Insight · Behaviour & change
Why good solutions still fail
The missing work between a worthwhile intention and sustained action.
3 min read · Lapid Leaders Africa editorial draft
The explanation we reach for first
When a new process is ignored or a useful service is underused, a familiar response is to provide more information. Sometimes people do need clearer guidance. But information alone cannot explain every gap between an intention and what happens. A person may understand the request while lacking time, resources, confidence or a workable opportunity to act.
Examine the moment of action
Francis Meyo opened his Unbuilt Future conversation with handwashing. Even people who understand its importance can benefit from a reminder at the relevant moment. The example makes an important distinction: knowing, intending and repeatedly doing are different things. A leader designing change needs to examine the conditions in which the behaviour occurs, including the competing demands around it.
Understand the choice from the other side
Francis’s account of cash-transfer programmes illustrated how beliefs and local narratives can change what an intervention means. A designer may see a benefit; a recipient may see uncertainty or a reason for suspicion. That does not make every interpretation correct. It makes understanding the interpretation part of the work. Listening and testing can uncover assumptions a technically sound design has missed.
Treat your own explanation as a hypothesis
The discussion also challenged the separation of data from lived experience. Experience can contribute to evidence. At the same time, one person’s experience does not explain everyone else’s circumstances. For an institution, the useful discipline is to keep learning: observe what people do, ask how they understand the choice and test whether the proposed explanation holds across different situations.
Make action easier to sustain
Choose one behaviour your team or users need to adopt. Describe it precisely. Ask whether people can do it, what motivates or discourages them, and when the opportunity to act occurs. Examine whether existing routines reward the old behaviour. Try a contained change and observe the response. Over time, the institutional question is how useful behaviour becomes supported by routines and accountability rather than depending on repeated persuasion.
Still open
What would need to change in the surrounding institution for the desired behaviour to become easier to sustain?
Developed from the Unbuilt Future Dialogue, Why good solutions still fail. Practitioner examples are paraphrased from the recording; the interpretation and application questions are Lapid editorial synthesis. This is a draft for review.
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