Kate Talty, a senior HR executive at Lixil Americas (makers of American Standard Brands) was looking for a way to enhance her capacity for strategic and operational leadership while exploring new ways to strengthen her decision-making skills. She found what she was seeking in the Behavioral Economics: Understanding and Shaping Customer and Employee Behavior program at Harvard Business School (HBS) Executive Education. In this interview, she discusses the benefits of the program's curriculum, environment, and people.
I thought this program would be very relevant and applicable to the corporate world. Most of our work as HR professionals directly impacts employees, which means we are in an ideal position to drive change and help employees make better decisions. I wanted to attend the program so that I could share and apply behavioral economics tools and techniques with my HR colleagues.
As a change-management professional, I've been accustomed to using training as an important tactic to increase employee engagement and influence change. In change management, we almost always have to assume that employees don't know what they should already know. However, merely training employees is hardly an effective approach in behavioral economics, where you generally assume that individuals already do know what they should know. To more effectively drive change, I learned to incorporate these tactics and to intervene in certain situations rather than rely solely on training.
The case study method was beneficial in preparing participants for classroom discussion. It gave us an opportunity to broaden our perspectives and test our ideas prior to class. Also, as an introvert, I found it very helpful–and good practice–to discuss my thoughts with a smaller group first.
My main takeaways were to be more cognizant of the biases that come into play in the decision-making process and focus on those biases when designing interventions and solutions. I'm currently summarizing everything I learned in class so I can offer a behavioral economics info session for my HR colleagues. I plan to ultimately offer the info session to our broader organization in collaboration with our Learning and Organizational Effectiveness department. I’ve also shared with my colleagues the findings and solutions that my behavioral economics task force produced. While the problem of how to increase employee commitment to learning and development is not unique in the world of HR, it is a persistent challenge.
I was very pleasantly surprised by how accommodating, approachable, and inspiring all the professors were. I also found everything on campus to be well designed and accessible. And it was comforting to know that concierge help was available through the evening. All of these benefits made it easier for me to fully focus on the class assignments and activities. Overall, it was an ideal setting for learning.
This program expanded my perspective and helped refine my thought process in understanding and influencing human behavior in a positive way. The truth is that everyone could benefit from this program, regardless of their field or industry. There's an inherent altruistic aspect to the program, in that it is primarily designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations make better decisions. Today, behavioral economics is more relevant than ever as organizations try to be more "human" and incorporate more compassion in the workplace. And the techniques I learned can also be applied outside of work.
