Intervention Design Strategies: SHIFT Stage 3
The Problem This Stage Solves
Most organizations have a default intervention for every problem. Communication-heavy cultures add more messaging. Training-heavy cultures build more courses. Technology-heavy cultures redesign the platform. These defaults are not wrong, but they address only one type of barrier. Intervention design in the SHIFT framework matches the strategy to the diagnosed barrier, not to organizational habit.
Two Core Toolkits
Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs) are the active ingredients inside an intervention. There are 93 documented BCTs in a validated taxonomy, each observable, describable, and replicable. They represent what you deliver. Examples: instruction on how to perform the behavior (BCT 4.1), prompts and cues (BCT 7.1), feedback on behavior (BCT 2.2), restructuring the physical environment (BCT 12.1).
Implementation Strategies (ERIC) are the practical delivery mechanisms. There are 73 labeled strategies that describe how you get a new way of working adopted and sustained. Examples: identify and prepare champions, create an implementation blueprint, change tools and defaults, form a coalition, provide continuous learning.
The distinction matters. BCTs are the medicine. ERIC strategies are the delivery system.
The 33 Strategy Cards
To simplify strategy selection, the SHIFT methodology combines BCTs and ERIC strategies into 33 strategy cards. Each card is color-coded to the COM-B domain it primarily addresses and includes: when to use it, what it does, how it works, which BCTs it contains, a diagnostic prompt, and whether it operates at system, team, or individual level.
Strategy selection follows directly from diagnosis. Capability barriers map to: Provide Continuous Learning, Enable Peer-to-Peer Teaching, Slowly Increase Difficulty, Run Learning Sessions. Opportunity barriers map to: Find and Equip Your Champions, Spot Your Early Adopters, Engage Influential Voices, Create a Learning Collaborative. Motivation barriers map to: Mandate the Change, Form a Coalition, Alter Incentive Structures.
Design principle: reduce friction on the new behavior and increase friction on the old one. If the target behavior is harder than the alternative, environmental redesign is the priority before any communication, training, or motivation strategy.
