Why People Do What They Do – and How to Enact New Behaviors

Introduction: A Day in the Life of a Challenging Change

Imagine a manager named Sam. Sam is dedicated, skilled, and driven by a clear vision of excellence for his team. He’s just completed a leadership workshop on improving collaboration and communication within teams, and he feels inspired to bring these new behaviors back to his department. He envisions open dialogue, mutual support, and stronger partnerships among team members.

Yet, on Monday morning, Sam walks into the same office with the same set of challenges. Some team members don’t seem open to change; others are entrenched in their routines and quick to revert to old habits. Meetings continue as usual, with little new energy or engagement. Despite Sam’s efforts, his vision of a collaborative, high-performing team remains a distant hope. Frustrated, he wonders: Why is it so hard to get people to change what they do?

In this article, we’ll explore why people do what they do – and, more importantly, how to help them enact new behaviors. Through concepts like enaction, active inference, and self-evidencing, we’ll uncover how people continuously generate evidence of who they believe they are, within a web of interconnected systems that shape and influence their actions. By understanding these dynamics, we can build a framework that supports genuine and sustainable behavior change.

Understanding Why People Do What They Do: Enaction and Active Inference

At the heart of behavior lies a powerful principle called enaction – the idea that we actively shape our world based on our internal models of reality. According to enactive theory, behavior is not merely a response to external factors but rather a process through which we enact a version of reality that aligns with our beliefs, perceptions, and identities. In other words, we act in ways that validate our model of ourselves in our worlds.

This concept is closely related to active inference, a theory from neuroscience suggesting that people act in ways that minimize the “surprise” in their environment. To do this, individuals constantly make predictions about the world based on their self-concept and then act in ways that generate evidence aligning with these predictions. The result is an ongoing cycle of self-evidencing or self-modeling, where each action reaffirms our understanding of who we are.

For instance, if Sam sees himself as a competent leader who values teamwork, he’ll seek out actions that reinforce this identity. However, if his team’s resistance suggests otherwise, he faces a conflict: the world isn’t aligning with his self-model. To resolve this, he can either adjust his actions to align with the team’s current behaviors or take steps to enact his vision by changing conditions and support systems around him.

The Complexity of Embeddedness: Navigating Multiple Systems

Adding to the challenge is that individuals like Sam don’t operate in isolation. Each of us is embedded in multiple, often overlapping systems – personal, social, and organizational. These systems, whether a family, work environment, or community, impose unique values, resources, and constraints, each shaping our behavior.

The roles we play across these systems can often conflict. For example, Sam’s role as a manager within his company pushes him to improve team dynamics, but his loyalty to his department’s established culture may hinder him from enforcing drastic changes. At the same time, his role as a friend or mentor to certain team members might conflict with his responsibility to hold them accountable.

Understanding that individuals are navigating these multiple systems is crucial for effective behavior change. People’s actions are influenced not only by their self-models but also by the demands and feedback loops within these systems. The challenge, then, is to create conditions that respect this complexity while guiding individuals to enact new behaviors that align with both personal and collective goals.

A Framework for Enacting New Behaviors

To help people like Sam and his team enact new behaviors, we need a framework that acknowledges the active, self-evidencing nature of behavior and the influence of multiple systems. This framework has five interconnected components:

Enabling Context: Building foundational conditions that align with the individual’s goals across systems.
Perception: Shaping how tasks and goals are understood to align with both personal and organizational priorities.
Action Selection: Supporting value-based decision-making that respects individual and collective roles.
Action: Structuring tasks and environments that facilitate intentional, aligned behavior.
Feedback and Self-Evidencing: Reinforcing behaviors through constructive feedback and self-evidencing cycles that integrate actions into the individual’s self-concept.

Let’s dive deeper into each component to see how this framework can help individuals and teams adopt new behaviors in a way that feels authentic, sustainable, and effective.

1. Enabling Context: Creating Foundational Conditions

At the base of behavior change is an Enabling Context that supports individuals’ self-concepts while considering the systems they navigate. This context establishes conditions that make it easier for people to adopt new behaviors in alignment with their goals, roles, and resources.

For example, Sam’s team would benefit from an environment that promotes psychological safety – a sense of trust that allows them to explore new behaviors without fear of judgment. Additionally, clarity of goals ensures that both individual and collective objectives are transparent and aligned. When people understand how their actions contribute to broader outcomes, they’re more likely to feel motivated and accountable.

Other enabling elements include information symmetry (access to relevant information for informed decision-making) and power alignment (ensuring that individuals have the authority and resources to act on their decisions). Together, these conditions support a stable foundation where behavior change feels feasible and worthwhile.

2. Perception: Shaping Mental Models and Expectations

The Perception component involves shaping how individuals interpret tasks and goals to align with their values and roles across systems. For behavior change to occur, individuals must understand not only what is expected but also why it matters within their larger set of roles and systems.

To help Sam’s team members perceive their roles in alignment with collective goals, Sam might use prompts that prime mental models – framing tasks in ways that resonate with team values and individual strengths. Peer modeling can also be powerful here, as it provides concrete examples of colleagues successfully enacting the desired behaviors, helping others see these actions as achievable and meaningful.

3. Action Selection: Making Value Judgments Across Systems

Action Selection is the stage where individuals make value judgments to choose actions aligned with both personal and organizational goals. People weigh potential actions based on how these align with their self-concept and their roles in different systems.

For instance, Sam can guide his team by offering prioritization structures that clarify which actions will have the most positive impact on team dynamics. By helping team members see which choices align with both their personal values and organizational goals, Sam can empower them to make decisions that feel authentic and motivating.

4. Action: Structuring Tasks and Environments to Support Behavior

Once individuals have made value judgments, the Action component supports their chosen behaviors by structuring tasks and environments to facilitate follow-through. This stage is about reducing friction and providing cues that keep individuals on track.

To support his team, Sam might use sequenced task structures that allow team members to see how each action builds toward the shared vision. Additionally, contextual reminders or cues can reinforce behaviors by prompting individuals to engage in desired actions in real-time. This structured environment reduces cognitive load, making it easier for team members to stay engaged with new behaviors.

5. Feedback and Self-Evidencing: Reinforcing and Internalizing New Behaviors

Feedback and Self-Evidencing reinforce behavior change by allowing individuals to see how their actions align with their self-concept and the systems they belong to. Feedback that validates individuals’ roles across systems helps them integrate these actions into their identity, making behavior change more sustainable.

For example, Sam can provide feedback that emphasizes the personal impact each team member has on the group’s success, helping them see their contributions as integral to team goals. Encouraging self-reflection also enables individuals to self-evidence their progress, fostering a sense of ownership and alignment between their actions and their evolving identity.

Conclusion: Building Lasting Behavior Change in Complex Systems

Changing behavior isn’t about forcing individuals to adopt a set of new actions; it’s about creating conditions that help them see these actions as natural extensions of who they are within the systems they navigate. Through enaction, active inference, and self-evidencing, individuals act in ways that align with their self-concept, generating evidence that reinforces their identity.

By building an enabling context, shaping perception, guiding action selection, structuring environments, and reinforcing actions through feedback, we can create a pathway for individuals like Sam – and his team – to enact new behaviors that feel authentic, sustainable, and aligned with both personal and organizational goals. When behavior change resonates with our identities within the systems we inhabit, it becomes not only achievable but also transformative.

Appendix: Framework and Tactics for Enacting New Behaviors
This appendix provides a detailed overview of the framework components and specific tactics that support behavior change based on enaction, active inference, and self-evidencing principles. These tactics guide individuals in aligning their actions with their self-concept within the multiple systems they navigate.

Framework Components

Enabling Context
Perception
Action Selection
Action
Feedback and Self-Evidencing

Each component is designed to support behavior change in alignment with the individual’s multiple roles and systems, from personal goals to organizational responsibilities.

Enabling Context: Foundational Conditions Across Systems

Objective: Establish a foundational environment that supports behavior change, respecting the individual’s embeddedness in personal, physical, and social systems.

Tactics:

Psychological Safety: Foster a climate of trust where individuals feel safe to experiment with new behaviors without fear of judgment.
Collective Goal Clarity: Provide transparency around both individual and collective goals to align personal and organizational objectives.
Information Symmetry: Ensure equal access to relevant information, reducing ambiguity and supporting informed decision-making.
Power Alignment: Distribute authority equitably, reinforcing trust and enabling individuals to act confidently within their roles.
Resource Availability: Offer tools, materials, and support that allow individuals to navigate and act effectively within multiple systems.
Leadership Modeling: Leaders exemplify aligned decision-making that considers the interconnected systems, setting a standard for behavior across personal and collective systems.

Perception: Shaping Mental Models and Expectations

Objective: Shape how individuals interpret tasks and goals to align with their self-concept and their roles within multiple systems.

Tactics:

Prime Mental Models: Frame tasks to resonate with individual and organizational values, helping individuals see actions as meaningful.
Change Prompts: Use instructions or prompts that encourage different cognitive models, helping individuals view tasks through various lenses.
Control Available Information: Shape contextual information so individuals can interpret tasks meaningfully within the relevant systems.
Influence Social Expectations: Set norms that reflect the individual’s role within the organization, team, and other social systems.
Encourage “Future Self” Visualization: Prompt individuals to envision themselves successfully embodying the desired behaviors.
Introduce Peer Modeling: Showcase peers who embody the desired behaviors effectively, demonstrating that these actions are achievable.
Exposure to Positive Deviance: Highlight individuals who successfully balance personal, physical, and social systems, offering relatable role models.

Action Selection: Making Value Judgments Across Systems

Objective: Guide individuals in making value judgments that respect both individual and collective goals across personal, social, and organizational systems.

Tactics:

Decision-Making Cues: Provide criteria that help individuals assess actions based on their relevance to each system they’re part of.
Prioritization Structures: Offer frameworks for prioritizing tasks to reduce cognitive load and support value-based decision-making.
Context-Specific Prompts: Use prompts that simplify value judgments by highlighting the most relevant actions for the individual’s role within each system.
Feedback-Driven Adjustment: Encourage individuals to use feedback from past experiences to adapt their decisions, creating a cycle of learning and alignment across systems.

Action: Structuring Tasks and Environments to Support Behavior

Objective: Structure tasks and environments to support individuals in performing actions that align with their self-concept and roles across multiple systems.

Tactics:

Alter Work Presentation: Present tasks to reduce decision fatigue, allowing focused engagement with system-aligned goals.
Curated Options for Action: Limit choices to guide individuals toward preferred actions that align with their values and system roles.
Contextual Reminders or Cues: Use environmental cues to prompt desired behaviors in real-time within relevant systems.
Sequenced Task Structures: Arrange tasks to make the connection between actions and goals across systems clear.
Dynamic Skill Adjustments: Tailor tasks to the individual’s skill level, supporting mastery within the demands of each system.
Adaptive Challenge Levels: Provide adjustable challenges to encourage resilience and growth across systems.
Progressive Challenge Cycles: Alternate task difficulty to balance personal achievements with system-aligned goals.
Implement Poka-Yoke: Use error-proofing to reduce mistakes, making it easier for individuals to sustain behaviors.
Role-Play or Simulation Exercises: Create exercises that allow individuals to “act as” ideal versions of themselves within relevant systems.
Create “If-Then” Habit Triggers: Establish automatic cue-response links that align with roles across systems.
Introduce Micro-Commitments: Start with small, manageable steps that support confidence in engaging with system-aligned behaviors.
Locating Responsibility: Ensure individuals experience the outcomes of their decisions, reinforcing accountability to each system they’re embedded in.

Feedback and Self-Evidencing: Reinforcing and Internalizing New Behaviors

Objective: Provide feedback that reinforces value-based action selection and self-evidencing, enabling individuals to integrate behaviors into their self-concept across multiple systems.

Tactics:

Craft Feedback Experiences: Design feedback to simplify the execution of behaviors within system-aligned goals, enhancing engagement.
Shape Feedback for Mental Model Evolution: Provide feedback that encourages mental model adjustments aligned with multiple roles.
Feedback Reframing: Frame feedback to emphasize personal agency and values that resonate with individuals’ roles across systems.
Real-Time Micro-Feedback: Offer immediate, actionable feedback for real-time adjustments within system-specific goals.
Visual Progress Tracking: Use visual tools to showcase incremental progress toward system-aligned objectives.
Goal Gradient Effect: Set up milestones to help individuals celebrate their progress in achieving individual and collective goals.
Set up Accountability Loops: Establish structures for individuals to report progress within relevant systems.
Encourage Self-Generated Positive Feedback: Promote self-reflection on achievements across each system.
Reinforce Behavior Through “Identity Labels”: Use identity-based language to strengthen behavior alignment with roles across personal and social systems.

Summary of the Framework

This framework acknowledges that individuals are not isolated agents but rather participants in a complex web of systems. Each component—Enabling Context, Perception, Action Selection, Action, and Feedback/Self-Evidencing—supports individuals in enacting behaviors that feel authentic, sustainable, and aligned with their self-concept and the systems they navigate. By embedding these tactics within a systems-oriented framework, organizations can foster behavior change that is both effective and deeply meaningful.