Rotman Management – April 2019

rotmanmagazine.ca / 51

AROUND THE WORLD, a growing number of organizations are em-
bracing behavioural insights to design and enhance their prod-
ucts, policies and services. The challenge is this: Their leaders
and workers are human, too, and are therefore influenced by
the same heuristics and biases that they are attempting to ad-
dress in others.
In our work we have identified three core activities of poli-
cymaking and strategy-making in any industry: noticing, delib-
erating and executing. In this article we will focus on the first
two stages — noticing and deliberating — and discuss some of
the most important behavioural insights that have been discov-
ered to date in each category.

CORE ACTIVITY 1: Noticing

Noticing involves the varied ways that information and ideas en-

ter the agenda for organizations. Two of the most significant ar-

eas of bias and resulting behavioural insights in this area involve

framing and confirmation bias.

FRAMING EFFECTS.Framing effects refer to the fact that the

presentation of an issue, not its substantive content, often de-

termines whether it is noticed and how it is interpreted. Fram-

ing is the process of selecting and highlighting some aspects or

features of a situation at the expense of others. Adopting differ-

ent ‘frames’ can have powerful effects on how people perceive a

As more leaders learn how to mitigate

common biases, behavioural science is helping to shape

strategic decision-making for the better.

by Michael Hallsworth, Mark Egan, Jill Rutter and Julian McCrae