While reading The Other Side of Change as part of HRW Shift’s Summer Book Club, I was struck by how many of the stories echoed techniques that behaviour change scientists study but, all too often, struggle to bring to life. Something that Shankar does so well throughout the book. Behaviour Change Science seeks to understand why people do what they do and what helps them adopt new behaviours, abandon old ones, or adapt to changing circumstances. One of the field’s most practical outputs is the Behaviour Change Technique (BCT) Ontology, a catalogue of 281 nudges, boosts and other techniques used to support behaviour change. For healthcare marketers and insights teams, these techniques offer practical ways to support physician behaviour change, encourage adoption of new therapies, improve clinical decision-making, and design more effective communications. This article explores eight techniques that repeatedly emerged from the vibrant and emotional stories in The Other Side of Change and considers how these learnings, from members of the public, many of whom themselves are patients, can be applied to support patient and healthcare professional (HCP) in their own behaviour change endeavours, whether to help people adopt a new perspective or, practically, achieve change. How can we help people become someone new? Technique #1: Using Role Models to Make Change Feel Possible: Technical BCT Name: Demonstrate the Behaviour One of the recurring themes in the book is the importance of seeing people who have already navigated a challenge. Dwayne Betts’ journey from incarcerated teenager to award-winning poet provides one example. Christine Ha’s adaptation to progressive vision loss provides another. Although their circumstances are very different, both stories illustrate the same principle: seeing somebody successfully adapt can expand our sense of what is possible. Behaviour change scientists refer to this as demonstration of the behaviour. Observing others perform a behaviour successfully can increase confidence, change expectations, and make new possibilities feel more attainable. Role models demonstrate more than behaviours. They also demonstrate identities. They help people answer the questions: Who could I be? And could somebody like me do this? Healthcare Application HCPs are more likely to consider a new approach when they can see how peers have successfully integrated it into practice. Local champions, advisory boards, speaker programmes, and real-world case studies help make behavioural change visible. Seeing another physician successfully navigate a change often makes that change feel more achievable than reviewing another slide of clinical data. Technique #2: Build a Change-Resilient Identity: Technical BCT Name: Construct New Identity Many of the people in Shankar’s stories are forced to reconsider who they are. Florence Williams faces this challenge following a life-changing accident. Dwayne Betts faces it as he builds a future beyond incarceration. Both stories highlight an important reality: change often threatens identity. When people define themselves through specific roles, abilities, relationships, or circumstances, major disruption can create uncertainty about who they are and where they fit. One line from the book captures this particularly well: “I’m slowly learning to hold onto my identity more loosely, with an open hand rather than a closed fist.” Successful adaptation often involves building identities that can survive change rather than resist it. Healthcare Application Many prescribing barriers are identity barriers. A physician may see themselves as a cautious prescriber, an advocate of evidence-based medicine, or someone who escalates treatment only when absolutely necessary. New therapies can sometimes create tension with these identities. Traditional market research often focuses on knowledge gaps, barriers, and attitudes. Behaviour change science encourages us to ask a different question: How does this behaviour fit with how physicians see themselves? How can we help HCPs call on enduring aspects of their identity so they can imagine themselves on the other side of change? Understanding professional identity often reveals drivers of behaviour that traditional barrier analyses miss. Technique #3: Help People Visualise Life After Change: Technical BCT Name: Goal Setting Several stories in the book involve people becoming consumed by the immediate consequences of disruption in their life. This is understandable: uncertainty naturally directs attention towards short-term loss, and discomfort. However, the book repeatedly encourages a different perspective by asking people to imagine life beyond the transition itself, such as Christine Hà who, after losing her sight, set herself goals to learn to cook and, eventually, go professional, eventually winning MasterChef Season 3 in 2012. Those who successfully navigate change ask themselves… what might life look like once adaptation has occurred? What future becomes possible? What do we want to achieve? By making that future more concrete, people become more willing to tolerate short-term discomfort in pursuit of longer-term gains. Healthcare Application Discussions around new therapies often focus on short-term disruption: learning curves, monitoring requirements, reimbursement processes, implementation challenges, or unfamiliar evidence. Yet adoption frequently increases when physicians can picture the longer-term outcome. What does successful implementation look like six months from now? How might patient outcomes improve? What becomes possible once the new approach is embedded within routine practice? People are often more motivated by the future they are moving towards than by the process required to get there and so offering doctors opportunities to think beyond their current situation and what they wish to achieve, whether via engaging conference presentations or interactive congress booth stalls, can all help open people up to life beyond a change. Technique #4: Reframe What the Change Means: Technical BCT Name: Reframe One of the strongest themes throughout the book is that the meaning of an experience matters as much as the experience itself. Shankar discusses this through the idea of psychological distancing: stepping back and viewing a challenge from a different perspective. One example involves panic attacks. Rather than viewing them as evidence that something is wrong, they can be interpreted as an overprotective threat-detection system attempting to keep someone safe – as intended by our evolution and equipping us with great empathy for others. The symptoms of anxiety are unchanged, just the interpretation is different. And the interpretation changes how people respond. Healthcare Application The same piece of evidence can be interpreted very differently. One physician may view a new therapy as an unnecessary departure from established practice, while another sees an opportunity to address an unmet need. Market research often identifies what physicians think. Behavioural science helps uncover how they are framing the situation in the first place. Research techniques can help uncover this framing, the assumptions beyond it and suggest opportunities to help physicians think through new ways of approaching reticence to change. How can we help people achieve change? Technique #5: Use Past Achievements to Build Confidence: Technical BCT Name: Prompt Focus on Past Success A common challenge throughout the book is self-doubt. When faced with uncertainty, people often question whether they can cope, such as Kylie Yorke, who experienced crippling eco-anxiety after wildfires destroyed communities she had previously visited. How can someone deal with the overwhelming challenge of tackling human-induced global warming when we’re just one person? One technique repeatedly used in the stories is encouraging people to look backwards rather than forwards. What challenges have they managed before? What obstacles have they already overcome? What challenges have others (even as broadly as humankind) overcome? Past success provides evidence and a boost to confidence. If somebody has adapted before, they have reason to believe they can adapt again. Healthcare Application When physicians are hesitant to adopt a new therapy, there are many ways we can build this “looking backward” approach into our marketing work to build confidence that change is possible – and to be relished. For example, we can remind clinicians of what they have already incorporated into their practice from: -Guideline updates -Therapeutic innovations -Treatment advances Overall, this can make future change feel more achievable. Confidence is often built through remembered success, not simply through expert encouragement. Technique #6: Reduce Worries Before Considering Change: Technical BCT Name: Reduce Negative Emotion People struggle to engage with change when they are overwhelmed. Throughout “The Other Side of Change”, the people Shankar interviews find different ways to create enough psychological space to engage with change. Nature, meditation, prayer, art, and experiences of awe all appear repeatedly as ways the author and others have grounded themselves and opened themselves back up to change. These activities do not remove the challenge itself. Instead, they reduce fear, stress, and emotional overload sufficiently for adaptation to become possible. Healthcare Application Healthcare behaviour change initiatives often assume that knowledge is the primary barrier. In reality, uncertainty, fear of making the wrong decision, cognitive overload, and perceived risk can be equally important. A patient who has just received a tough diagnosis or a physician who is uncertain about evidence, implementation, or patient suitability may not be ready to engage with additional information meant to assuage those concerns until their base levels of stress have been reduced. Before people can change behaviour, they often need support managing the emotions surrounding that change. When designing patient and physician journeys, we often ask… what can we build in that will allow these stakeholders to step back, de-stress and reopen themselves to ideas and opportunities for change? Technique #7: Encourage Small Experiments: Technical BCT Names: Behavioural Experiments & Graded Tasks Many turning points in the book begin with surprisingly small actions. Dwayne Betts tries writing poetry. Christine Ha experiments with cooking again. Others test assumptions by taking a first step rather than endlessly analysing possible outcomes. The principle is straightforward: action generates learning. People often discover that their fears and predictions are less accurate than they assumed and gain confidence as they experience small but significant successes. Healthcare Application Many healthcare decisions feel high stakes. Physicians worry about making the wrong decision for parents, adopting an unfamiliar therapy, or deviating from established practice. One way to reduce perceived risk is to reduce the size of the initial change. Pilot programmes, limited patient cohorts, phased implementation approaches, and low-risk first steps allow clinicians to learn through experience. Behaviour change often becomes easier when people feel they are conducting a no-commitment trial rather than making a permanent, lifelong commitment. Technique #8: Build Support Around the Individual: Technical BCT Name: Social Support (Emotional, Practical & Informational) Change rarely happens in isolation. If there is one type of technique that runs through almost every story in the book, it is social support. Florence’s recovery from paralysis depended on her family, friends and her rehabilitation team. Dwayne’s development into a poet was shaped by mentors, educators, and communities. Shankar’s own journey is shaped by the stories of those she interviews. Again and again, adaptation emerges as something enabled by relationships, opportunities, resources, and support structures. Healthcare Application Physicians rarely make decisions in isolation. They are influenced by colleagues, MDT discussions, department culture, clinical leaders, local protocols, and wider professional norms. Interventions that focus exclusively on individual decision-making can overlook some of the most important drivers of behaviour. Understanding the support system around a physician can be just as important as understanding the physician themselves and when supporting physicians to try out something new, social support can be a powerful level to ensure those trialled, experimental behaviour works out. Final Thoughts: The Value of Behaviour Change Science for Healthcare Marketers and Insights Professionals The value of behaviour change science is not that it provides another framework or another model. Its value lies in helping us move beyond describing behaviour towards understanding the mechanisms that drive it. For healthcare marketers and insights teams, that means going beyond identifying barriers and facilitators. It means understanding why physicians adopt some innovations and reject others, why good intentions often fail to translate into action, and what makes behaviour change more likely. The stories in The Other Side of Change provide vivid examples of these mechanisms in practice. Behaviour change science provides the language to explain them – and to operationalize the learnings from them into our practices. Together, they offer a useful reminder that successful change is rarely accidental and that the same principles continue to appear across healthcare, business, and everyday life. If you’d like to explore how behaviour change science can strengthen healthcare insights, communications, or physician engagement strategies, we’d love to talk. Email us at shift@hrwhealthcare.com Further Reading -Marques, M. M., Wright, A. J., Corker, E., Johnston, M., West, R., Hastings, J., Zhang, L., & Michie, S. (2024). The Behaviour Change Technique Ontology: Transforming the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy v1. Wellcome Open Research, 8, 308. -Shankar, M. (2026). The Other Side Of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans. Riverhead Books. Apply Now!