The Art and Science of Behavioral Change: Insights from Bri Williams
Announcer: Brainy Business podcast explores the psychology of why people buy.
Melina Palmer: Welcome to episode 575 of the Brainy Business, Understanding the Psychology of why People Buy.
Melina Palmer: In today’s episode, I’m excited to introduce you to Bri Williams. Ready? Let’s get started.
Bri Williams: 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.
Announcer: Now, here’s your host, Melina Palmer.
Beyond the Foundations: The Art of Application
Melina Palmer: Hello. Hello everyone. My name is Melina Palmer and I want to welcome you to the Brainy Business Podcast.
Melina Palmer: One of the biggest misconceptions about behavioral science is that once you know the principles, the hard part is over. But of course, as with so many things, that’s not really how it works.
Melina Palmer: Knowing about framing, scarcity, loss aversion, social proof, and all the rest is helpful, of course, but there’s a reason we call those our foundations. The real magic is when you combine the science with some art—that experimentation and testing and really digging into these concepts in action so you know when to use what, how ideas fit together and how to make what you’re trying to say or do easier for someone to actually understand and act on.
Melina Palmer: And that’s where this stuff can really shine. And that’s where so many people get stuck. People tend to want the silver bullet, the one perfect tactic, or the simple answer that works every time. I, of course, understand how their wiring will make this the case, so it isn’t too much of a surprise.
Melina Palmer: But deciding that this matters enough to put in the effort into creating this sort of behavioral experimentation habit is key if you want to get continued impact from this in your business. Because real behavioral change is not about grabbing a random concept off the shelf and hoping it works.
Melina Palmer: It’s about clarity. You need to ask consistent questions. Some of my favorites that I use with my clients are: Who are you talking to? What do you want them to do? What are they doing instead? And how do you make your message resonate in a way that feels useful, memorable, and easy to act on?
Melina Palmer: As we dig into applying behavioral economics today, I’m joined by Bri Williams. She’s a behavioral strategist, speaker, consultant, and author whose work helps individuals and organizations apply behavioral science in practical, creative, and effective ways.
Melina Palmer: In today’s conversation, we talk about her book and the many models, frameworks, and visual tools she’s developed over the years to help make behavioral science easier to access and use in the real world.
Melina Palmer: As you listen, consider some of the areas where you would like to have the most impact in your business. Where would it be worth it to start applying behavioral science next? Having that in mind as you hear a bit about the models can help shape your thinking and get you that much closer to application really quickly.
Melina Palmer: Before we get into the conversation, I want to be sure you know that there are links in the show notes for my top related past episodes and books, ways to get in touch and more. It’s all within the app you’re listening to and at thebrainybusiness.com/575.
Meeting at NudgeStock and Making Science Fun
Melina Palmer: Now let’s jump right in. Bri Williams, welcome to the Brainy Business podcast.
Bri Williams: Absolute pleasure to be with you, Melina. Yay.
Melina Palmer: Well, so, we just met in person. I’m sure I mentioned this a little bit in the intro, but we just met in person in your neck of the woods in Australia, when I was down there for an amazing event and had this opportunity to say, like, we have known of each other for a very long time and I can’t believe we hadn’t ever actually talked, even in like email or like LinkedIn chats or whatever really before this event. So I’m so glad that we now know each other in real life and otherwise.
Bri Williams: It’s been a long time coming and yes, we have lots to talk about because I think our careers have shared a lot in what we’ve discovered and what we’re putting out into the world. So, yeah, I’m really looking forward to what we have to kick around here.
Melina Palmer: Yes. And you have been on my list of people I should reach out to about being on the show forever. I most actively remember—so you spoke at NudgeStock. Was it in 2021 or 2020? Maybe 20?
Bri Williams: Look, well, I think it could have been 2020. It certainly was the first virtual one that they did.
Melina Palmer: Then it was 2020. Oh, so you were supposed to be… but so how was that then? So if you were supposed to be at the one that would have been like the small thing, and then it’s like, just kidding, like 300,000 people are going to watch this. Like, did that end up being like a win or…?
Bri Williams: Sadly, I don’t think I was going to be on the main stage. It was more a question of Ogilvy having to go, “Oh, how are we going to recalibrate in this virtual world? We now have to fill out a program and speak to whoever is around in our circle.”
Bri Williams: And what I loved about that, I had the opportunity because of time zones to pre-record mine. So that actually played into my favor because it meant that I had a 10-minute slot but I could pre-record and I could edit. I mean, I look back at the presentation now and think how terrible it was in terms of the clumsy edits. But that just is a marker of progress made in the last six years.
Bri Williams: But yeah, I think I really had some fun with it and I think that really resonated with people because I was wearing silly hats and, you know, I started the presentation with a bit of a funny device. I won’t tell people what it is because hopefully it will pique their interest. But it really… yeah, people seem to really enjoy it and I love the combination—when I’m an audience member, let alone as a presenter—of combining fun or entertainment with the education.
Bri Williams: I don’t think particularly with a topic like behavioral science, we have to be dry. We don’t have to be up and down and serious. Although the science is serious, how it is used in our lives doesn’t have to necessarily be.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, I mean humans like fun, right? And games and things. I feel like I will always appreciate adding the fun element. People like the whimsy and silliness and it helps us to remember things and to actually be engaged. There’s a lot of boring stuff in the world. Why should we have to be part of it?
Bri Williams: Well, my background actually… I studied accountancy.
Melina Palmer: Right. So I have to talk about boring? No, I’m just kidding. I know we have plenty of accountants that listen.
Bri Williams: Well, that was the segue because I studied psychology and accountancy as a double degree, but certainly accountancy had this reputation of being completely dull. And I’d go to a lot of conferences as an accountant and later as a presenter of behavioral science to accountants. My frustration is: if you think your topic’s boring, guess what? People will find your topic boring.
Bri Williams: Accounting doesn’t have to be boring. No topic has to be boring. And you’re absolutely right. First and foremost, people want to be entertained. And particularly these days when it’s harder to cut through with our communications—whether we’re doing a TikTok, or whether we’re crafting a marketing campaign, or whether we’re trying to pitch for new clients or talk to our internal customers—people fundamentally want to be entertained and we need to keep that in mind.
Bri Williams: I actually recently looked up the definition of entertainment because whilst I thought it was about sort of the superficial, keeping people light… to “entertain,” I’ve forgotten the particulars of the definition, but it was keeping people in the right frame of mind. And I think if we take that as our lesson, it’s like: to entertain someone is to frame it in a way that emotionally resonates and gets them in the right frame of mind to hear our message.
Melina Palmer: Oh, yeah, okay. I will be looking that up after this and I’m sure everyone listening is going to go check that out as well. Maybe I’ll have it in the outro. We’ll see. But with that, it’s not the definition we would come up with if we don’t work in that space, but it’s such an important one.
Melina Palmer: Like the definition of culture, when you get into “cultivating”—that has definitely been lost quite a bit when in internal employee culture, it’s like a word that just got attached to it at some point and isn’t thinking about that nurturing or cultivating in so many places. I think people are trying to bring it back into their spaces, thank goodness, but the idea kind of lost its way for a long time.
Bri Williams: I love that. Going back to the derivation of the word. I’d not heard of culture being from cultivate, and it makes so much sense, doesn’t it? And sometimes when you’re trying to brainstorm or come up with a new idea, or if you’re feeling a bit flat about a particular topic, as funny as it sounds, going back to those basics can open up a whole array of new meaning and new levers that you can pull. So I think, yeah, that’s a nice little tip.
Melina Palmer: Absolutely.
Framing Trust and Using Visuals
Melina Palmer: And I think just in the framing piece—I know you love framing too. It’s one of my very favorite aspects and concepts from the field. I tell people, as you’re looking to find that experience, that right frame of mind, think about the word that it might be and then go do an image search and see what comes up. It might not be what you think it’s going to be, right?
Melina Palmer: I like to use the example of “trust.” If you search for trust, what does trust actually look like? It can be so many different things. In one case it’s a person throwing a kid in the air. Then it’s trust falls, or jumping out of a plane, or ants walking across something. Trust can be all those things.
Melina Palmer: But if I don’t know what you’re thinking about, and you don’t know how I’m thinking about it, we have totally different perspectives. If you think that trust is like a fabric: for one person it might be fuzzy fleece because it’s warm and safe. The next person says it’s like lace because if you pull one thread it comes apart. Someone says it’s mesh because you can see through it. Someone else says it’s like a wetsuit because I can go to the depths and I have full trust.
Bri Williams: Right?
Melina Palmer: But if you talk in lace terms to a wetsuit person, it’s not going to match. So even defining the words that we think we know is important. If I’m going to use that metaphor in my communication, like “for us, it’s about building this trust and it’s like a wetsuit, we can go to the depths together,” even if you’re naturally a mesh or a fleece person, you “get it” and you can be on board with my metaphor.
Melina Palmer: But I had to do the work to understand what I want you to think and then put that into the way I’m going to talk about it and have the right visuals and lead-ups. The magic is in the edit of making that happen so we’re all on the same page.
Bri Williams: Yeah. And I think what you’re talking about is such an important technique because often you would have talked a lot about the difference between say and do—the intention gap. One of the frustrations when we’re trying to understand other people is we have a bias towards listening. We want to ask them questions and listen to their answers.
Bri Williams: Certainly, in my background in product management, we did this all the time. We did commissioned focus groups and market research and we listened to our customers, and what they told us didn’t prove to be true.
Bri Williams: But what you’ve talked about there—whether it’s called a card sort or some other similar technique—having images that you get people to talk about to extract the deeper metaphor or meaning, that’s where you can actually have very interesting and meaningful discussions. You’re getting to the core psychology of what they’re trying to articulate as opposed to just a question and answer session where you get a constructed memory, a justification, or a rationalization. Using visuals to extract meaning is very, very rich as a form of understanding other people.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, absolutely. And knowing all the “why” underneath and how we’re thinking—all of those aspects are so important when it comes to applying these things. Knowing the concepts is an important piece of the puzzle, but I’ve always really loved the mix of art and science in the application.
Melina Palmer: It’s not just enough to know what scarcity is or that loss aversion exists. Those things can work together. How might we frame it? What if we try this? Should we throw in an anchor? You start to understand, but what are we trying to actually do and who are we talking to? The context makes such an impact.
Melina Palmer: In general, people tend to look for the “just tell me what to do” silver bullet. If I pull this lever or push that button, it will give me the same result every time. And as with most things in life, behavioral science messaging just doesn’t really work that way either.
The 50 Models: Making Behavioral Science Accessible
Bri Williams: Yeah, I find that you’ve hit upon something really interesting which is—and particularly I find it in small business—people want immediate and simple answers. When you, as someone in behavioral science, says “well, it depends,” there’s a bit of frustration about that.
Bri Williams: Getting to that deeper why is key. In my work, and yours is probably similar, it’s: “What’s the behavioral objective? What behavior are we seeking to drive?” Let’s start from there because oftentimes we don’t. We see an exciting laundry list of behavioral principles and think, “How can I use scarcity?”
Melina Palmer: Well, you’re already…
Bri Williams: You see it all around in retail—the “carpet store is closing down” or the “limited offer.” We see these principles floating around all the time. But then it’s about how do you integrate them or coalesce them around what you’re trying to achieve. I know it sounds simple, but oftentimes we skip that very question: What do we actually want them to do?
Melina Palmer: Right. Yes. And it is funny. Like you said, we do a lot of similar work with clients. When I say, “So who are you talking to? What do you want them to do? Let’s start there,” it seems surface level. People think, “Oh, we know that, this is silly.” And then it’s like, “So write it down.” “No, I don’t want to write it down.” But then we can dig in, and there’s a lot of value that comes when you identify those and get specific.
Melina Palmer: What I think is so interesting is that so often organizations or consultants try to come up with one framework—like COM-B or EAST—and say “we can always use this thing.” I have my “It’s Not About the Cookie” framework. You have a main one, and then you went like gangbusters on Bri’s 705 frameworks—no, not quite—but share a little bit about that.
Melina Palmer: I was impressed beyond words and fascinated. Most of us come up with a few because of how long it would take to make 50 as you have. So, first, giant kudos. And then, can you share a little bit about why you felt the need to do more than one or three or five?
Bri Williams: I’m going to take you way behind the scenes of the book. How it started… there’s a book in the market called The Decision Book: 50 Models for Strategic Thinking. I picked it up in an airport and it had 50 models using, for instance, the SWOT analysis or Porter’s Five Forces. It was a repository of those across different authors and it became a bestseller.
Bri Williams: I was looking at it thinking, “This seems pretty perfunctory. I’ve seen a lot of these models and I’m surprised that just having them in one book made it an international bestseller.” But I realized there’s something that resonates with people about this. What would it look like if I did the same for behavioral science?
Bri Williams: I had probably half a dozen models that I had developed through my speaking and client work mainly as a way to understand behavioral science myself and articulate it to others. So I set myself a task of writing the book. I didn’t necessarily have 50 in mind, but the closer I got to 50, it just became a number—an anchor point.
Bri Williams: I would say if you pressed me, some of them aren’t models; they’re more philosophies. One of them is “Carry your customers’ bags” or the “Porter Principle” as I call it. The harder you make it for people to work with you, the less likely they are to do it. So how can you make their load lighter?
Bri Williams: What do I mean by that? It’s making sure you’re providing them the information they need rather than them having to ask you. Whether it’s a procurement process, or sound bites they can use with their stakeholders, or pre-recording a welcome video so they can see what you’re about—it’s trying to anticipate their needs.
Bri Williams: So not all of the models are quadrants or triangles. Some are principles. I’ve been doing this since 2011, so I have more experience than someone that might pick up the book and just want an understanding of how to think about a problem. Each model only has two to four pages. It’s very short and sweet because I want people to dive in, get a feel for it, and then be able to use it.
Melina Palmer: Right. And a full background on 50 models would be a very different book. That scannable aspect—”I see it, I get how I might use it, I understand a quick application”—is great. It has good “flip-ability” to it. And the choice architecture of how you sorted these 50 items… if they had been in alphabetical order, that would not be useful.
Visual Learning and the Zorro Technique
Melina Palmer: So how did you go about grouping those into categories? Did you start with five areas most people need, or did they just start fitting together?
Bri Williams: That was part of the trauma of writing the book, Melina! It was a very organic process. I didn’t sit down and say “I’m going to have 10 in this category and two in another.” It was: “What do I have? What areas have I covered? What do I think would have application?”
Bri Williams: So there’s internal communications, external customer focus, and influencing behavior more generally. As you know, the tricky thing is that everything is about behavior change. All roads lead back to how you are going to influence behavior to be different. That can be through communications or environmental design.
Bri Williams: Trying to subcategorize became tricky, but there’s a lot of cross-referencing because you might think about an internal customer for one scenario but realize you could apply it in a different context. I’ve just tried to make my thinking around influence accessible to the reader.
Melina Palmer: One thing I really appreciate is that the table of contents shows a little mock-up of each one. That is so nice for how we remember things. Instead of just the name, you can say, “Oh, it’s the one shaped like a Z,” or “the frog with the lily pad.” Having that visual reference all together is really nice.
Bri Williams: You’ve struck up on something I haven’t mentioned regarding the design of the book. I worked as a publisher before I had my own consultancy. I was a publisher of human resource books. We had a strong accounting market and a less strong human resources market.
Bri Williams: At the time, everything was designed around writing in the same way, whether someone was an accountant or an HR practitioner. What I tried to do was say: not everyone absorbs information in the same way. Accounting resources were very linear and text-dense. I hypothesized that HR practitioners might not find that style as interesting.
Bri Williams: I introduced much more visual design. I used metaphors—like a little pull-out poster of a bridge with a river under it. Visual learners were more likely to access that book over a competitor’s that looked like an accounting book. So the driver of this book was visual elements. In fact, the first working title was Sketchy Behavior. If we had to sketch behavior, what would it look like?
Melina Palmer: Amazing. Well, as we are almost ready to close out the conversation—because we know we could talk forever—do you have a couple other models you want to share as a little sampler?
Bri Williams: Well, the Zorro technique really resonates with people. It’s for when you are in discussion with customers, or you can do this work yourself. It’s four questions that follow the shape of the letter Z.
Bri Williams: Question 1: What’s good about now? (Why shouldn’t we change?) Bri Williams: Question 2: What’s not so great about now? (Why should we change?)
Bri Williams: By asking those two, you get both why people resist change and you start to build an appetite for it by showing the cracks. Then questions 3 and 4 are about imagining the new world.
Bri Williams: Question 3: if we did change, what concerns might you have? (This allows you as a leader to mitigate those concerns.) Bri Williams: Question 4: if we were to change, what’s the benefit?
Bri Williams: This leaves them on a high point, thinking about how great the new world would be. I use the Zorro technique a lot in workshops to set an appetite for learning behavioral science.
Melina Palmer: I love that. So often people jump into “what’s broken?” and try to attack it. But by celebrating what’s going well first, you lower defensiveness and psychological reactance. People feel more open to participate when you ease into it.
Bri Williams: Very much. That reminds me of another model. Often we think about people moving “towards” something, like a new process. In actual fact, most of the work is getting them to move “away” from what they’re doing.
Bri Williams: Even in our personal lives, if we want a new exercise behavior, we have to first move away from sitting on the couch. We need to play both sides of the equation. Rather than just talking about how great a new software is, talk about the downsides of the old way—the bugs or how it’s not keeping up with competitors. We have to concentrate on what people are moving away from.
Melina Palmer: Yeah, and to do anything, we typically have to stop doing at least one other thing. Identifying that is the art piece. For one person, it’s the couch. For another, it’s staying late at work and missing the exercise break. For someone else, it’s ordering out instead of cooking.
Melina Palmer: Those are different challenges to “undo.” We might have different campaigns for the busy professional versus the person stuck on TikTok.
Bri Williams: Perfect. In my work, the question is “What do you want them to do?” My follow-up is “What are they doing instead?” That unearths the delta. These questions sound simple, but they are vital for clarity. That’s where you get economies and efficiencies—you aren’t targeting everyone; you’re targeting a select group. That’s the best bang for your buck.
Closing Thoughts and How to Connect
Melina Palmer: Yeah, as opposed to “we want to talk to everyone, do everything, spend no money, and be a household name.”
Bri Williams: We just want the silver bullet! But it doesn’t have to be complicated. A lot of the work we do is to make it less complicated by asking the right questions and being clear on what we’re not doing.
Bri Williams: It’s like the negative space in art. The negative space makes the message pop. In an email, it’s not only what we write, but what we don’t write so we don’t bulk it out. My presentations could be hours long, but the work is curating it so I’m not overwhelming people. Clarity is doing less rather than more.
Melina Palmer: In the spirit of less rather than more, we shall leave it here. For everyone who is excited to follow you and get the book, what are the best paths for them?
Bri Williams: Briwilliams.com is my website. I invite you to pop on there. I do a free three-times-a-week newsletter, and through that, you can access free office hours with me. I am also relatively prolific on LinkedIn. Briwilliams.com is where you will find all things Bri.
Melina Palmer: Amazing. We’ll have links in the show notes. Thank you again, Bri, for joining me. It was delightful.
Bri Williams: Overdue and an absolute pleasure. Thanks, Melina.
Melina Palmer: Thank you again to Bri Williams for joining me. Bri and I are such kindred spirits. We’ve bonded over helping people apply behavioral economics consistently to get past biases like the intention-action gap.
Melina Palmer: So many people get caught up in the collection of concepts—a sort of “bike-shedding” productive procrastination. But at some point, you need to break free and start applying it. That’s why I work with clients on “Find Your Five”—identifying the five key concepts most useful for your team right now.
Melina Palmer: If you want to start being more brainy in your business, visit thebrainybusiness.com/contact. I can’t wait to hear from you. Come share what stood out for you on social media; you’ll find me as @thebrainybiz and Melina Palmer on LinkedIn.
Melina Palmer: Until next time, remember to be thoughtful.
Announcer: 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.
