From initial pilot to business growth, Scotland
In this chapter, we spell out a mnemonic that helps you take behavioural science from a pilot to a company wide programme of activity over a number of years.
It's relatively simple to use nudges within a business, but to reap the benefits of behavioural science it needs to be baked into propositions from the ground up. This can be challenging if behavioural science is a new concept for your business.
For support on this journey, climb the P-R-O-O-F-I-N-G ladder: Pilot, Recognition, Operationalise, Organisational-ise, Future state, In-house, Normalise, and Growth.
And it was this mnemonic that helped Aegon to successfully build behavioural science into their organisation, transforming everything from customer communications to call centre scripts. Organisations who ascend the rungs of the PROOFING ladder will outperform those who haven’t, giving you the competitive edge.
We saw in Chapter 8 that the first run on the ladder is critical, so prioritise getting your first statistically significant proof point. For those with no statistics skills, here's a helpful flow chart to help you decide which statistical test is best for your experiment:
And here's an interactive version:
You can discover more about the early Pilot work Cowry Consulting conducted for Aegon in this video:
Be methodical –- however tempting it is to skip rungs – don’t. By methodically climbing one rung at a time you can build a strong path to embedding behavioural science at scale within your organisation.
It may take time and patience, but your will reap the rewards and differentiate yourselves from your competitors.
