Faisal Naru is currently the Executive Director of the Policy Innovation Centre at the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors. Faisal formerly worked at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), as Head of Strategic Management and Coordination and prior to this position, he founded the OECD work on Behavioural Insights (BI) and also worked on regulatory policy. Faisal is responsible for several publications and guidelines and is also a former member of the UK Cabinet Office, Chief Adviser to the Government of Vietnam and advisory to numerous Government leaders on reform and improvements. He's co-founder of The European Nudge Network, on the Board of Trustees of Nudge Lebanon, and serves on a number of International Committees. We asked Faisal for his advice on how to apply BI in government.
Is there a role for BI work in the Global South?
Due to its novelty, BI advisory services are in popular demand. Faisal began guiding governments and regulatory agencies at a local and national level – he has since shifted focus and now helps international organisations and other institutions set up BI units and initiatives. In our interview, he outlined a few key tips on how to be most successful when applying BI, especially when moving in unfamiliar and unpredictable contexts, such as those that can be present in the Global South.
It is understandable that when thinking about applying BI in the developing world, some may be concerned by potential limitations caused by external constraints, such as poor physical infrastructure or low digital penetration. However, Faisal’s opinion is the contrary:
“I wouldn’t necessarily see them as constraints, I’d just say that they’re the external contexts. In fact, what you could argue is that, in some of those contexts, the scope to apply behavioural insights is even greater and there could actually be more potential opportunities.”
The developing world can seem daunting from the outside, but if you look deeper, you realise the abundance of opportunity. Faisal proposes if you apply this same level of curiosity and detail-orientation to the way you go about applying BI and generate a deep understanding of what you’re working with, you will be a lot more successful in driving behaviour change. With this in mind, let’s launch into Faisal’s advice on how to engender this approach.
HOW CAN BI BE APPLIED MOST EFFECTIVELY?
Understand your tools and the context you’re applying them in ...
Faisal’s first piece of advice to practitioners is to develop both an understanding of the broad methodology and tools at their disposal, coupled with the context of the people we want to change the behaviours of: “RCTs [randomised control trials] might be the gold standard and they are one way of doing things, but they aren’t necessarily the only one.”
Nudging, for example, is another tool that should be used but with an understanding of its constraints under certain contexts. That is to say, nudging can only get you so far in finance education before structural issues need to be addressed. For instance, telling people about the risks of loan sharks has its limits: “That’s completely void of their context. If they’re about to get kicked out of their apartment, have children and not enough money to eat [nudging may help but it won’t solve the underlying issues and therefore may not be effective]”. But most behavioural scientists and practitioners already carry this caution, it is rather those who are unfamiliar who may expect nudging to be a silver bullet – it is not and nobody in the field has said it is.
Faisal explained the value in starting by (1) understanding the problem, including why people are making their current decisions, and then (2) determining which methodology will generate behaviour change. “If you start to think about BI in relation to decision-making, then there’s a bunch of different ways that you can start to use BI, such as understanding why people are making decisions in those contexts.”
As an addition to traditional nudging, Faisal encouraged practitioners to think about changing the broader framework and the choices that people have, by creating an environment for decision-making. For example, the UK Government switched the default for pension schemes from opt-in to one in which workers are automatically enrolled (opt-out), which led to millions of people in the UK beginning to save for retirement. Taking the UK pension scheme as an example, once practitioners identified the problem was not that people didn't want to save, but instead, that they simply suffered from decision inertia, they were able to determine that changing the default was the best tool to apply. However, Faisal acknowledges that the feasibility of these methods is entirely dependent on the environment you're in.
Understand the context of the nudgers
While it has been widely acknowledged that the context of the population being targeted matters, what is less discussed is that context matters for those carrying out the behaviour change work. To most effectively apply BI, Faisal thinks this needs to change:
“I think this is where there’s been issues in the BI community and reflecting on conversations I have with BI units globally, a lesson is that just simply parachuting in a behavioural scientist to do the work for you doesn’t always work... If they don’t understand the business and they’re not actually plugged into the existing networks of how to make change happen and how to make change stick, then they will always have an uphill struggle.”
Faisal provides the example of applying a behavioural perspective to health issues in the Ministry of Health. He suggests that immersing BI practitioners in the day-to-day functions of the Ministry of Health “is much more powerful and, longer-term, [and] helps you to bridge a bunch of gaps.” He explained that it is only natural for Ministry officials to be sceptical when external figures try to overhaul ways of working that they’ve been following for many years, and they begin to think: “Are you telling me that the last ten years of my career are a waste of time and I’ve been getting everything wrong?”
So, how do we better address the unique contexts of those trying to make change happen? With sensitivity and with time, Faisal reassured us that the BI practitioners and recipients will better understand each other: “In many of the conversations that I’m having with some of these behavioural units, it’s only now after being part of government for a while that they’re beginning to get over some of those initial barriers.” When this happens, we can work towards a common goal.
HOW CAN BI PRACTITIONERS LEARN FROM EACH OTHER?
Improving documentation of projects
In the Global South, Faisal reported that when it comes to moving towards understanding and utilising a wider set of BI methodologies and tools, “there are things happening, but it hasn’t necessarily been captured”. Additionally, the need for practitioners to understand the context they’re working in is underrepresented in the literature. We can take from this that we don't need a one size fits all approach to how you incorporate BI into an organisation. Instead, what we need are more case studies that enable lessons to be shared from practitioners' perspectives.
Indeed, Faisal highlights the benefits of sound documentation and data collection as this will start to give evidence to issues and problems, where it didn’t exist before. As lessons are shared, practitioners will also start to question the tools they automatically turn to and will better understand the powers of their repertoire. In contexts where there is currently no rich history of BI work and resources are very scarce, this step becomes even more crucial and valuable.
The question, then, is around how to share the lessons once documented. Faisal drew attention to the stumbling block around the journal bias that exists in the industry, in which not all experiments are published depending on the outcome of a study. As a result, he believes there’s a need to find ways to get the stories out there other than in traditional journals – since, despite the differing factor of context, we are similar in many ways and can share innovative solutions:
"I think the surprising thing that people will probably realise is that actually... it's quite similar... The differing factor here is around the context, but I think a lot of the things that people are finding elsewhere, the kind of solutions that are coming up are very innovative and I think having that [sharing of stories] for the rest of the community is quite important."
However, until now there has been limited sharing of these lessons. “When it does happen [sharing of BI information] and this knowledge is shared wider ... good people win Nobel prizes for their foundational work.” We need to develop more avenues for lesson sharing. In our article covering Part 2 to Dilip Soman's interview, the need for lesson sharing is similarly addressed. Dilip provides his suggestions such as hosting global conferences between the Global North and South, in order to deliver ground-breaking behavioural change work.
The power of shared stories
To conclude, the sharing of lessons is crucial in this novel field as it creates a feedback loop whereby new contexts and new tools are spread, improving the effective application of future BI work. Plus, who doesn't love a good story?