Date · Friday, 8 May 2026, 09:00 CEST
Hosted by · WHO
Session page · UNOG learning
Speakers
Combining insights from behavioural science and practical HR advice, this session offers science-based steps for achieving professional (and personal) goals. Participants are first introduced to the simple but powerful COM-B (Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour) framework for understanding barriers that stand in the way of achieving career-related goals. The session focuses on evidence-based steps for overcoming them, using the EAST (Easy, Attractive, Social, Timely) framework, drawing on research on habits, effective planning, social support and more.
Key takeaways
- Behaviour is driven by both System 1 (automatic, habitual) and System 2 (conscious, deliberate). Tools that target only conscious motivation, information, training, willpower, don’t reach System 1 and therefore don’t change habits.
- Use COM-B as a diagnostic: when a goal isn’t happening, identify whether the bottleneck is Capability, Opportunity, or Motivation. and address that specific element. Don’t default to assuming motivation is the problem.
- The environment is more powerful than willpower. Small frictions can stop a behaviour entirely; small reductions in friction can restart it. Design your context for the behaviour you want.
- Career goals only become executable when they are specific actions: “network more” is not an action. “Reach out to one person every Tuesday” is.
- Social commitments with short time horizons are one of the most effective tools for closing the intention-action gap. Tell someone what you’ll do this week, and ask them to check in.
- Planning helps. but it must be specific: write down when you will act, where, and what you’ll do when the expected obstacle arises. Vague plans are easy to cancel.
- The planning fallacy makes us chronically overconfident about what we can fit in. Anticipate barriers before they arise, not after.
Tiina Likki
Tiina opened the session by grounding the audience in the conceptual foundation of behavioural science: the dual-process model of the mind. Building on Kahneman’s work, she explained that the brain operates via two systems, System 2 is deliberate, effortful, and relatively accurate; System 1 is fast, automatic, and prone to shortcuts. The central insight is that organizations and policy have historically been designed as if people always operate on System 2: provide information, expect rational action. But most daily behaviour runs on System 1, and tools that only target conscious motivation, training, information campaigns, willpower, simply don’t reach it. She illustrated this with a striking example: experienced judges make measurably different decisions right before lunch, when blood sugar is low. Even trained professionals are not operating on pure System 2.
From there she introduced the COM-B model as the session’s main diagnostic framework. For any behaviour to occur, three things must be in place simultaneously: Capability (mental and physical), Opportunity (physical access and social environment), and Motivation (both conscious attitudes and unconscious habits and emotions). The practical value is diagnostic: when a goal is not happening, identify which element is actually the bottleneck. She flagged Opportunity, especially the social and physical environment, as frequently underestimated. Changing the environment can do what willpower alone cannot.
She then walked through the EAST framework, four principles for making behaviour change more likely. On Easy: even tiny frictions have outsized effects. Her own example: she completely stopped buying a daily pastry simply because her new office added two minutes of walking distance. The lesson is to reduce friction for behaviours you want and add it for habits you want to break. Pre-scheduling a recurring calendar block eliminates the weekly cognitive overhead of re-deciding when to fit in an activity. On Attractive: humans systematically discount the future and prefer instant rewards, which is why long-term goals lose to short-term pleasure. The remedy is to create rewards along the journey, through temptation bundling (pairing a pleasurable activity with a less enjoyable one), through visual cues in the workspace, or through deliberate disincentives (committing to donate money to an unwanted cause if a goal is not met). On Social: we are wired to follow the behaviour of those around us, evolutionary, not irrational. The practical move is to convert a private intention into a social commitment with a short time frame, and to ask someone to check in. “I will shift careers in two years” is too diffuse; “I will reach out to someone by Friday” is trackable. On Timely: behaviour is easiest to change at transition points, moving house, starting a new role, a period of disruption. New habits take hold better when anchored to an existing routine. Reminders help, but timing matters: too early they are ignored, too frequent they become noise.
She closed the transcribed portion by introducing the intention-action gap, the gap between stated intentions and actual behaviour, illustrated with a flu vaccine study in which adding a single planning prompt (writing down the specific day and time you intend to act) raised vaccination rates by four percentage points. She then began discussing the planning fallacy: the systematic tendency to underestimate how long things will take, how much effort they will require, and what obstacles will arise, even when past experience consistently shows our plans overrun. The session ends here in the available transcript.
Tina Stochmal
Tina translated each theoretical principle into career-specific action, drawing on her 17 years in UN recruitment to ground the frameworks in the lived experience of job seekers and professionals navigating the UN system.
On Easy: large career tasks feel overwhelming in their current form, and that is precisely why they don’t get started. The fix is to reduce them to their smallest executable unit. Instead of “update my CV”, which already sounds like a weekend project, use AI tools for one specific section at a time. Instead of “network more”, an abstract ambition, not an action, commit to reaching out to one person every Tuesday.
On Attractive: job applications in particular risk becoming what she called “a toxic relationship.” After repeated rejections in a tough market, the process loses its pull. Her advice is to reframe: you are not just applying, you are positioning yourself for something that could shape your career. Pair the application with a small reward. Turn a LinkedIn update into a personal brand exercise that has its own satisfaction. The UN job market is difficult right now, she said this directly, but the strategy is to make the activity itself more rewarding, not to wait for outcomes to restore motivation.
On Social: career development is typically treated as a private, solo pursuit, and that isolation makes it harder. Sharing experiences, including failures, normalises the process. Becoming a mentor or mentee creates accountability in both directions. Telling someone “I’ll do a mock interview this week” makes you measurably more likely to follow through, because you anticipate being asked how it went.
On Timely: there is no perfect time, the time is now. She was direct. Update your CV immediately after completing a project or receiving positive feedback, while the memory is still vivid. Don’t leave applications to the last day. And for those facing the current UN restructuring: this disruption, difficult as it is, is also a moment of transition, which is, behavioural science tells us, exactly when habits are most open to change.
On the intention-action gap: online corporate learning completion rates can be as low as 4%. The culprit is usually not motivation but relevance, training that feels disconnected from daily work doesn’t stick even when people intended to complete it.
Frameworks and models
| Name | What it stands for | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| COM-B Model | Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour | Diagnostic for any behaviour that is not happening: all three components must be present simultaneously. Most stalled behaviours are misdiagnosed as motivation problems when the bottleneck is actually opportunity (the environment). Use to identify the actual bottleneck before designing an intervention |
| EAST Framework | Easy, Attractive, Social, Timely | Four principles from the Behavioural Insights Team for designing the conditions that make a behaviour more likely. Use after COM-B has identified the bottleneck. Pick at least one move per principle for any goal you want to make stick |
| Dual Process Model (background concept, no separate framework page) | Kahneman’s System 1 (fast, automatic) vs System 2 (slow, deliberate) | (Considered for promotion to a framework page but not promoted: this is foundational background that is well-documented in Kahneman’s “Thinking Fast and Slow” and broader cognitive-science literature. The implication, that interventions must target System 1 not just System 2, is integrated into the COM-B and EAST pages.) |
| Intention-Action Gap (concept, no separate framework page) | The documented gap between stated intentions and actual behaviour | A universal phenomenon. (Considered for promotion to a framework page but not promoted: it is the problem that the COM-B and EAST pages exist to solve. The closure mechanisms, planning prompts, environmental design, social accountability, well-timed reminders, are absorbed into the EAST page.) |
| Planning Fallacy (concept, no separate framework page) | The systematic tendency to underestimate time, effort, and obstacles | (Considered for promotion to a framework page but not promoted: this is a Kahneman/Tversky cognitive-science finding rather than an actionable framework. The implication, build buffers and identify barriers in advance, is integrated into the EAST and SMARTEER Goals pages.) |
Resources
| Resource | What it is / What it’s for | Link |
|---|---|---|
| Career Tips Thursday | Regular inter-agency series of career advice sessions | learning.unog.ch/career-tips-thursday |
| Career Transition Series | Inter-agency programme supporting career transitions | learning.unog.ch/career-transition-series |
| Future Ready Managers | Inter-agency programme for managers | learning.unog.ch/future-ready-managers |
| Switch, Chip and Dan Heath | Book on behaviour change, structured around the Rider (rational), Elephant (emotional), and Path (environment) analogy | heathbrothers.com/books/switch |
| Atomic Habits, James Clear | Widely recommended book on habit formation and the habit loop | jamesclear.com/atomic-habits |
| Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg | Book on the science of habit formation | charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit |
| How to Change, Katy Milkman | Book by the researcher behind temptation bundling and other evidence-based behaviour change strategies | katymilkman.com/book |
| Good Habits, Bad Habits, Wendy Wood | Research-backed book on the context-dependency of behaviour and habit formation | dornsife.usc.edu, Wendy Wood |
| Think Small, Owain Service & Rory Gallagher | Book by Behavioural Insights Team founders on applying behavioural science to achieve personal goals | bi.team, Think Small |
| Choicology, Katy Milkman (podcast) | Podcast on the science of decision-making and behaviour change | katymilkman.com/podcast |
Last updated 2026-05-10.