Dallas Burnett: Hey everybody.
We're talking to Jason R today.
What an amazing guy.
He is a behavioral scientist and entrepreneur who's cracked a code
on habits, talents, and innovation.
From Stanford's lab to leading Walmart's first behavioral science team, he has
some incredible stories about transforming businesses with psychology and building
top performing teams at Persona.
he's a great new friend of mine.
You don't want to miss this incredible conversation.
Welcome to the last 10%.
Your host, Dallas Burnett, dives into incredible conversations that will
inspire you to finish well finish strong.
Listen as guests share their journeys in valuable advice on living in the last 10%.
If you are a leader, a coach, a business owner, or someone looking to
level up, you are in the right place.
Remember, you can give 90% effort and make it a long way, but it's finding
out how to unlock the last 10%.
That makes all the difference in your life, your relationships, and your work.
Now here's Dallas.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I am Dallas Burnett, sitting in my 1905 Koch brothers
barber chair in Thrive Studios.
But more importantly, we have a great guest today.
Jason Aya is a behavioral scientist.
He's the author of a book called Real Change.
He's the CEO of persona, where he uses some real cutting edge
psychometric tools to connect companies with exceptional talent.
He pioneered Walmart's behavioral science team.
He's been advising tech startups.
Man, he's all over the place.
We're excited to have him on the last 10% today, So welcome to the show, Jason.
Jason Hreha: Hey, thanks for having me.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah, man.
So just tell our listeners, like what's your background?
You've got into all this behavioral you've done all this work with Walmart, written
the book, but what was your background?
How did you get started?
Jason Hreha: Oh, it's a great question and I, I don't even
know where to begin actually.
so I got interested in human psychology, human behavior in high school.
I was just living my life doing my thing.
And I went to an interesting high school where we actually could choose our English
class, our junior year of high school.
And I chose, to take a course or, yeah, on, it's called Ancient Eastern Thought.
And we read, like Buddhist texts, Hindu texts, like all these just interesting,
ancient, texts, from different religious, religious philosophies.
And at that time there was a guy at the University of Wisconsin named Richard
Davidson, who was doing these MRI studies on monks where he would put experienced
meditators, monks in MRI machines.
And he would look at their brains and see is there a functional difference here?
Is there, is the structure different?
And he noticed that there were significant differences between experienced meditators
and non-experienced meditators in the prefrontal cortex of the brain.
Dallas Burnett: Yes.
Jason Hreha: at that time, national Geographic had a,
an issue on this research.
And there's a picture of a monk on the cover with electrodes all over,
his head and my teacher brought that into class and showed it to us.
And I just was fascinated by it.
And I knew at that moment I said, okay, this is what I wanna study.
I wanna study the brain.
And so I read, I borrowed that issue, I read it, and then I just bought every book
I could on the brain and I said, Okay.
this is what I wanna go to college for.
This is what I wanna study.
And then I went off to Stanford and studied neuroscience.
Dallas Burnett: Neuroscience at Stanford.
That's incredible.
And I, that is fascinating 'cause I actually have seen those studies as well
Jason Hreha: yeah,
Dallas Burnett: fascinating that you could, that meditation
actually change your brain just
Jason Hreha: totally.
Dallas Burnett: this process.
So it's just that, that also was very impactful to me.
I thought that was just fascinating.
So you may get to Stanford, you're in, you're studying neuroscience.
next, what happens at Stanford?
Jason Hreha: Yeah, that's a good question.
like any college student, I didn't, I knew what I wanted to study going
in, but I had really had no idea about what I wanted to do with it.
So I was just, I just knew that I wanted to learn about what makes
us tick, why do, like how do we think, why do we do what we do?
I was just interested in these sort of philosophical questions.
but I always wanted to do something applied or, impactful with this knowledge.
Dallas Burnett: I.
Jason Hreha: And so when I was in college, I.
started looking around to see, okay, like what different paths could I take?
So of course I, if you're taking like a biological science as a major,
most of the people in your class are, want to go to med school, right?
They, most of 'em wanna be doctors.
And so I got interested.
I was like, okay, should I go down the medical PA route?
And so I actually, shadowed a doctor at the Stanford Hospital.
And I also was able to see some operations while I was there and was just
exploring the medical side of things.
But I just didn't really like being in the hospital.
I didn't really like that environment, that setting, and I just wasn't
all that interested in it.
And so I decided, okay, I'm not gonna be a doctor.
that's not the path I'm gonna go down.
maybe I'll become a researcher.
So I worked in two different labs when I was at Stanford.
One lab was a genetics lab.
Dallas Burnett: Oh,
Jason Hreha: and we were looking at actually, more or less like stem
cell genetics, we're looking in fly.
it's been a long time since I've thought about this, to be honest.
But we were looking at in flies, what are the genes involved in keeping these
adult stem cells versus allowing them to differentiate in other types of cells.
So we're looking at kind of the genes involved in that,
and like more, local signaling.
And so I was in a lab doing that.
And then I joined a lab that was more or less a behavioral neuroscience lab.
it was a neuro ethology lab, that was the technical term for it.
and so what we did is we studied, the idea is you wanna study animals in
their natural environments to really understand like the natural behavior.
And then we looked for things called, in that field there's an important
concept called a fixed action pattern.
Basically the idea is that in animals, they operate in a much more
reflexive, in instinctual way, right?
And so the whole idea there is let's uncover kind of these instinctual
reflexive behaviors that they do, and figure out like what are the signals that
unlock these like genetically encoded, behaviors and try and understand like
the, genetic side of I guess you could say behavioral, yeah, genetic side of
what, what causes behavior, et cetera.
So we were very interested in that.
So I studied that, for a period of time I was in that lab.
And to be honest, I didn't really like research that much.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: it's just not a, it's, I don't like being in a lab.
I just realized, Okay.
Dallas Burnett: percent.
Jason Hreha: I don't like being in a hospital.
I don't really like being in a lab, doing everything that's involved in that.
So as I approached graduation, I was a little bit lost and I was
wondering, okay, what should I do here?
should I become a management consultant or something like that, or
should I go into finance or, should I just figure out something else?
and then I encountered right as I was graduating, actually, I encountered
the work of this guy, BJ Fog, who was at Stanford, and he ran this lab that
was, at the time it was called the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab.
Now it's called the Stanford Behavior Design Lab, but at the time it was
called the Persuasive Technology Lab because they're really focused
at that time on, so BJ had invented this field, he called it captology.
And the idea was, okay, you have technologies, you have like mobile
phones, you have computers, et cetera.
These things, we interact with them every day.
they're a huge important part of our lives.
And so, you know, they're changing our behavior.
They're shaping what we do, like
Dallas Burnett: yes.
Jason Hreha: regardless, like it, they just will impact us.
And so the question became, how could you actually modify these
systems or use these systems and harness them to change behavior
in a very deliberate, mindful way?
So how could you actually make it so that these systems could be designed
to, let's say, shape, health behavior or shape other types of behaviors
to, to make people's lives better?
And so the lab really studied how do you change behavior using technology?
In order to change behavior using technology, first you have to understand
just behavior change in general.
So a lot of the research of the lab was just around, okay,
how can you change behavior?
What tactics work?
What tactics don't work?
What are the determinants, et cetera.
And so I emailed him actually and I said, Hey, I'm graduating more or less,
can I still be a member of your lab?
And so I started doing research for him after I graduated and, worked with him.
I think, I don't remember the exact amount of time.
it, was probably a year and a half or two years I was collaborating with him.
And I just, that, that changed my life.
'cause it was at that point I realized, okay, you actually can use these
tools in a very, behavioral science tactics, behavioral science knowledge.
You can use it in a very tactical way in order to get real world results.
Dallas Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jason Hreha: if you think about it, that's what most companies are trying to do is,
a company is only as good as its ability to like change consumer behavior, right?
If you can't get anybody to change their habits and start shopping at your store,
or if you can't get people to suddenly, build a routine around your application,
if you can't get people to do any of these things, then you're, you're outta luck.
Right?
And so if you just look at the most successful, for example,
technology products, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, et cetera, right?
What the, their defining feature is that they're very engaging and
that a lot of people use them, and a lot of people love them.
Dallas Burnett: Oh yeah.
I think that's so fascinating too.
there's a lot of things about your story that, res that resonate with me.
coming out, I came out of a very technical degree as well and didn't
kinda know what I wanted to do with that.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: of the things I went to is similar to you, I went to a biomedical
engineering lab and I was like, well, maybe this is cutting edge stuff.
I'll try this out.
And I will, I'll be honest, walking around and seeing all the different
research projects I can imagine it was, is mind blowing at Stanford.
And more mind blowing in genetics lab is seeing what all these brilliant people
were working on and engaging with that.
So for a semester I'm just, I'm in it looking at all these things, but
man, I got to the end of it and I was like, I cannot be in, there's
no way this is gonna work for me.
And we were working on some really cool stuff and I wanted to know all about it.
I just didn't wanna be
Jason Hreha: Totally, totally.
I'm the same boat.
. Dallas Burnett: yeah, so the other thing is.
It's so interesting because I've just read in the last 24 hours, read two articles
that just really jumped out at me.
That is exactly like center mass of what you were just talking about.
And one of them that just recently just published I think was how
don't know, I think it was MIT, but someone was looking at how our
brains are functioning with AI and.
If you use AI to write it, they used a word like cognitive deficit or
something like that, where there's just not, you don't even remember
what you wrote like 10 minutes ago.
Well, the reason is you're not writing it, but it's
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: They were talking about how it's changing our brains and so
they kinda, you kinda read all through this research and it gets to the end.
It says, no, you can still use ai, but just you write it first and use it to edit
it and you'll remember and own it more.
Essentially your brain will own it more and function at a higher level than if
you just have it, which kind of seems to me to be very fairly intuitive.
Right.
That will make sense.
But it's exactly what you're saying
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: how is this changing?
And then also, was re-released recently in the news where, I think it was, I think,
yeah, it was chat GBT that said, Hey.
actually been increasing people's likelihood of believing
in conspiracy theories.
Jason Hreha: Sure.
Dallas Burnett: And then when they called out the AI on it, it was like,
you need to call people at chat, GBT and the media and let them know
that's what we've been doing here.
You know?
And it's okay, wow.
but to your point, we're interfacing with technology so much, and it's
only getting more and more and more.
So before it was just, you're logging on your computer and you're just using
tools on your computer, like Word.
Then all of a sudden social media comes and everybody's got it in
their pocket and their phone.
And now with ai now we're integrating it into actual
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: and things like that.
It's just, we're seeing this integration.
So totally relevant.
I know you're like it because working with, BJ Fog and his, his research is
just, I mean, it was center mass of what's going on in, in the world today.
So I know that you had some serious actionable things
that you could take out of
Jason Hreha: Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
working for him was incredible because, when you study the behavioral sciences
and neuroscience in an academic concept context, you understand behavior very well
for me in ab, in an abstract way, right?
Like you study a lot of these lab experiments that are done
in a very, artificial context.
You learn about these different theories, but bridging the divide
between, okay, I read about this in a book to I'm, I can use it and
actually experience it in real life.
there's a huge divide there.
There's a huge gap and I think it requires a lot of creativity and a lot
of, just a practical mindset that is.
that you don't really learn in an academic context.
And with BJ I could see, I saw the way he thought and the way he was able to
break down problems and really hone in using his different models on what
the bottlenecks were for a behavior not occurring or his ability to just
see a situation and just break down in a, just a very logical and, systematic
way, all the behavioral dynamics and then come up with potential solutions.
It just blew my mind.
And
Dallas Burnett: Oh
Jason Hreha: working with him, I, he really was the one who gave me
the confidence and really the tools, I think, to start this career.
And, I owe so much to I personally think that he is the, the most,
The most brilliant kind of applied behavioral scientists, of our era.
I, I really do.
And I do think that his materials, like I always, I recommend his materials
to everybody I can because, 'cause I think that if you're interested in
just getting started in this field or if you're interested in just learning
how to think, in a practical way about behavior and behavior change, I do think
that the fog behavior model, his main behavior model is the best place to start.
Dallas Burnett: Wow.
That's awesome.
That's
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: to look up some of this stuff.
I
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Absolutely.
Dallas Burnett: any of his in, his material, but that now I
want to, so I'm gonna have to
Jason Hreha: You should.
Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: awesome.
if you were to think back
Was there one thing that stood out to you that was like, my
gosh, this is mind blowing.
this is just something I was not expecting.
Some unexpected insight,
or was it different?
Was it more like unveiling the reality you kind of already knew?
Jason Hreha: No, I mean, I, I would say that learning the fog behavior model,
his main behavior model for the first time was mind blowing for me because,
it in an academic context, right?
Like, well, first of all, behavior is very complex.
Like we do things for, there's so many different variables that kind
of go into, any given decision.
we, humans are extremely complex.
The brain is extremely complex.
When you study it in this very rigorous academic way, it's
a little bit overwhelming.
it's a little bit overwhelming because
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: this infinitely complex problem.
But what BJ did that I think is so brilliant is he said, okay, listen.
In an applied context, when we're thinking about behavior, really there are three
elements that you need to think about.
There are really only three major elements.
One is called motivation, one is ability, and the other is trigger.
He calls tri, he changed trigger to prompt now, so he says
motivation, ab ability and prompt.
And so the whole idea here is that as we walk around the world, we
have, varying levels of motivation for different behaviors or different
outcomes in our life, right,
And there are some days when I'm extremely motivated to work out.
And in those situations when I'm extremely motivated to work out,
I can be, far away from a gym.
Dallas Burnett: right.
Jason Hreha: I could have a low ability to go to the gym that day, but because
I'm so motivated and amped up, I'll actually end up, I'll going and doing it.
Dallas Burnett: right.
Jason Hreha: so it's the combination of motivation and ability kind of
determines my probability or propensity to do a given behavior when prompted,
Dallas Burnett: I
Jason Hreha: if you can understand that.
Yeah,
Dallas Burnett: totally.
That is so interesting because you hear the other models, and I
know Duhigg has his habit model,
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: James Clear has Atomic Habits.
One
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: and one has four.
I think one is you have the trigger that I think they still use trigger
they then the actual behavior and then the reward, which kind of
Jason Hreha: yeah,
Dallas Burnett: The other one has, I think the other one has motivation
tied or emotion tied into it.
And I think that's somehow or something, I may be wrong on that, but it's been
a while since I've read those books.
But, I love how you're positioning it that way because in a sense.
you're there is the behavior.
But it's saying before you even get to that, your motivation has got to outweigh,
any obstacles that are impeding it.
if you're not highly motivated, you're not going to actually do
the behavior that you could do.
Jason Hreha: sure.
Dallas Burnett: if there's some, if the motivation is extremely high, you'll
still find a way because you're just like
Jason Hreha: Totally.
. Dallas Burnett: to do it.
And so I love how it starts with that motivation piece.
I just, I like that framing.
That's a very interesting way to, Way to frame it up.
I Now, speaking of Atomic Habits, now this is amazing.
So you have written a book called Real Change, and
Jason Hreha: Yeah,
Dallas Burnett: by James Clear in Atomic Habits, which is awesome.
that's a super huge call out.
And so, um, tell, tell us how that book is related to habit formation and
kind of your, the background of that book and your time at Stanford, how
Jason Hreha: sure.
Dallas Burnett: of goes together.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
I do want to clarify.
James Clear, he, he quoted my, my definition of habit
in Atomic Habits years ago.
My book is significantly newer, so he didn't, he didn't cite
my book or call out my book.
he just, called out, I believe, actually it was, years ago.
I think I put out a, I believe he found it.
It was a tweet where I laid out my definition of habit because.
I guess to kind of fast forward a little bit, after I graduated college and
worked with bj after that I decided, okay, I just want to just start
doing this applied behavioral work.
And I just want that to be my career.
I just wanna work on applied behavioral science projects in industry.
And since I graduated from Stanford, a lot of my friends were in the technology
world building technology startups or working for large technology companies.
And when I was looking around seeing, okay, where could I apply this stuff?
tech was the obvious answer.
Just because number one, it's a lot easier to make, product changes in a technology
product versus a physical product or versus a real world situation, right?
Like in order to make a change to a technology product, you can
just sit down with a developer.
I. In a period of a few hours or a few days, you can make a new feature
or you could tweak things, right?
And so you can shape the environment of a technology product a lot more easily
than a real world situation, right?
And so number one, technology allows you to iterate very quickly.
It allows you to make these big changes and run experiments very accurately.
Number two, with a technology product, the sample sizes are often very large.
Dallas Burnett: Right.
Jason Hreha: with Facebook, you have like billions of people using it.
And if you're an academic and you're trying to study human behavior in a lab,
you can maybe recruit a couple hundred, maybe, students or something like that.
But if you're Facebook or if you're one of these large companies, you
can get, hundreds of thousands or millions of people in your experiment
very quickly, and you can segment them very easily and then you can
actually track exactly what they do.
So it's very easy to measure the behavior.
So technology products are really like the perfect, laboratory for human behavior.
Dallas Burnett: Sure.
Jason Hreha: great, this is what I want to do.
So I.
created my own consulting firm.
At the time it was called Dopamine.
It was just me and I would hire contractors to help me
out, with different projects.
And so I started doing this applied behavioral work and doing
this applied behavioral work.
What I realized very quickly was, okay, what all the clients that I work with
want is they want habit formation.
They want to build habit forming products.
They want people to come into their products, love their product, and
just start using it continuously.
And so I was spending a lot of time for many years thinking about,
okay, the academic literature says certain things about habits.
I'm experiencing some of that in the real world.
I'm seeing my, I'm coming up with my own insights as well.
And so I wanted to come up with a very crisp, clear definition
of habit for me to use.
It was really for my own benefit.
And I believe I tweeted that out.
James, I think doing the research for his stuff and his book, saw that and
then decided to use that in the book.
Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: Oh my goodness.
That's awesome.
that's awesome.
Takes your definition for the book on habits, like That's awesome.
Jason Hreha: No, it was cool.
I mean, it was very, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm very honored and, so it's
just, it was and very, very nice of him.
Yeah,
Dallas Burnett: Cool.
Shout out tool.
Shout out.
That's really great.
so let's talk a little bit about that, because you
Jason Hreha: yeah,
Dallas Burnett: together these models and seeing it you were able to iterate
so much, I think during that time.
'cause it sounds like what you're able to do is you've got this massive sample
size and then you can just experiment on real, in real time, on real people
Jason Hreha: yeah.
Dallas Burnett: technology.
So that's amazing.
That's amazing.
information and data that you could process.
So
Jason Hreha: Totally.
Dallas Burnett: bit about what you found, specifically let's talk
about as it relates to and habits, 'cause you've got Atomic Habits,
but in your book Real Change.
Let's talk a little bit about all of that and what you found
in that time as a consultant.
In, in, in the Valley.
Jason Hreha: yeah.
so my time as a consultant working with a lot of different technology companies,
it was eyeopening, it was enlightening.
and the big thing that I realized very quickly actually was, very early
on I realized that a lot of what you learn about in the academic world just
doesn't really apply, in the real world.
and what I noticed is, so my original approach, when I first started doing
this work, my entire strategy was okay.
I saw myself as the, the translator for translating
academic work into, the real world.
And so what I would do is, so whenever I would work with a company, my first.
Task was to go to the literature, to go to the academic literature, do a literature
review, just l see, look up as many different papers as I could on these types
of behavior change problems, interventions that have been tested in a laboratory
context or in a real world context.
by academics, gather all the interventions or the po the possible
interventions that I could, and then evaluate each of them, figure
out which ones make the most sense for the given product or the given
behavior change problem I'm working on with the technology company.
And then I, we would work to run experiments around, okay, let's take this
tactic and add it to the product or add it to a marketing campaign or whatever,
and then just see what the results are.
And what I realized very quickly, and this was actually quite disheartening
at the time, was so many of the tactics that I'd read about in books or in
papers that I tried to apply in the real world, they would just have no effect.
This happened over and over again.
It happened quite a number of times.
My first, let's say, two or three years doing this applied work.
And I remember at the time, my, my point of view was, either the
research is wrong, I'm implementing it incorrectly, or I'm just like a total
idiot and just misreading these things
Dallas Burnett: you had to have some, you had to have some patience.
That had to be a little bit discouraging
Jason Hreha: oh, it was ex
Dallas Burnett: time and going through all this stuff.
Yeah.
Jason Hreha: it was extremely discouraging.
But, I started then reading the papers with a bit more of a critical
eye in looking, looking at the methodology, looking at how the
researchers set up these experiments.
And I started getting quite suspicious and thinking, okay, a lot of these studies
are done with very small sample sizes.
a lot of the times the, the, these papers just didn't really pass the
sniff test, the closer I looked at the methodology and so I started thinking,
I. I think that there might be either some, just massaging or just, potentially
outright fraud in some of these papers.
it's hard to say because a lot of these, a lot of academics do not,
now it's becoming much more common, but in the past they wouldn't like
necessarily release the raw data.
and or today what, what a lot of academics do is called pre-registering
where you, before you, run the experiment, you say, here's the
experiment where we're gonna run.
Here's how we're gonna do it.
Here are the analyses that we're gonna do.
And you lay it all, you put your prediction out and your
whole plan out ahead of time.
And so you can't deviate from that plan.
'cause what I'll.
Dallas Burnett: hypothesis, you have to say, this is my hypothesis
and this is how I'm gonna build it.
To test this hypothesis
Jason Hreha: you pre-register it, you pre-register it so that you can't later.
So let's say you pre-register like this and then, or let's say you don't
pre-register this and you run the experiment, then you can say, okay, well
the original findings that we were going out to look for, we didn't find, but we
reanalyzed the data and these other ways and we found this significant effect.
You can then publish that significant effect.
But for a variety of reasons, it gets pretty complicated, but for a variety of
reasons, that just like methodologically is just not, it's not proper.
You really don't wanna do that.
You can get a lot of false positives that way.
Dallas Burnett: Yes.
Jason Hreha: And what I started noticing doing this applied work is
okay, something is not right in the academic applied behavioral science
slash behavioral science world.
And it was interesting.
So I started having these realizations and I started writing about it.
And then what happened was I. There was a big project called
the, reproducibility project.
It was run by this guy Brian Sik, and the idea was they'd ran this, big
study where they took, they selected a hundred behavioral science papers
from top journals, and then they had labs, do, reproduce, try to reproduce
the studies and reproduce the findings.
And, I don't have the study in front of me right now, but if I remember correctly, I
believe it was 36%, so 36 out of the 100 papers where they were able to reproduce.
So
Dallas Burnett: my
Jason Hreha: a majority of the research, they could not reproduce the findings.
Dallas Burnett: amazing.
That's the vast majority.
That's a huge number that they
Jason Hreha: yeah, yeah, it's,
Dallas Burnett: gosh.
Jason Hreha: meant that it's more likely than not.
If you encountered a new study back then, it was more likely than not that it would
not, the findings would not hold up.
And so the, it was, that was a interesting experience for me
because when this research came out.
It was, validating because I realized, okay, I'm not wrong.
Like the, what I was experienced, what I experienced was due to, research
quality rather than, anything else.
it,
Dallas Burnett: crazy.
I'm
Jason Hreha: I'm not crazy.
Yeah,
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
You're actually getting the real results.
You're seeing what's really going on in your tech, in the
world of tech at that time.
Whereas what you were basing some of your assumptions on was not
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
So that was, I mean, it was disheartening.
but it was validating and disheartening at the same time because this is
what I had spent the last many years thinking about, right?
So at that time, I probably would've been, I don't know, 24, 25, 26 years old.
I'd been studying this stuff intensely since 16 or 17.
So I'd spent almost a decade, just like full-time thinking about this stuff.
And so it was a very interesting.
period for me.
And so what I started really getting obsessed with was, okay.
What research is good and what research is not good.
And so I really started spending a lot of my time trying to figure
out, okay, I don't think the entire field of the psychological sciences,
the behavioral sciences, I don't think the whole thing is rotten.
I think a lot of it's rotten.
But, what is the truth here?
And so I started really trying to figure out on my own, based on my own
applied work, based on my reading of the research, based upon just my own
thoughts, okay, what's the truth here?
What actually causes behavior change?
What's actually effective here?
And what's like the accurate model of human behavior?
And so that has led me down this entire path.
And that eventually led to this book Real Change.
and it led to my current company.
and it led to, other work I've done, but Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: Wow.
I think that is very interesting and it's definitely coincides.
I've read over the past, I don't know, five to 10 years, different reports out
that's very similar to the one that you did where people are going and looking at
and it's outside of just the behavioral science.
it's really, it's really across the board.
And, what I've seen is they've had a, they've had a lot of problems and I
think that in, in some ways, I, look at it and go, gosh, you always are
asking the question what is true, right?
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: is true?
Is that right?
Is that, are those facts or.
it been massaged?
Because at the end of the day, what is true is we're all human.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: like we all have cognitive biases that can creep in.
Even
Jason Hreha: Yep.
Dallas Burnett: professors, we can have bandwagon effect or you know, we can have
a Dunning Kruger, we can do all that.
We can, we are susceptible as that.
So it's like, wow, some of these reports, it's not all, but some, or a
lot, in many cases are not as accurate as what we, as would subscribe to them.
So I think it's really awesome that you we're in a position not only to
wonder that, but to literally have the tools at your disposal to test it, to
Jason Hreha: Mm-hmm.
Dallas Burnett: in the real world and go, okay, this is.
This has been tested and this kind of been proving to, to be wanting
because it's not lining up with
Jason Hreha: Totally.
Dallas Burnett: at all.
So I think that's really cool because I think definitely gives you a unique
perspective because you have seen the academic side, you spent years in that
research and really understanding it, but then you were able to apply it and see
what actually was working in real life.
So that's really cool.
I, so let's talk a little bit about that because I'm interested in habit change.
So if a lot of the research, I mean two thirds at least was not even reproducible.
That means a lot of the books and advice and things that everybody wrote for years
and years based on all that research,
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: in the same boat.
Because they're going, look at this research from this and
look at this research from that.
And it's ah, yeah, that was part of the two thirds that wasn't right.
So what can you tell us about habit change?
Efforts and maybe why they fail.
And maybe what are we, what do we think we know that just isn't so that,
as it relates to change behavior.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
my perspective has shifted a lot over the years.
I'd say that right around you had right around the time when I was running all
these tests and having bad results.
And right around the time when the reproducibility project, came out
with their results and we saw this, I started looking, I started looking at
kinda okay, what areas of research seem are like the longest lived, that have
the highest, re reproducibility rates?
The highest replication rates?
And I just, it became very interested also just in looking at, with the
companies that I've worked with, where we've had success, like
what's true versus, like what things succeeded versus which things failed.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: my perspective really did shift around from one of, okay,
so let me zoom out a little bit.
I would say that the, the typical approach in the habit formation
and behavior change world,
Dallas Burnett: Mm-hmm.
Jason Hreha: approach goes something like this, okay, you have a group,
you have a person or a group of people, and you have a behavior.
And the whole job is, okay, we want these people, or sorry, we want
these people to do this behavior.
They're not doing this behavior for whatever reason.
How can we nudge them?
Or how can we apply some sort of stimulus or signal to them in order to get them to
suddenly start doing this thing That for whatever reason, they're not doing more.
So that's the general model.
Dallas Burnett: Right.
Jason Hreha: model is it's one-to-one.
It's like we have a behavior and this is inflexible, and then you have a group of
people and how do we get them to do this?
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: My.
Dallas Burnett: like a reward.
Can I give them a reward or,
Jason Hreha: Sure.
Dallas Burnett: or, show 'em some, something to make them
click or do or whatever.
Yeah.
I got
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
So the typical advice, then turns into something along the lines of, okay, if
they're not doing this behavior, maybe it's because, the reward isn't big enough.
So maybe can we add a reward to the situation?
Or, okay, if they're not doing this behavior, maybe it's because, it's
just too hard or it's too, the, their circumstances just make it.
too inconvenient.
And so how can we make it, easier or more convenient?
Or, Hey, maybe there's forgetting about this thing.
they're forgetting to do this behavior and then it's too late in
the day by the time they remember.
And so maybe if we remind them or prompt them early in the day, we
could get them to do this thing.
And, over the years, I started to notice there, there are a lot
of problems with this general mindset or this general frame.
And the problems are, number one, a lot of behaviors, you just,
let's just start with easiness.
A lot of behaviors you just cannot make easier.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: by their very nature.
Right.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: so learning, like learning a new skill.
of course you can make the instructional materials better, maybe
you can get somebody a tutor, maybe you can do these sorts of things.
But a lot of skills, a lot of fields are just really hard by their very nature.
And so good luck trying to make it significantly easier or
significantly more convenient.
Kind of the whole point is, the whole point of learning a new skill is that
it's something that is hard for you.
It's something outside of your capabilities, and so therefore, like
can, I don't even know if you could, in a lot of situations make it easier
without destroying the whole purpose of doing the behavior in the first place.
Dallas Burnett: Exactly.
Jason Hreha: So a lot of behaviors just, you cannot make easier.
And then a lot of behaviors, on the motivation side is, there's a similar
story here, which is, okay, if you're trying to get somebody, let's say
to learn a new, a new, area of math, for example, There's not really a,
and they're not motivated to do it.
There's not really a whole lot you can do there, Right.
Maybe you could turn it into, try to gamify it, turn it into a game.
But gamification in general has a pretty mixed track record.
It's generally pretty good at getting people to change their behavior in the
short run, for a small period of time.
But most games end, Right.
Like most video games end, most board games end, most games are not indefinite,
and so it can provide a little boost for a period of time, but it's not
really a sustainable long-term, tactic.
just from, in my experience, from everything that I've seen.
yeah, maybe you could try to gamify it.
Maybe you could add some sort of tangible reward, pay people to do it, et cetera.
But.
Number one, that's expensive too.
It's not that sustainable.
and then you can get this, there is some research showing that you do get
this, reward, this sub substitution effect where if people start doing
something for extrinsic reasons, for reasons other than the activity itself
and the rewards it provides, let's say if they're just, you're just paying
them to do it, you can get this effect where, they start to rely on the,
extrinsic, the reward that you added.
And then if you take that away later, then they lose motivation for the activity.
So that's a,
Dallas Burnett: Makes
Jason Hreha: a bargain with the devil, in, in a certain sense.
And so you could do that to try and increase motivation.
Maybe you can make the activity social.
You could add a fun social element to it or add a fun competitive element
to it, to make it fun and social.
But number one, not everybody's competitive, right?
So if you add in points on a leaderboard and stuff like that,
some people will like that.
A lot of other people won't.
Dallas Burnett: Yes.
Jason Hreha: and then some activities, you don't really want to be social
or it's just super inconvenient for it to have to be social all the time.
So for a lot of behaviors, increasing the motivation is
extremely hard, if not impossible.
Dallas Burnett: Right.
Jason Hreha: so what I started noticing over time was, okay, there
are a lot of behaviors that you just really can't make a lot easier.
There are a lot of behaviors that you just really can't motivate people
to do that much, above and beyond their intrinsic motivation for it.
And so if this is the case, then how do you actually get people
to do these things, right?
It's a good question.
Dallas Burnett: That's a.
Jason Hreha: And so my perspective shifted from, okay, let's just figure
out how to get people to do this one behavior to one behavior matching.
So my perspective became, okay, let's say we want to get people running, right?
let's say That's the habit we're trying to get people to form.
And for whatever reason we have a.
group of let's say 10 people.
They're not running.
We really wanna get them all running regularly.
We want them to form a running habit.
Once again, running's really hard.
You can't really make it a whole lot easier.
Running is not that pleasant.
Maybe if you have a running group, it's more fun than it would be if you ran
on your own or if you ran at the gym.
But, at the end of the day, it's like a lot of people
aren't that socially motivated.
there is a lot of individ, there are a lot of individual differences there.
And so in a situation like that, my perspective turned into,
okay, why are we trying to get people to run in the first place?
What's the goal here?
Behaviors are done for a reason like organisms, animals, did not
evolve the ability to do behaviors just for no reason at all.
We do behaviors to gain things or to solve problems in our lives, Right.
there's a function behind each behavior that we do, even if we're not aware of it.
So if you say, okay, I want this group of 10 people to go
running, the question becomes why do you want them to go running?
Dallas Burnett: Right.
Jason Hreha: they want to go running?
Is it to gain better cardiovascular health?
Is it to lose weight?
Is it to just relieve stress?
Whatever the reason is that the only way to achieve that end goal is the
only way to lose weight by running?
No, of course not.
you can lose weight a thousand different ways.
You can play tennis, you can go swimming, you can have a diet, you
can take a GLP one drug today, right?
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: do there.
There's so many different ways to get that end goal.
And so my entire perspective shifted from, instead of trying to force people or use
these hacks and tricks to get people to do behaviors that they obviously do not want
to do or cannot do, let's instead, based on the goal that we have in mind for them,
let's actually match them with A behavior that's better suited to their individual
unique characteristics and to their goals.
Dallas Burnett: man that's yeah, that just, it goes right back to what we
were talking about at the beginning of the conversation when you're talking
about is your motivation, great enough to overcome these obstacles or your
ability, your ability to do something.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: that's, it's so fascinating 'cause what you're talking
about is let's say like you're just saying essentially this is the,
you're starting with the result.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: okay, now let's, it's the different ways to skin a cat.
So if we gonna have this result, how many different things can we come up with
that could be used to get to that result?
And hey, pick your poison.
You can go and choose any one of these things as long as you're
motivated to do that thing.
So it's almost like you're just tapping into that intrinsic
motivation that's already there.
Jason Hreha: Yep.
Dallas Burnett: or aligning it to one that has, like for example, if
they're just really not motivated to exercise and they're just like, I
am, that's just not my thing at all.
I'm not playing tennis, I'm not running.
Then, taking one of those, weight loss, that might be the
Jason Hreha: Sure.
. Dallas Burnett: person's I just don't like running.
It's mindless.
I just can't get into it.
I like competing.
Okay, maybe the tennis is a good option.
Or maybe, pickleball or whatever, racketball.
I think that's really fascinating.
It definitely puts the onus though, on the
To really get to know the individual, because at that point you can't, I
don't know, do it just seems like
broad brush.
Jason Hreha: I think in the past this sort of approach was
impractical and often impossible.
I think that the reason that these approaches of, okay, we want everybody
to do a. How do we just force, force or like prod everybody to do
a, I think that approach was more justifiable or more reasonable in
the past when we didn't have, when we didn't have the technologies and the
means to personalize things at scale.
Dallas Burnett: Agreed.
Jason Hreha: a government, and you're just looking at like a hundred
million or however many people and you're, it's a nearly impossible
task to say, okay, let's help each person pick the right thing for them.
I think governments and companies, et cetera, I think everybody can do
more on the personalization front.
or could have done more on the personalization front in the past.
I think they could have, but I think today, there's no excuse, right?
We have new technologies.
We have ai, we have LLMs, right?
These sorts of things where actually today we're entering the era where, okay,
instead of just trying to push people and prod people into doing like a thing
or two things, I think we can really actually, now we're getting to the point
we're at scale where for individuals, for groups of people, for huge groups of
people, help matching them to the right.
right activities and the right things for them to accomplish the
aim that we or they have in mind.
Dallas Burnett: Ah, I love that.
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: that's so true and I agree with you a hundred percent.
It is that it takes the focus less, it puts the focus less on the thing,
whatever that motivating thing is, and puts it more on the result and
saying, okay, what are all the things that we can do to get the result?
And then allowing that personalization to take place in the workplace.
I think that's think that's so good.
I think that is really good advice.
So if you're listening today at the last 10%, put that down.
Mark that down.
That is a great idea.
That's a great, great truth that we've got today on the show.
I wanna talk a little bit about, 'cause we've got a lot of leaders
that listen to the last 10%.
They're leading teams are growing
Jason Hreha: Mm-hmm.
- Dallas Burnett: teams and you went to Walmart and literally built like
your own behavioral science team
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: at this massive company.
All right.
You gotta give us a little play by play on that.
Like a, how in the world did that happen?
And B what was the biggest challenge, like getting into
Walmart and just building this team.
And we will talk about
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: how you led it in a minute.
Jason Hreha: I can't say enough good things about Walmart.
Walmart's an incredible company.
they're, I think they're the best retailer in the world.
the people that are incredible, the leaders are incredible.
the stores are insane in a great way, right?
I think that they're just like, they're, you have over a hundred
thousand different unique products in the Supercenters, right?
they're, I think they're marvels.
they're absolute marvels.
And the effort and the work and the care that goes into building the stores and
running the stores and making sure that they're a great experience, it's it's
insane how much work goes into that.
And I was just so blown away by just the level of talent and just
the level of care at the company.
And first of all, I just wanna say I just, I love Walmart.
I'm the biggest Walmart fanboy ever.
and
Dallas Burnett: I
Jason Hreha: the way that happened was pretty interesting actually.
I actually got recruited.
There was a guy at Walmart.
and so I actually co-led the group.
in the early days with a guy named Omar, who is just incredible.
so he had been at Walmart for many years and he had gotten permission,
from the leadership at Walmart to build this applied behavioral science group.
And so the two of us co-led the group.
So he brought me in to co-lead the group there.
and the whole idea was, okay, if you think, as I mentioned earlier in this
conversation, every business is in the business of changing behavior.
Every business is in the business of understanding the person that
they're, that who is the customer, the consumer, and getting them
to engage with that business, in positive ways as much as possible.
And so Walmart's very, a very forward thinking company.
And so they, the executives there thought that was a great idea.
And so the two of us built out this group together.
And, I. it's probably my favorite job I've ever had by far.
because we were actually given, we were given a lot of freedom because
I'd say the executives there understood that, they're not, they weren't
experts in applied behavioral science.
Like we were the experts and we understand the toolkit and the
capabilities and what's possible there.
And so the leaders of the company did give us some strategic objectives and strategic
projects to work on, but actually a lot of our time there was spent they gave
us freedom and leeway to figure out, okay, given everything that you know,
and given everything that you see at the company, what do you think we can do?
Or what should we do?
And so I spent a lot of my time going around the company, going to stores,
going to different teams, learning about what they're working on, what are their
strategic objectives, and then based upon that, I could, I. Propose projects
or I could work on different projects.
And so it's hard for me to go into a ton of detail around exactly what we
did, just because it is confidential and I don't wanna, the last thing
I'd wanna do is, spill any secrets, but some of our projects are public.
so for example, one of the big projects that, that we did work on, was, Sam's
Club, Sam Walmart owned Sam's Club.
I don't know how many people know that, but so Walmart, Sam's Club
is like the, the big, the warehouse store similar to Costco of Walmart.
And, they actually created a new store format.
the first store is in Dallas, it's called Sam's Club now.
And so my group is very, very much involved in kind of building out
that new store format and figuring out the behavioral dynamics there,
and then help launching that.
we were also involved heavily with Sam's Club in kind of, they have
an application called Scan and Go where you can check yourself out.
At the store, so you don't have to go through a line.
You can use an app in order to check yourself out.
and so we were heavily involved in increasing the, usage and engagement
with that application and getting members onboard and into that.
We were heavily involved in the new member experience at Sam's Club as well.
So somebody signs up for, a membership at Sam's Club, how
do we ensure that they, love it.
understand exactly how to use it, and then build a habit around
coming to the warehouse stores.
And so we worked on a lot of different projects there.
And it was fascinating for me because this was really my first
intense experience working on what I'd call real world behavior change.
And by real world, I mean in the physical, real world versus in the digital world.
Yeah.
It becomes a lot more, everything becomes significantly more complicated when you're
dealing with people in physical spaces.
or when you're dealing with people, moving and changing their activity
in the real, in, in a physical world versus a digital world.
Because in a digital world, it's pretty constrained, Right.
It's like you just have a little screen in front of you.
People can only do so many things on the screen, right?
if you add a button, it's very likely they're gonna tap the button.
But in a physical space, there's so many different variables.
There's so much happening, right?
Dallas Burnett: Yeah, you've got all the senses, the sight and the sounds and
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
. Dallas Burnett: and then the directional things.
you've got, all kind of other things that can impede, what
you're wanting to get 'em to do.
there's so many things that's interesting about that because the team, when you're
talking about building this team, I can totally see what would be a team.
'cause when you, and obviously I'm sure listeners are just enjoying this,
because the amount of planning and detail that goes into just checking
out, just the checking out of products.
a team of people that's working on making that experience
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: seamless and as essentially have it forming and
as easy as possible so that you, don't mind, but enjoy doing it.
And when you were talking about that though, it makes me feel like it, it
just reminded me of a ux ui designer,
Jason Hreha: Mm-hmm.
Dallas Burnett: that are, because you're talking about behavior, but the behavior
is Closely linked to design as well.
So it's almost like
Jason Hreha: Totally.
Dallas Burnett: kind of hybrid between knowing how people think and then
designing a, instead of a computer page.
Now you're designing an environment to fit that way that people
operate very fluidly, for where it
Jason Hreha: Absolutely.
Dallas Burnett: That's just a fascinating, so tell us, one of the things like
when, and you don't have to go into details about projects, but, those
were great, but as it was relates to building that team, did you have any,
did you have any challenges or, did you have any, things that you had to
work through with your team in terms of leading and growing that team?
'cause that's a huge company, and this was a big, you had a lot of projects
and stuff going on, but anything that you had to, as you got into it,
you said, man, this was something I learned as a leader, running this or
growing this behavioral science team.
Jason Hreha: I would say that the biggest thing I learned is, and actually this
is something that kind of influenced my perspective going into persona, my
current company, the, I'd say the biggest thing I learned is that recruiting's not
everything, but it's almost everything.
and what I mean by that is, I really think that, a company culture or
number one, if you just zoom out a company, what is a company?
A company is just a group of people working together
towards a common goal, right?
Dallas Burnett: Yes,
Jason Hreha: So you have two, two el almost two elements there.
You have the goal or the mission, and you have the people, right?
and then, so I guess in that situation it's okay, like you have
basically two things you can tweak.
We can, you can tweak the mission and the product, let's say that kind of
is built to instantiate that mission.
And then you can also tweak who you have in your organization.
And so I really think that, for me, when I was at Walmart, I just, I learned so much
just looking around the company around okay, Walmart has done such a great job
at the corporate level, just and at the store level bring, just finding the right.
people, bringing them on board, nurturing them, making sure
that they uplevel and upskill.
And I really just saw how, like important, it was just like being
very mindful about who you select to be a part of your organization.
And when I was at, when I was recruiting for that team, I realized how hard it is,
especially in the behavioral sciences.
'cause the Applied Behavioral sciences are, it's a pretty new field.
And, when I started doing this work back in, in Silicon Valley, like right.
after working in the persuasive technology lab, I was one of like maybe two or three
or maybe four people total doing this type of work in Silicon Valley at the time.
Now there are a lot more people, but even when I was at Walmart, the pool of applied
behavioral scientists with like real world practical experiences was very low.
And so in order to recruit people, number one, we started reaching out
to a ton of different people with a behavioral science background in, in
an academic or an applied context.
And I just, would bring them in to interview or I'd interview them on the
phone and I realized very quickly that finding the right person was number
one, very hard finding the Right,
person that had the kind of the realistic and, I'd say calibrated academic.
Point of view that not the point of view that I was talking about
much earlier in the conversation of the not reproducing point of view.
'cause a lot of people have the point of view that's built
on non reproducing research,
Dallas Burnett: right.
Jason Hreha: but finding people that have the accurate point of view, built
on the good stuff that also have, real wor like that also have like practical
skills so that they can instantiate those ideas into something real in a company.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: very small.
So what I, my perspective at Walmart when recruiting for this team
basically became, wow, finding the right person I. Especially in a
specialized context like this, you're looking for a needle in a haystack.
A haystack.
And so I realized very quickly when I was there, okay, a lot of number
one, A, a company is just a group of people working towards a mission.
And a company is made up of smaller teams that works towards
sub missions or smaller missions.
And so if I'm going to build the best organization and possible, I have
to build the best teams possible and to build the best teams possible,
I have to find the right people.
And finding the right people is really hard.
And you, have to sift through a lot of different talent to find the right fit for
your specific organization and its needs.
And so my mindset at Walmart really shifted into this whole idea of recruiting
is a number, is largely a numbers game.
And if it's a numbers game, you have two options.
Number one is you just, if you're a company leader, you have to
spend all your time doing this.
that's option one.
Option two is you build and use tools to do this.
Dallas Burnett: Right.
Jason Hreha: it was at Walmart where I think the, when I was doing all
this, I had the first kind of inkling of what I wanted to end up building,
which is I wanted to build a, an automated or a semi-automated set of
recruiting tools that would allow me to, At scale, find people that kind
of fit the archetype that I want
Dallas Burnett: Hmm.
Jason Hreha: and then bring them on board.
Dallas Burnett: a great way to, to take it though.
That's because when you think about it, and you talked about,
you kinda hinted at the beginning, is that culture is so important
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: and your culture is your people, like your people.
And that what they do and how they do it ultimately is the culture, their mindset,
their shared values and all these things.
you.
you can start by bringing in people that you already know are in alignment
with that, not only with just their values, but their skillset.
Because if you bring in, if you have a high performers on the team,
you bring in somebody that's not a high performer, a mid to low
performer, it's just gonna, it's.
That's not going well.
for either party.
And so by just being able to align some of those metrics, it gives
you more of an ability, I think, to create a stronger culture faster.
Because you're bringing in people who are already getting it.
They're like, oh, they're gonna see it and go, oh yeah, totally.
Yeah, that's, I get it.
Yeah.
I'm there, versus somebody who you're having to either bring up to speed or
spend more time training on, or maybe they're just not equipped to begin.
They're just not.
It's a, round peg in a square hole kind of thing, and you're just
Jason Hreha: Totally
Dallas Burnett: there.
Jason Hreha: couldn't agree more.
. Dallas Burnett: good could.
That's a really good now.
All right, we got one more topic I wanna hit before
Jason Hreha: Okay.
Dallas Burnett: the show.
And that is this.
And we could talk for three hours.
'cause I'm in this is awesome.
It's a really good conversation.
But I, I'm very interested in, because you're a behavioral scientist and
we have a lot of leaders who are managing teams that are in the office.
We have some that are managing teams.
That's a hybrid situation.
And we have some, this management teams is completely remote.
I'm just interested and you're not, I'm not asking you to
throw shade on any of it.
They're all existing post COVID that I know.
A lot of people have moved remote.
You've been in the tech, I know Tech is, a lot of remote as well, but then
some that are, wanting people to be in, creating these spaces in the go.
you hear the stories about the Google,
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: and free lunches and the futons and ping
pong tables and that stuff.
So in your opinion, as a behavioral health science, expert, do you
see an advantage for people being together in an office environment
versus remote or virtually the same?
And then how would you say we would manage remote differently
than say a, an environment?
I'm just very curious to hear your
Jason Hreha: Yeah, so I, I think it's undoubtedly true that the
office is better than remote, right?
All, all things equal.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah,
Jason Hreha: I think the issue is that, let me just say this.
I think that offices better than remote, but remote allows a lot of companies
to hire better people than they would otherwise be able to hire in person.
Dallas Burnett: that's true.
Okay.
Jason Hreha: So if you had the ability to, get every single person in the office,
like talent, quality, talent level, Equal.
Yes, of course that's better than being like, remote.
But I think that a lot of companies unfortunately, just can't do that.
It's like you may be in, you may be in a, a second or third tier talent
city, and the people that you know are in your local market just aren't
quite at the level that you want.
But you can hire somebody from, anywhere in the world who's
at the level yet you want.
And since remote is a perk, a lot of people that you, number one that aren't
in your area or that you wouldn't otherwise be able to convince to work
for you, now you can get to work for you.
And So I think that, I think that on balance, I think remote just
makes a lot of sense for probably most companies to have at least
part of their workforce remote.
Just because once again, it's.
are you gonna be able to otherwise locally find people at the same
level to do exactly what you want?
Probably not.
but if you're somebody like Google or Meta or Apple.
where number one, you can just throw money at problems.
And number two, you have a, you're so desirable and high status as an employer.
Dallas Burnett: that's right.
Jason Hreha: I think in those situations, those companies I think
should probably all just be in person.
And they have the ability to convince, basically, not everybody,
but most people to just, Hey, listen, you wanna work for us?
You're gonna come into the office, right?
Or, Hey, cool, I know cost of living's higher in the Bay Area, we'll pay you
extra, but we want you to be here.
That makes sense for them.
But for most companies, I think that, yeah, most companies aren't
Apple, most companies aren't Google.
Most companies don't have that level of power to do that.
and don't have the pocketbooks to be able to do that.
And so for most companies, I think.
Okay.
We can get incredible people from all over the world.
They don't just have to be in our specific area.
We can hire people from, different states, different countries, and
we can just, with the whole global market as our talent market, I think
they can get much better people.
And so I'd say for most companies, remote makes a lot of sense.
the whole point of it is you can then, now you have access to so much more talent
and you can find the exact right fit and the, and significantly better people.
Dallas Burnett: I think you're right.
if I found the best person, but they're working remote, let's say we're only
gonna get 90% of their best at remote,
Jason Hreha: Sure.
Dallas Burnett: 10% if they're in person.
But if in my market I can only hire the average person for that job,
it's like you're saying, if you don't have top tier talent in your
market, then maybe they're 50%.
obviously if I get,
Jason Hreha: Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: if I get the 90% of the best, that's still 40% more
than what I'm getting in my market.
So I can see how that would be, an advantageous, move.
I just, I'm a, maybe I'm old school, but I love that connection piece.
When you talk about culture, it's, to me, it's so much
easier to build that connection.
I think about, from an employment standpoint or an employer standpoint,
we know each other, so I want to, you're going through something at
home with the kids or whatever.
I'm like, Hey, I'm, I know you, I see you at the office every day.
Whereas if you're just on the other screen, the other side of the screen
somewhere else, we have no connection.
There's just.
There's something that's different there and I just feel like
we'll relate just a little bit differently, if that's the case.
But, I would love to hear, is there things that you've seen, you've been in
the tech space, you've been at Walmart, you've been in this behavioral space.
Is there things that you've seen as a remote?
If I'm leading a remote team, is there things that you've
seen that's worked really well?
Or as a behavioral scientist, leaders could do if they're in this
environment of leading remote team?
What's some things that you've seen work really well?
Jason Hreha: number one, I think that I don't think everybody's
equally well suited for remote work.
I think that, it's even more important to pick the right
people and to vet for the right.
people.
If you have a remote team, you want people that are very self-motivated, right?
That without kind of a, without a boss kind of hovering over them
and watching their every move.
People that are just self-motivated, they're gonna follow through.
So I think, screening for that and being very intense about looking for that.
is so much more important if you're dealing with a remote team.
That's number one.
Number two is people who are like hyper social, and just really hyper extroverted.
Not always the great.
best fit, right for remote team, right?
It's just not good for them.
they'll become demotivated over time.
And so I think that, I think you really have to look for that personality match
much more intensely with a remote team.
And, so I think it just makes the recruiting process even more important and
harder when you're dealing with remote.
So I'd say that
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: the most part, I'd say that's how it will, it should impact
how you think about remote work.
That's, those are the first two things.
The next thing is in an office, I think you can be a little bit
more laissez-faire, a little bit more chill about, about standups
meetings, these sorts of things.
Just because they're built into the environment where
you're just around each other.
You're having these sa small side conversations all the time.
You're catching up with your colleagues and so you have this knowledge
transfer, this like kind of a natural knowledge transfer and natural kind of.
Dallas Burnett: Yeah.
Jason Hreha: Water cooler.
stuff,
Dallas Burnett: cooler.
Jason Hreha: you also have accountability built into it because if you're all in
the office and somebody's showing up at, an hour late every day, or they're
just like slacking off, it becomes very obvious very quickly, and they probably
will realize it very quickly and then their behavior will shift based upon that.
but with remote, you don't have that level of, the accountability layer is
often by default, a little bit lower and there's just a little bit less oversight,
just of course 'cause they're at home.
and so I think that with remote, you have to be much more mindful about
having daily standups and recurring meetings and recurring check-ins
and just like these mechanisms, like
Dallas Burnett: Mm.
Jason Hreha: just have to build a lot more of them into your company
and its culture, or else you're just not gonna get as good performance.
And you also have to have more, I think, explicit, knowledge capture
and like knowledge management, let's call it systems in place,
Dallas Burnett: Yes.
Yes.
Jason Hreha: as I just mentioned, like in, in person.
That's happening naturally.
Everybody's getting on the same page.
Everybody's picking up in these little things, but remote all of
that side chatter, all those small conversations are not happening.
And so you have to build that then into your processes.
Yeah.
Dallas Burnett: I think that's great too.
I agree with that 100%.
you need to know and build those in.
I think that's really good advice.
Very well, very good.
screening for very motivated people and maybe if you're hyper extroverted than
this, those are all very good things.
And so I, this has just been a pleasure talking to you today, Jason.
I
Jason Hreha: Amen.
Dallas Burnett: your time today.
And so we got a couple things.
Number one, tell us about your company and how people can
connect with you if they want to.
A, get your book, find out more about your company or connect
with you, how will people do that?
Jason Hreha: Yeah, so my company's called Persona.
Our website is persona talent.com.
so we do remote recruiting and staffing for companies.
we focus on non-technical roles just because we find that?
those are actually the hardest to recruit for because with a technical
role, if you're trying to hire a developer, it's pretty easy to
actually vet technical ability.
You can just look at their pass code, you can look at their past projects.
It's quite simple to determine whether or not they have the
skills that they claim they have.
But when you're dealing with these non-technical roles where it's like
a little bit fuzzier, then you're dealing with things like personality,
problem solving, ability, et cetera.
Those are very hard to measure, and that's really our expertise at the company is
putting numbers, hard numbers on these, like more fuzzy intangible skills.
And so that's persona talent.
So for any remote, non-technical roles, I do think we're the
best in the world at that.
I I think, if we're not the best in the world, we're at
least the most rigorous at that.
So I'll say that.
so there's that company.
And then, for my book's on Amazon, It's called Real Change.
I have a very weird last name.
It's H-R-E-H-A.
So my name's Jason Rhea.
If you just type my name in or type in Real Change, you'll see the book there.
the, the cover has a butterfly on it.
It's a cool cover.
I actually,
Dallas Burnett: a
Jason Hreha: I actually had the guy that did, that did, some of Adam
Grant's covers and James Clear's cover Do that cover actually.
Dallas Burnett: totally can see that.
I
Jason Hreha: yeah, yeah,
Dallas Burnett: that feel?
That's awesome.
Jason Hreha: He's the man.
Yeah.
He's the best, book, cover designer in the world.
at least from my perspective.
I love him, love his work.
I was honored that he was, he was willing to work with me.
and then I have a website.
It's the behavioral scientist.com.
I put articles up on there.
I have a newsletter, you can sign up for it.
I share thoughts.
you can also connect with me on LinkedIn.
I put a lot of thoughts on there too, and those are the best places to find me.
And, feel free to shoot me a line, shoot me an email, from my website
and be happy to talk with you.
Dallas Burnett: That's awesome.
All right, so now we always ask the guest on the last 10% to close
out the show, who would you like to hear as a guest on the last 10%?
Jason Hreha: Can you guess who I'm gonna say?
Dallas Burnett: I'm guessing it might be James Clear.
Is that,
Jason Hreha: James Clear would be amazing.
Dallas Burnett: maybe BJ Fog.
What about that?
Am I
Jason Hreha: Exactly.
That's what I was gonna say.
I was gonna say BJ Fog,
Dallas Burnett: BJ
Okay, great.
Jason Hreha: I think he's like kind of the father of modern applied behavioral
science, at least in the technology world.
So I think he's the most important person in the field.
he's absolutely incredible.
he'd be a great guest
Dallas Burnett: man.
All right, we'll have to, we'll have to get together off the show.
Maybe you can connect me.
connect us, on, and we'll see if he's got some time for the last 10%, that would be
Jason Hreha: Yeah, would love to.
Dallas Burnett: So that's great.
Jason, again, thank you for your time today and, look forward to, look forward
to checking out your book and you guys check out persona and all that he's into.
So thanks again.
Jason Hreha: Thanks for having me.