Explained series: Short articles to explain terms you may hear while talking to an organizational psychologist.
Snapshot: What is Fuel and Friction?
According to Dr. Dan Ariely, professor of psychology and behavioral economics at Duke University, human behaviour follows the status quo unless acted on by a change in “fuel” or “friction”.
Fuel are the motivational factors (or the “push”) that encourage people to adopt a new behaviour. This includes extrinsic (earn a reward or avoid punishment) and intrinsic (personally rewarding and meaningful) motivational factors.
Friction are obstacles that hinder or prevent a desired behavioural change. Examples of friction include factors like information overload or confusion over next steps.
Why does it matter to people leaders?
Change is inevitable in the workplace. And it is never easy. How do you set yourself and your team up for success to navigate change successfully?
Based in behavioural science, “fuel and friction” provides you with a framework to understand and analyze what makes it easy and what makes it hard for your staff to adopt new behaviour. More importantly, it will help you formulate targeted change management tactics to adapt to change more effectively.
Put it into Practice: How do you use “fuel and friction”?
Dr. Ariely talks (TED Talk) about approaching behavioural change like launching a rocket into space. Too much friction on the rocket and it won’t fly. Not enough fuel? You won’t get to space either.
The focus is to increase fuel and reduce friction.
Let’s say you’re implementing a new quarterly performance review program. You notice that people appear reluctant to participate and engage in these latest quarterly review. You want to understand why.
Step 1: Identify the different personas involved. Different personas would have different fuel and friction. Sometimes it is obvious (ie. managers vs. direct reports), sometimes not so much (ie. direct reports – new hires vs. direct reports – those with more than six months experience).
Step 2: Analyze the fuel and friction factors of each persona by conducting individual interviews and/or focus groups with employees who are representative of the personas identified. A common mistake is to focus only on the fuel and not pay enough attention to the friction. Dr. Nordgren and Schonthal, author of The Human Element and professors at Northwestern University, argue that while Fuel is easy to see, Friction hides below the surface and requires more empathy and understanding of the people and context to uncover.
Step 3: Prioritize the focus areas and actions needed to increase fuel and/or reduce friction.
Fuel and Friction Framework