Or more importantly, what Is my audience's motivation ?

The prime focus of this guidebook is related to scope 1 emissions defined as direct greenhouse (GHG) emissions that occur from sources that are controlled or owned by an organization (e.g., emissions associated with fuel combustion in boilers, furnaces, etc.). Still, it’s complex and often requires the convergence of the finances, regulations, technology, and culture to be successful.

Most of the guidebook content addresses specific technologies and any related financing and regulatory measures/circumstances to consider. That leaves us with ‘culture’, i.e., people and people’s behavior to implement these changes. Certainly, we shouldn’t underestimate this piece of the puzzle. Steve McCormick, Managing Director of Draper Kaplan Foundation and former President and CEO of The Nature Conservancy states, “The only way to make meaningful progress on complex environmental issues is to understand that they must be addressed as human issues.”

For purposes of focusing on a primary audience, the authors of the decarb:Healthcare will make the large assumption: if you’re reading this section, YOU are convinced of the change needed (towards decarbonization) and may even have identified some specific technologies and financing. However, you need to “present your case” to XYZ stakeholders, from whom, you need the support and greenlight to proceed. For this reason, we are focusing on the aspect of motivating others to your vision.

A common definition for motivation: The psychological willingness to put in effort to achieve desired goals.

As we know, we need little motivation to perform behaviors that are (or at least perceived) easy. Alternatively, as the effort increases, the amount of necessary motivation increases. According to Making Shift Happen, motivation is driven by internal factors, such as perceptions of the positive or negative consequences of the behavior, perceptions of the social acceptability of the behavior, and the degree to which personal identities and value systems align with the behavior.

We want to help you philosophically align with your key stakeholders to attain your desired decarbonization goals

To briefly zoom out for more context, motivation is really one piece of driving behavior.

Behavioral drivers: Means + Motivation + Memory

We want to acknowledge how motivation, is not the SOLE silver bullet, though certainly important. The following are BEHAVIORAL Building Blocks™ to help shift behavior, pending what’s driving the behavior. Most of the “shifters” listed below, are directly related to MOTIVATION.

BEHAVIORAL Building Blocks™ (i.e. shifters)

1. Highlight norms to leverage BELONGING
2. Make it EASY
3. Cultivate powerful HABITS
4. Activate ATTACHMENT
5. Design it to be VIVID
6. Leverage our need for consistent IDENTITY
7. Inspire through active OPTIMISM
8. Judiciously use REWARDS
9. Frame for the appropriate ASSOCIATIONS
10. Expanding the self to ensure nature’s LONGEVITY

For simplicity sake, since we know, there’s a “stickiness” to simplicity, let’s start with three specific motivational drivers to assess and address:

1. Social Norms
2. Perceived Importance
3. Values or Identities

You’ve likely experienced this driver first-hand (and so have we). Consider a healthcare organization’s leadership hearing about their peers setting admirable carbon reduction goals and beginning to show progress. Now, couple this with recruiting challenges for that next generation of young clinicians who are expecting MORE in terms of their employer heeding the decarbonization charge.

Growing evidence indicates how social norms/proof are among the most powerful motivators of behavior. This also includes “social comparison”, the need to fit in or perform better than your peers. Looking for a comparison group? As of the beginning of 2023, over 1,080 federal and private sector hospitals (representing over 15% of U.S. hospitals) have committed to the White House/HHS Health Sector Climate pledge. The pledge, at a minimum - reduce organizational emissions by 50% by 2030 (from a baseline no earlier than 2008) and achieve net-zero by 2050, publicly accounting for progress on this goal every year.

Bottom-line, we are all wired to want to “belong”. Some of us, beyond the desire to belong, desire to lead. And, yes, regulations/policies are typically powerful signals of social proof, implying a future state of “norm”.

How to expedite the social norm

Make it social! Amplify clear, relatable messages via appropriate groups of people, who are likely to further amplify and ultimately be communicated and/or reinforced to your key stakeholders.

Simple, in concept; complex in reality. If you have reason to believe your key stakeholders suffer from competing priorities, which is likely 99% of cases, this driver should be of the utmost importance (no pun intended).

The operative word is ‘perceived’. Fortunately (sometime unfortunately), we all have the ability to shift our audience’s perception of something — in this case their perception of what is important.

Prior to starting this effort, identifying a general understanding of the current perceived importance of this topic is useful. i.e., Is this a Mount Everest battle, requiring certain tactics vs. a smaller hill climb. To help assess current state, survey (in-person, ideally) your key stakeholders with open-ended questions such as:

1. What are the top five most important issues facing our organization?
2. How would you rank these issues (in order of importance)?
3. How important is the environment to the well-being of our community and workforce?

Once you have a better understanding of the current perceived importance of this topic, proceed with “reducing the psychological distance” via aligning the environmental initiative with something already perceived of high importance to our stakeholders. e.g., Align with financial resilience, operational resilience, clinician recruiting, etc. This alignment activity is also referred to as “activating attachment”. And, an effective way to create relevant “attachments”, is through storytelling. Stories are not only the neurologically preferred method for communication, for comprehension, they also stick!

Stories help us empathize with others by allowing us to see the world through others’ eyes. Though stories, we can imagine real-life scenarios or daydream about possible ones.

Storytelling is the natural segue to another “shifter” —design it to be VIVID. We are increasingly challenged to manage our own attention, yet that of others, due to information overload, and thus, attention fatigue. Naturally, anything that successfully captures attention and is easy to recall from memory is what’s known as “availability heuristic” and a powerful influencer of behavior. Why is VIVID communication effective? Simple – it typically has a uniquely interesting quality (often with emotive appeal) and is concrete, creating further “stickiness”.

Our drive to be consistent with our most strongly held values and societal roles shapes every aspect of our lives… including, how we behave on a daily basis.

Because we all have a natural drive to act consistently with our respective values/identities, understanding your stakeholders’ current values/identities is useful, particularly if that includes any environmental affinities. In the case they do, we can leverage the motivational power of “behavior spillover” for promoting decarbonization initiatives. e.g., Your stakeholders are in favor of reducing energy consumption for the primary reason of cost savings. Presenting options that reduce energy consumption AND provide additional environmental benefit will likely yield to higher adoption.

One step further, which is good news, we are also driven to remain consistent with commitments to future behaviors. As mentioned earlier, the HHH Climate Pledge is a prime opportunity for leveraging the power of commitments. Towards this, ensure the commitments are:

• voluntary
• public
• specific
• in writing
• supported with follow up mechanisms

Ultimately, through these efforts, we’re trying to help our stakeholders internalize positive commitments to drive positive behavior.

Curious to learn more about motivation and shifting behavior, contact us.