Every type of change includes some form of behaviour change. At least I think so, I’m trying to think of one that doesn’t; when change occurs there are things we often need to stop doing, start doing, or do differently.

At one point in history McDonald’s and Disney were top employers for child child psychologists. They wanted to understand children incredibly well so that they could market their products to children as they knew if they got through to children, pester power would win the day and families would spend money in their shops & parks. They brought together people and disciplines who understand children (their behaviours, their development, their mental and emotional triggers) with people and disciplines who were selling the products (designing the experience, the style, the brand look and feel, etc.).

Most public and social organisations I’ve worked with and know about, don’t make this connection. Many organisations have passionate teams of marketers and salespeople trying promote the cause, raise scarce funds, etc. (i.e. trying to bring about a behavioural change in the donor). And they have another group of passionate people who are implementing programmes (i.e. trying to change hygiene practices in a community).

In fact, almost every team in a social organisation is trying to enact change internally or externally – think about it. How often does your finance, HR, procurement, logistics, IT teams want you to follow some new procedure? Strategy teams are all about change. Operations navigate roadblocks every day and wish internal bureaucracy would be different, while also trying to create impact in communities (impact = something different [i.e. change] than what was before).

Weirdly, their usually is a very thick, high invisible wall between the passionate marketers and the rest of the organisation. People like that, don’t do things like this. So we rob ourselves, our organisations, our causes of critical skills available to us if only we think slightly differently. If a burger chain and entertainment company can do it, surely we can.