Want to start learning about Behavior Change?

Here are some books I own and have read to get you started.

1. Training to Change Practice by Lucie Byrne-Davis et al - This is a really easy book to read and helps you understand how to work to improve education and training for health professionals (though of course, you can adapt this to organizations) - The cards for change you see are included in the book as pages (not these physical cards)

2. Engaged by Amy Bucher - great book, that talks about Basic Psychological Needs as well as the COM-B model for designing products. It has some great examples and is the way Amy explains things, it's just a pleasure to read.

3. Designing for Behavior Change by Stephen Wendel - he uses his CREATE Action Funnel (Cue, Reaction, Evaluation, Ability, Timing, Experience) and the DECIDE (Define the problem, Explore the context, Craft the Intervention, Design within the Product) framework which is a great way as well to look at how to work with Behavior Change. He is also the VP of Busara - a nonprofit organization that uses social and behavioral science to solve problems in development and poverty alleviation

4. The Behavior Change Wheel by Susan Michie Robert West Lou Atkins - shows you examples of everything from selecting a target behavior, finding the influences of behavior with the COM-B model, selecting, Intervention functions, and more. (This is my go to, in my projects) There are of course some advances since the book was written and UCL Centre for Behaviour Change has started to release its new ontologies for behavior change. Nevertheless, this is a great foundational book.

One important note - it is called the Behavior Change Wheel for a reason, so please don't stop just at COM-B, continue the systematic approach until you reach your behavior change techniques, otherwise you are missing the whole value of this evidence-based approach to change. (Policy options can be optional, depending on your context)

5. The ABC of Behaviour Change Theories - also Susan Michie - this one is more of a reference, for those who really want to dig deep into theories of change.

6. Design for How People Think by John Whalen, PhD - looks at a model of 6 minds of experience: Wayfinding, Vision, attention and automaticity, Langauge, Memory, Decision Making, and Emotion. More geared towards product and service design, but well written and with nice examples as well.

All these books are great start and can they give you a good foundation.

This can include change management, business transformation, creation of products, services, and experiences, or even poverty alleviation.

Robert