{"id":370,"date":"2020-04-13T23:03:24","date_gmt":"2020-04-14T03:03:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-peopleanalytics\/submission\/humu-nudges-nifty-reminders-or-lazy-leadership\/"},"modified":"2020-04-13T23:03:24","modified_gmt":"2020-04-14T03:03:24","slug":"humu-nudges-nifty-reminders-or-lazy-leadership","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-peopleanalytics\/submission\/humu-nudges-nifty-reminders-or-lazy-leadership\/","title":{"rendered":"Humu Nudges: Nifty Reminders or Lazy Leadership?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNudge.\u201d What a pleasant and innocent way to describe what really might be called \u201cyour organization thinks you could be better and here is how, maybe you should do this.\u201d Because that\u2019s what a \u2018nudge\u2019 really is, right?<\/p>\n

Building on the research of Nobel prize winning behavioral economist Richard Thaler and Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein, the Human Resources consulting company, Humu, founded by the former Head of HR at Google, Laszlo Bock, uses \u2018nudges\u2019 to get managers to make better decisions. According to an interview with Yale Insights<\/a>, Humu uses small reminders throughout a manager\u2019s day to influence their behaviors, and thus, make better decisions. Some examples of Humu nudges include sending a text to a manager right before a meeting reminding them to seek input on a decision being made at a meeting, or a calendar reminder to schedule a feedback session with direct reports. Nudges come directly from a Co-Founder\u2019s account, so it comes with the extra \u201cweight\u201d of a PhD in behavioral economics \u2013 this stuff is grounded in real research.<\/p>\n

Where Bock obfuscates is how his company does it. Emails are scanned but are not \u201cread,\u201d he claims. The data is the users and Humu is fully GDPR compliant according to official company policies. I have no reason to believe otherwise, but it does leave a dirty feeling with me that if my company were to use Humu\u2019s product, a machine would be scanning my email for certain sentiments to determine if I were a flight risk, and, accordingly, prompt an intervention from my manager.<\/p>\n

Perhaps more strikingly though, is my wonder if companies paying for Humu\u2019s services could do this internally. It isn\u2019t particularly novel, after all, to expect good managers to seek input during a meeting. So is this a failure of a company\u2019s culture and the company\u2019s leadership? Or merely a failure to implement a process or checklist to ensure managers are doing their job? Could I, as a company executive, publish a 3 x 5 note card that all managers are expected to review at the beginning of a meeting that carries the same message as Humu\u2019s text message reminders? Could I teach a Chief of Staff to seek outsider opinions when driving a decision making process without the calendar invite reminder? Perhaps that isn\u2019t as effective in our phone-obsessed world, but it seems like a step I\u2019d want to try first before hiring a consulting company for hundreds of thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I actually believe in nudges, and don\u2019t disagree with Humu\u2019s premise behind their product. Thaler and Sunstein produce multiple examples of evidence when choice behavior can be influenced by choice design \u2013 in everything from Medicare Part D plans to Swedish retirement investment accounts. Choice paralysis is real \u2013 we experience it everyday (have you ever apartment hunted in a major city? I\u2019m currently going through this difficult challenge). I just don\u2019t believe an organization needs to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement it. I\u2019m not convinced it takes AI to determine when an employee is disgruntled, or to remind a manager to do their job. What it does take is employees who care about one another, and clearly articulated expectations and standards. Write a playbook or Standard Operating Procedure, and demand that employees follow it. When they don\u2019t, hold them accountable \u2013 dock their pay, demote them, don\u2019t promote them, or fire them \u2013 this isn\u2019t an area of choice paralysis \u2013 and it shouldn\u2019t take a nudge to tell a leader what to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Humu, a human resources consultancy founded by the former Head of HR at Google, uses behavioral economics ‘nudges’ to prompt better leadership. 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