SECTION 1: NAVIGATION
CHAPTER 15 - VALUES ARE BEDROCK
Triggering the right mental shortcuts and biases can make anyone take a decision.
We are all decision-makers, but none of us are 100% rational. On average we make more than 35,000 decisions every day.* Our brains use thinking styles and develop mental shortcuts and biases to reduce the amount of deep thinking we do and to make our lives livable. These become habits that we live by:
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Thinking styles: Thinking fast (instinctive, emotional) and thinking slow (more deliberative and more logical).* Our aim in influencing is to trigger our target to take a fast decision, and minimize slow thinking including weighing up the cost-benefit or probabilities around decisions and actions.**
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Mental shortcuts: We develop mental shortcuts to reduce complexity and make decisions quickly. They are subject to internal factors (emotions, intuition, memory related to the decision), and external factors (type of choices available, competing objectives, culture around the decision).
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Bias: An illogical discrimination between two pieces of data.
We also learn thinking styles, shortcuts and biases from family, friends, colleagues and even enemies. Polynesian navigators passed down the wisdom to track the rise, fall and location of the sun and stars. They also learned to take land-dwelling birds with them on ocean journeys. The navigator would release the birds if they believed they were near land. If the bird did not return, the navigator knew that land was close.
From a systems perspective, it is most impactful to shift a narrative that will influence thousands of small decisions. However every action to shift that narrative requires us to trigger the mental shortcuts and biases already in place with those who have power over those narratives.
It is far easier to trigger an audience’s existing mental shortcuts and biases in order to shift their habits, rather than overwhelm them with hard choices. We can influence someone to pass on a message the way we want by understanding their feeling, thinking and acting habits.
This Chapter shares how people make decisions so we can identify how to get them to do the actions aligned with our theory of change. You may find yourself questioning which key stakeholders should really be the target of the campaign.
Footnotes: *Daniel Kahnemann explains these two forms of thinking (Systems 1 and Systems 2).
** Weighing up cost-benefit and probabilities is called Bayesian decision-making.
Humans tend to use two thinking styles:
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Fast (System 1): Instinctive, emotional. Our influencing should steer targets towards this
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Slow (System 2): Deliberative, logical. Our influencing should minimize this. Slow thinking requires rational checks. We weigh up cost-benefits (what do we have to give up, and what do we gain) and probabilities (how likely is something to happen).
Skilled strategic communicators deliberately trigger mental shortcuts and biases in an audience to guide them toward fast or slow noticing, consideration and decision.
In our modern lives most of us are flooded with information. As a first step, therefore, a communication must break through the noise and be noticed (repeatedly).
Mental shortcuts that guide noticing:
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Allocation of attention: Spread, volume, repetition by familiar channels, sense of surprise all increase the likelihood of attention.
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Urgency: Urgent rather than important threats, events, or opportunities.
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Proximity: Relevance to someone’s family, community, work, hobbies or life priorities.
Mental shortcuts that guide consideration:
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Angle: The framing - the context and perspective through which information is presented.
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Affect: Information that inspires strong positive or negative emotions.
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Availability: The information already in your memory or experience.
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Anchoring: The first information accessed on the subject.
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Authority: Communication from a trusted or authoritative channel and messenger.
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Aversion to loss: The perceived risk of loss (pain is twice as powerful as gain).*
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Average: Likelihood of an event or fact based on a preconceived notion or memory.
Biases that guide consideration:
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Similarity: The preference towards what is similar to that which you are used to.
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Expedience (confirmation bias): People prefer information that confirms their values and does not overly challenge their understanding of the world.
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Experience: Preferring what we have experienced in the past.
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Distance: Preferring what is close to them physically or recently.
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Safety: Preferring what seems safest to them or what has already been proven to be safe.
Biases that guide decision-making:
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Optimism: The overestimation of your abilities.
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Illusion of control: The overestimate of your control over events.
When defining and delivering a communications strategy for influencing a decision maker or target audience, consider how to share the framing, stories, and messages to take advantage of these mental shortcuts. If you study great communicators and communication materials - be they emails, TikTok posts, elected officials speeches, or issue campaigns - you will see that these are clearly at use. For example, communications might be from an influential messenger (Authority) sharing an emotional powerful story (Affect) about a scary risk (Aversion to Loss) and a very accessible familiar solution (Familiarity). How can you shape your communications strategy to do the same?
Where possible you may consider how to reach your target audience in a position where they need fast thinking, and trigger the mental shortcuts and biases that will appeal to them and move them to do what we want.
At the same time, it is however important that we check our own logic before we engage them, so we avoid triggering unconscious bias that is culturally insensitive.
Further reading:
For more on the five SEEDS of bias see the NeuroLeadership Institute: https://neuroleadership.com/your-brain-at-work/seeds-model-biases-affect-decision-making/
For a more complex take on influencing behaviors, see the Behavioural Insights Group report here.
“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” - Anaïs Nin
concept: thinking styles, rational
checks, mental shortcuts
& biases:
story: replacing cops with mimes,
colombia
In the early 1990s, Bogotá was a city paralyzed by corruption, chaos, and dangerous traffic conditions. Antanas Mockus, the newly elected mayor, faced the challenge of transforming this dysfunctional system.
Mockus could see that the city was stuck in a vicious loop of corruption, impunity and mistrust. Public trust in the corrupt traffic police force was low - when traffic police attempted to enforce the law, the public disobeyed, creating more chaos on the road.
So the Mayor removed the existing traffic police from the system, and added a virtuous loop of collective accountability and civic engagement:
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Mockus disbanded the entire traffic police force.
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He offered to rehire the officers—but as mimes, who would use humor and social pressure rather than coercion to influence driver behavior.
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He empowered Bogota citizens by distributing 350,000 “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” cards, enabling them to express approval or disapproval of traffic behavior directly.
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The mimes, through their non-verbal communication, highlighted the absurdity of traffic violations, encouraging drivers and pedestrians to follow rules not out of fear, but out of a shared sense of responsibility.
Mockus cleverly triggered fast thinking, leveraging mental shortcuts and biases to reshape behavior and reduce traffic problems:
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Affect (Emotion): Mockus used humor to engage the public emotionally. By replacing corrupt police officers with mimes who used playful gestures to enforce traffic rules, he tapped into the positive emotions of surprise and amusement, making people more receptive to following rules.
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Authority: Although unconventional, the mimes became perceived as figures of authority. Their presence and antics were a novel way of reinforcing traffic rules without traditional enforcement, which the public had lost trust in. Mockus also empowered citizens by giving them “thumbs-up/thumbs-down” cards, making them feel authoritative in judging traffic behavior.
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Availability and Familiarity: Mockus capitalized on what was familiar and memorable. Traffic violations, once ignored, became absurdly visible through the mimes' exaggerated reactions, making them unforgettable. The citizens’ cards, readily available in their hands, allowed immediate feedback, embedding the new behavior in daily routines.
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Aversion to Loss: Mockus understood that people are more motivated by the fear of loss than the prospect of gain. By removing the corrupt police force and replacing them with mimes, he reduced the perceived "loss" of being unfairly treated or fined, encouraging compliance.
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Anchoring: The first interaction with the mimes, who ridiculed violations in a light-hearted manner, became the anchor for future behavior. This initial experience set a new standard for how traffic rules were perceived and followed.
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Similarity and Safety: The mimes represented something non-threatening and relatable—people in the community enforcing rules in a safe and humorous way. Citizens felt safer complying with these figures rather than with corrupt police officers.
By utilizing these mental shortcuts and biases, Mockus effectively bypassed the need for slow, deliberative thinking. Instead, he steered the public towards quick, instinctive decisions that led to safer, more cooperative behavior on Bogotá’s streets. His strategy was highly successful, reducing traffic fatalities by over 50% and transforming the culture of the city’s streets from one of lawlessness to one of mutual respect and shared responsibility.
Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opinion/the-art-of-changing-a-city.html
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tool: navigation & persuasion
Once you have read through the rest of this Navigation Section, you can bring your strategy for reach and communications together. Use the flowchart here as a guide.
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Route: One by one, select the most powerful decision-makers in the system and plot the route to reach them. It is likely that there will be more than one decision-maker and more than one route to reach them. It is also likely that some routes will need re-planning. Remember, each person on that route is also a decision-maker.
For each decision-maker on that route, consider:
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Outcome: Decide on what you want the decision-maker to do.
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Narrative: How might you appeal to the existing narrative in the system while cultivating your own counter-narrative? Focus on a consistent topline deep narrative, while allowing different people to tell stories in varied ways. This approach will help shift the narrative more effectively.
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Motives: What are the needs and motives of that decision-maker we need to appeal to?
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Network: What networks, groups or communities do they draw value and belonging from? How can your message resonate with them so that they are likely to adopt it?
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Messengers: Which media and other messengers does the decision-maker most trust? What does your message need to say in order for that messenger to pass it on?
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Values: Which of the four values frames will most likely get the decision-maker to act?
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Mental shortcuts and biases: Which mental shortcuts and biases will ensure the decision-maker acts quickly?
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Decision: Are we sure the decision-maker’s action will be the one we want?
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Emergence: How might our actions and those of the network, messengers and the final decision-maker play out in the system? What else might emerge that we need to consider? Could the decision create a new kind of bias that we need to consider?
