September 12, 2018. We talked a bit about one of the new books, Famous Faces Decoded, as it is r

April Seifert, PhD considers herself a multi-passionate person. In this episode, our conversation with her covered skydiving, motherhood, data nerdery, implicit bias assessments, gender stereotyping and, of course, digital exhaust analysis. April's dissertation was on gender stereotyping which is what we spent most of our time on, between references to the Millennial Falcon. April offered two key ways we deal with the out-of-context or contradictory stereotype images: 1. We adjust our stereotype to include this new image (which is rare because it's hard) or 2. We claim the image is an exception to the rule. By gum, we humans are fascinating beings! We also talked about some of April's favorite books including Carol Dweck's seminal work Mindset, Martin Seligman's work on positive psychology and Tara Mohr's exciting book, Playing Big. We discussed music and it's important contribution to priming and got into power-woman bands including No Doubt, headed up by Gwen Stefani, and a Scottish synth-pop band named Chu

In this episode on the mysterious world of self-identity and self-schema, we offer 4 tips on how you make the most of your self-identity. 1. Fake it 'till you make it.  2. Insure your self talk is positive and future focused.  3. Create small wins and acknowledge your progress.  4. Get a partner to help keep you on track.  Grooving Sessions are for Kurt and Tim converse about topics that are near and dear to their hearts. Grooving sessions make for short listening and we focus on practical take-aways.  

Kurt and Tim have experience in designing and implementing rewards programs for sales reps, channel partners and loyal customers as well as corporate recognition programs. In this episode, we discuss the not-so-intuitive value of non-cash rewards for a variety of reasons. We serve up research from Dan Ariely, James Heyman, Scott Jeffrey, Ran Kivetz and Richard Thaler. If you have doubts, listen in! If you are a believer but need more cognitive ammunition for your boss, listen in! And if you have stories you'd like to share, drop us a line at www.behavioralgrooves.com. 

Kurt and Tim have decades of experience applying BS (behavioral sciences) in corporate environments (and non-profits) and this episode walks through some tips that YOU can use to apply BS (behavioral sciences) to your workspace. We talk about sales incentives, employee recognition and general ways to get the BS (behavioral science) stuff going at your company. We outline some best practices: the need to start with a business problem, how to convince your boss (and your boss' boss), start small by creating a pilot, measure what is meaningful, and live with the results.  If you have stories to share or questions you would like answered, fill in the form at www.behavioralgrooves.com or drop us a note in your review and we'll plan a follow-up podcast to share. 

This podcast is Part 2 of a 2-part podcast. Our interview with Rob Burnet, founder of Well Told Story in Nairobi, Kenya went so well and so long that we decided to break it into two separate podcasts. Part 2 begins with a Seth Godin story and gets into sociologist James Coleman’s working model of how social change occurs. Often referred to as Coleman’s Boat, Rob brought it up as a way to recognize the power of every individual’s behavior on social change. Rob also detailed some research projects he’s embarked on with Tulane University and Cambridge University and how they’re gathering data from social media posts to measure the change in teenage attitudes toward (unprotected) sex.  We expand the story of the Teaspoon Hustle and discovered that Scotsman living in Nairobi for 25 years still loves The Blues Brothers! Thanks to Well Told Story for giving us permission to use "The Hustler" theme music from Shujazz!

This podcast is Part 1 of a 2-part podcast. Our interview with Rob Burnet, founder of Well Told Story in Nairobi, Kenya went so well and so long that we decided to break it into two separate podcasts. In this episode, Part 1, we tee up the work that Rob did with the Ford Foundation and leading into the creation of Shujazz, the Nairobi-based graphic novel (or comic book). Shujazz means 'hero' in Sheng, the slang spoken by Kenyan youth. Rob shared the challenges he and his team faced in creating ways to improve the lives of the largely disenfranchised population of teenagers in a country where poverty and corruption run high. Shujazz – the hero – was their mythical creation to inspire healthier living. It’s a wonderful story and we end Part 1 of our podcast with the true tale of Winnie, a teenager hustling her own path to becoming bulletproof – a term used to signify she’s practicing safe sex and has a foot firmly planted on the ladder of success. There is no musical grooving session at the end of Part 1 as we

In this episode, we spoke with Michael Ahearne PhD, a professor and researcher at the University of Houston. Mike is an expert in sales incentives, so we talked about the behavioral issues that come to light with – mostly – bad incentive design. Mike’s work with Tom Steenburgh, PhD at the University of Virginia’s Darden School has introduced a new way of thinking about salespeople. This was highlighted in a Harvard Business Review article from July-August 2012 called "What Really Works." These two researchers coined the use of the terms Stars, Core and Laggards to describe salespeople on their performance journey. One of the things we took away from our conversation with Mike was that the emphasis on Stars and Laggards is overshadowing the Core performers – those in the middle 60%. We touched on some big mistakes common to sales incentive design and the importance of measurement. We also talked about the Baseball Hall of Fame, General Colin Powell, and automobile sales.   In our Grooving Session, Kurt and I w

From being a recording engineer at Prince's Paisley Park studios, to playing with the big-hair metal band Slave Raider to founding a successful Agile coaching business called Dev Jam, David Hussman has been forging his way one untraditional step at a time.  Our interview with David quickly pegged him as the 'accidental behavioral scientist' and that played well throughout the discussion. We talked about chaos monkeys, constructionism, how important it is for Neil Young to know G-C-D chords (and to know what to do with them) and to do things that focus our attention on things that make people smile.  Unlike pies and cakes, software development is never done. The behavioral aspects of how people interact with software - from the photo app on your phone to the way GPS could alert you gas stations nearby when you're low on fuel (connecting to your car's fuel system) or eateries (connecting your journey to the time of day) - need to be better constructed for the world we live in. Hendrix vs. Van Halen - who would

Dr. Christina Gravert is a Post-Doc at the University of Gothenburg and Chief Behavioral Economist of Impactfully, a behavioral science consultancy. We talked to her from Gothenburg, Sweden, and we had a very interesting conversation about nudging. Christina has worked closely with Nobel laureate Richard Thaler and we thought she'd be a good one to talk to about nudging.  Our discussion began by defining a nudge versus other policy or incentive decisions. We talked about how nudges came about, in part, because Richard Thaler started recording anomalies he witnessed in real-life behavior and how those behaviors were often at odds with what classical economic theories would have predicted.   We also talked about the evolving definition of Economic Utility and how it has morphed by the impact of behavioral economics.  We also discussed utility functions in broader terms than simply time or financial utility. Although these are not new to the behavioral sciences, we found gravity in how our feelings of right and

In this episode, we spoke to Mark Horwitch, Partner for Co-Creation ~ Flexibility ~ Openness ~ Vision at Bain & Company about his remarkable new leadership model developed at Bain. Leaders at Bain selected Mark to lead a team to develop a new leadership model with specific emphasis on improving employee retention and engagement.  He and his team examined thousands of leadership models in order to hone in on 32 distinct characteristics that they found drove leadership effectiveness. They discovered that leaders don't need to demonstrate all 32 characteristics to be effective. With just 4 of them, the leader can be seen as a truly inspirational.  The model can be found here or at www.bainleadership.com/leadership-model/. We discussed whether the Peter Drucker model for management is dead and Mark’s comments might surprise you.  Of course, we talked about music and discovered that the KINKS is one of his favorite bands – a group not known for being shy about their dispositions. Neither is Mark. Enjoy the dis

When Kurt and Tim founded the Behavioral Grooves, we wanted to glean insights into the applications of behavioral sciences from world-renowned researchers and practitioners. So far, so good! In this shorter episode, rather than interviewing a guest, we converse with each other about a topic near and dear to Kurt's heart: The 4 Drive Model. We discuss Lawrence & Nohria's development of the 4 Drive Model and how it's morphed over the years, how the model remained below the radar of corporate applications until a Harvard Business Review article appeared in 2008. In this 31-minute discussion about the 4 Drive Model, you can learn about how it's been modified since it was first conceived and how it's being applied to organizational effectiveness, sales incentive design and employee engagement. 

This episode’s guest is Kyle Simenson, a marketing consultant who noted that ‘When marketing is good, you can’t see it.’ His comment instantly brought questions of malevolent and benevolent use of marketing data along with intention and the lines marketers draw when considering the uses of behavioral sciences. Kyle’s work in digital strategy is particularly relevant in a world where big data can generate highly-tailored messages and can incorporate nudges that appeal to the unconscious mind of the customers. We talked about, on some levels, marketing is entirely behavioral. POC and SEM. Automation tools that observe the dynamics of human behavior. We discussed books from “Predictably Irrational” to the “Undoing Project” to Tim Ferriss’ book, “Tribe of Mentors” and they inspire Kyle to deliver insights to his clients. Our conversation also uncovered that Kyle is a not-so-in-the-closet Rolling Stones fan and “Tumbling Dice” would be his theme song. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we did recording it.

When we started our conversation with Silke Brittain by talking about her thrill-seeking nature and her background in gymnastics, we couldn't have predicted the deep conversation about influence mapping inside organizations. Silke is the managing director at Clearvoice.agency based in the UK and works with corporations to help them map communication pathways to determine ways to change the cultures of organizations.  She shared research that 3% of the people in an organization account for as much as 85% of the organization's change, all through informal influence. Her rigorous approach to analyzing situations, developing solutions based on informal communication, and creating influence maps inspired us to want to return to Clearvoice.agency's projects in the future.  Silke revealed that her theme song would be "We Are The Champions" by Queen, a UK band known for its subtle and informal influence on the world! Tim noted in the Grooving Session that one of his favorite UK bands is Tankus The Henge, led by front

Bernardo Nunes, PhD believes that applying behavioral sciences to startups is the fastest way to get entrepreneurs up and running in a fast-changing world. At Growth Academy in Amsterdam, the students work in small teams over three months to build a company with the help of sophisticated machine learning tools as well as knowledgeable coaches and teachers.  In our conversation with Bernardo, we spoke at length about the ethics and regulations surrounding data privacy, how an article in The New York Times featuring David Laibson, PhD got Bernardo started down this path and how Frank Zappa's 3-song "Hot Rats" album would be his go-to for desert island listening. We had an important discussion about the interplay between policy and marketing and how they influence each other.  There is some background noise occasionally but we don't think it inhibits the quality of the interview. We hope you enjoy it. Music: Theme song "Everywhere You Go" by Tim Houlihan and transitional music "Transfiguration" by Jon James. Use

"One begins with a judgment and ends with a judgment, and the purpose of facts and figures is to come in between them is to make the one you end with more accurate." This wise comment came from the grand-dad of Kal Turnbull, the founder of Change My View in the Reddit community.  In this interview, Kal shares his discoveries with a community of over 520,000 people willing to engage in civil discourse about views they currently don't buy into. The conversation began with a definition of Fisking (it's not dirty!) and when to consider using it and when not to. Called by Elon Musk as the "most civil place on the web," Kal's community exchanges ideas in a way unlike anywhere else in our world. Kal noted that good conversations on opposing views require (1) Tone that avoids shame and accusation, (2) a general sense of dispassion (although passion is not a bad thing overall), and (3) Data to support the argument. Ultimately, Kal cites Socrates as the great example of engaging someone in a view-changing discussion. 

Charlotte Blank, Chief Behavioral Officer at Maritz, says her job is 'selling science.' In this interview, held immediately before our meetup gathering in Minneapolis in February 2018, Charlotte describes research she conducted with Leslie John, Tami Kim, and Kate Barasz to create a recent HBR article titled "Ads That Don't Overstep." Their work yielded two very simple and important messages about communication: 1. Don't talk behind someone's back,  2. Don't make assumptions. In the world of big data, machine learning and algorithm-driven communication, marketers need to pay close attention to these. An early part of our discussion was on Charlotte's fascination with Franz DeWaal's work with monkeys, bonobos and the mysterious octopus! This led to a discussion about fairness as a key principle in program design and if you're not familiar with DeWaal's seminal work with capuchin monkeys, check it out here.  We discussed the now-famous Target advertising case where the company promoted pregnancy-related product