Nudging a juggernaut: part one – problem? What problem?!

In summary:

• How transformation programmes can lose sight of their human-centred goals due to cognitive biases like problem naivety, where teams are unaware that they are ignoring something important.
• A narrow focus on deliverables and technical success can lead to teams “hitting the target but missing the point”, resulting in misaligned outcomes for customers and colleagues.
• Practical strategies are offered to gently raise awareness, including storytelling, safe spaces for reflection, and sharing human insights to help teams reconnect with the original vision and purpose.

Welcome to the first instalment of our three-part series, ‘Nudging a juggernaut’, where we explore the ways in which common cognitive biases – the way we think – can prevent transformation programmes delivering human-centred outcomes. We will share tried and tested ways of nudging colleagues to change their perspective; to course-correct and maximise the positive impact for customers and colleagues.

The three biases we’ll explore are:

1. Problem naivety
2. Tunnelling
3. Status quo bias

For this series, we start with the assumption that the programme does set out with good intentions around human-centricity. But that the programme ‘juggernaut’ has its own momentum and, at some point, you realise there’s been a departure from the original vision. If it’s not there in the first place, that’s another problem entirely!

This first article is about ‘problem naivety’ - when people aren’t even aware there’s something important that they’re ignoring. The human-centred vision is being side-lined, but most people haven’t noticed. They are so focussed on deliverables they’ve lost sight of the ‘why’.

Hitting the target but missing the point

When people are so focused on the delivery detail – getting every requirement, test, and milestone checked off – they can fail to notice that the human-centred vision is slipping away. Instead of continuously asking, “Does this create the experience our customers or colleagues truly need?” teams become consumed with compliance, process, and technical delivery, often at the expense of the overall goal. And because they’re hitting their target, they can’t see that there’s a problem.

An amusing illustration of this serious issue is an emergency exit staircase that meets every requirement for durable, safe construction – except it doesn’t actually line up with the exit door. Technically correct? Maybe. Fit for purpose? Not at all.

Why does it happen?

As with the example above, when we don’t realise there is even a problem, it isn’t due to malice or negligence. We don’t wilfully ignore human-centricity! Rather, it’s helpful to think in terms of human psychology and organisational behaviour. Often people ‘miss the point’ through a combination of:

• Cognitive focus: people naturally hone-in on what they’re directly responsible for. To efficiently deliver “their bit”, teams narrow their focus, assuming (even subconsciously) that ‘someone else’ will ensure it all comes together coherently. As our attention isn’t limitless, focus on one set of priorities can easily make you naïve to other priorities – like the vision.
• Measurable over meaningful: it’s much easier to track sprints, deliverables, and defect resolution than long-term impact. Human outcomes can seem intangible and incidental, especially to technical, detail-loving people who typically make up most of a programme team. It’s a problem for the future... if at all.
• Ingrained silos: complex programmes split responsibilities between specialist teams. Yet a human-centred vision is always greater than the sum of its requirements. As service designers well know, it’s naïve to believe that disparate requirements, however well delivered, will magically add up to the vision. The vision will fade if individuals or teams focus on their piece of jigsaw. Silos create bad experiences.
• As one workshop participant put it: “We had beautiful plans tracking every requirement and milestone; everything was ‘green’, but I realised we were sleep-walking into failure, in terms of intended outcomes. We’d lost sight of why, or rather who, we were doing it for.”

The invisible gorilla

The psychology underpinning problem naivety is well-known. One famous experiment, the ‘Invisible Gorilla’, shows that when people are intently focused on counting basketball passes, they can completely miss a person in a gorilla costume walking through the scene. This is attributed to ‘inattentional blindness’ – we are only conscious of what we’re focusing on.

Source: Daniel Simons -- Videos

In transformation programmes, the ‘gorilla’ which people are unaware of might be the misaligned user experience, the missed opportunity for genuine impact – overlooked because people are focused on the delivery detail, missing the bigger picture.

How to nudge towards awareness

Lecturing colleagues that they don’t “get it” only deepens the problem, triggering defensiveness because they are literally unaware of the problem.

The key is to use behavioural psychology and design thinking to gently expand awareness – helping people shift from problem naivety to seeing the bigger picture, without feeling attacked. After all, as we can testify, even being psychologists doesn’t protect you from experiencing cognitive biases!

Here are practical ways we’ve helped teams break free from the trap:

• Make the vision tangible: use storytelling to make the purpose and expected impact concrete and real. We love using ‘future-retrospectives’: imagine a news story five years from now about your success – anchored on the vision, or create aspirational customer testimonies you’d like to cite in a future award submission. This can help to expand colleagues’ cognitive focus to include the ‘why’ – it makes the vision less ignorable. The next three nudges address the need for more consideration of what is meaningful.
• Create safe spaces: hold regular ‘customer corner’ sessions where the team is reminded of the vision and have space to realise what they’ve been naively ignoring, without embarrassment. This could be reflecting on why other organisations’ products or services ‘flopped’ (when it’s fairly obvious they’d neglected human outcomes!), or asking “what if [a customer-centric brand] was doing our transformation – what would that look like?”.
• Celebrate curiosity: cultivate a safe environment for questioning, by modelling humility and openness in how you offer honest feedback on where the vision is being sidelined. Praise colleagues who do likewise. Sometimes the ‘annoying’ colleague who keeps asking “why” can be the catalyst for real breakthrough. Encourage ‘hopes and fears’ discussions to surface hidden concerns around alignment to the vision.
• Share human insights: make customer and colleague insights widely available , to keep everyone grounded in the reality of the service they’re transforming. For example, hold ‘hopes and fears’ sessions with operational colleagues, and playback a ‘warts and all’ version of insights to the Programme. Film depth interviews with customers and share edited highlights with colleagues. Empathising with these perspectives is step towards colleagues finding their own ‘why’ and choosing to co-own the vision.

But what about ‘ingrained silos’? Can’t we nudge our way beyond these, if they’re causing people to ‘miss the point’? We’ve observed that, if behaviours are indeed ingrained, you probably need to lift the bonnet of the programme – to ‘re-wire’ the governance and culture that’s making it easy to work in silos, focus on what’s familiar, and ignore the vision. More on this to come!

Final thoughts

In complex transformation programmes, being naïve to the problem that a human-centred vision is being neglected, is often the first and most insidious enemy. Breaking through it requires curiosity, humility, and a commitment to keep humans at the heart of every part of the solution.

As we continue our series, we'll dive deeper into tunnelling – the trap of urgent priorities crowding out what truly matters, and status quo bias – where safety in familiar ways of working can stifle innovation and human-centred impact.

If you’d like to join the conversation on human-centred transformation, or share your own stories of “hitting the target but missing the point”, reach out and let’s keep nudging!

Want to go beyond nudging? Join us at the SDinGov conference for a workshop on ‘re-wiring the juggernaut’, for practical advice on how to harness the inner workings of a programme, to reclaim focus on human-centred outcomes - impact by stealth!

Stay tuned for Part 2: The tunnelling trap.

This series is inspired by workshops and lunch & learn sessions with practitioners and transformation leaders from Sopra Steria and beyond, March 2025.