Nudge: helping people to make better decisions
How behavioural nudges lead to improved decision-making and more strategic alignment within your organisation
Executing strategy effectively is one of the five most common challenges facing global leaders, according to London Business School’s (LBS) inaugural Leadership Institute survey. Most senior managers struggle to align their organisations’ daily activities and top-line strategic goals. Nevertheless, there are various ways to address this, one being to steer their employees, customers and shareholders to make better decisions.
In this podcast, Lisa Shu, Assistant Professor of Organisational Behaviour at LBS, explains how behavioural nudges – where companies make subtle changes that positively influence people’s behaviour – can help businesses achieve their objectives (listen to the podcast for more insight).
“My research into behavioural nudges shows that organisations are architects of their employees, customers and shareholders’ decision-making. Organisations nudge people and steer them in their everyday choices. As ‘choice architects’, they can better shape their business outcomes by establishing a greater alignment between strategy and the day-to-day.”
Dr Shu’s conversation with Vyla Rollins, Executive Director of the Leadership Institute, sheds light on the subtle changes organisations can make to positively influence people’s decision-making. One example is the approach taken by the British government to encourage more employees to take out pensions. The state introduced a new policy in 2012 where companies had to automatically enrol staff on their workplace pension scheme.
It had the desired effect: the number of people with pensions climbed from two million to seven million in four years. While employees could opt out, it seems many were happy to pay into a pension set up by their company.
This podcast – focusing on how behavioural nudges can lead to more effective strategy execution – is the first in a series of five exploring the five key challenges facing today’s senior executives. In our next episode, Dan Cable, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at LBS, discusses how you can implement lasting change in your company.
