1. IDENTIFY

The first goal in Focus and Analyze is to identify your program goal and the causes stopping your goal from being achieved.

Your program goal is your starting point.  It gives you the direction you need to guide all your other program decisions.  Understanding the causes stopping your goal from happening shows you what you need to work on throughout your program.

To achieve this goal, you will gather evidence about the causes that delay and block achievement of your goal.

Almost all behavior change approaches encourage you to set your goal.  But they usually then jump straight to behaviors (if they focus on behaviors first at all).  These approaches don’t think more generally about what’s interfering with the goal.  They miss the forest by staring at the leaves.

BIG guides you toward a more refined goal and a set of clear causes hindering the goal.  It moves you through a stream-lined thinking process about these causes.  This sets the stage for selecting your program’s behaviors. 

2. PRIORITIZE

The second goal under Focus and Analyze is prioritizing the behaviors that can address the causes inhibiting achievement of your goal.

This ensures that you stay focused on those behaviors closest to your goal that can be changed.  These will have the most impact on your program goal.  They are the “who needs to do what” behind the behavior change you want.

To achieve this goal, you will build on the guiding evidence around your goal and causes (from identify).

BIG is different from other approaches, which often lean on preconceived ideas on who should do what and guide you to select your program behaviors as the first step (rather than get clear on what’s going on).

BIG inspires you to brainstorm a set of anything-goes, unfiltered possibilities.  Who can do what to address the identified causes stopping your goal from happening?  That way you don’t miss a behavior possibility that could be game changing.

The BIG process then helps you take this free-thinking and put each possible behavior through a rigorous question and answer interrogation until you narrow down the list to just what change you should be encouraging and among whom – your priority behaviors.

3. ANALYZE

Your third goal of Focus and Analyze is to analyze your priority behaviors.

Focusing and analyzing helps you lay out your evidence along pathways to change and understand your context and priority behaviors.  Those three pieces let you make strategic decisions for your program.

To achieve this goal, you will build on your guiding evidence (from identify) around the behaviors and list of prioritized key behaviors (from prioritize).  

What is unique to BIG is that we’ve provided you with a structured, easy-to-follow framework – a Behavior Profile.  These let you think through your priority behaviors:

• from steps needed to practice the behavior,
• to factors inhibiting or supporting this practice,
• to understanding those who can help with activities and what they can do,
• to good program interventions to conduct.

You want to choose only the interventions that will help you change your priority behaviors.  (Remember, Think | BIG helps you slash waste and maximize investments.)  A Behavior Profile will help you make those choices.

From here you are ready to move on to phase two of the Think | BIG process, Design and Manage.

Can’t wait to get started on achieving the Focus and Analyze goals we talked about here?  

Intrigued, but want to learn more before you dig into the work?  

Have a question? Let us know!