Behavioural Change Toolkit · Frameworks

COM-B and the Behaviour Change Wheel

You need to know why a behaviour isn't happening before you design anything

The workhorse of this toolkit. Developed by Susan Michie and colleagues at UCL. If you learn one framework, learn this one — it’s the only widely-used model that connects diagnosis to intervention choice rather than leaving you to guess.

The core claim

For any behaviour to happen, three things must be present:

B = f(C, O, M)

Remove any one and the behaviour stops. This is why training-only rollouts fail: they fix Capability while Opportunity and Motivation are untouched.

Why this matters when advising leaders

Executives default to two interventions: tell them (Education) and train them (Training). Both target Capability. In most tech and process rollouts, Capability is the smallest barrier. The real blockers are:

• Physical Opportunity — the new process takes 4 minutes longer and nobody removed anything from the day
• Social Opportunity — their manager still accepts the old format
• Automatic Motivation — 11 years of muscle memory

Bringing a leader a COM-B breakdown reframes “our people are resistant” into “we’ve built a system that makes the right thing harder.” That’s a much better conversation, and it puts the fix inside the leader’s control.

The nine intervention functions

Once you know the barrier, this tells you what kind of intervention can work.

The mapping shortcut

Physical Capability      → Training, Enablement
Psychological Capability → Education, Training, Enablement
Physical Opportunity     → Restriction, Environmental restructuring, Enablement
Social Opportunity       → Restriction, Env. restructuring, Modelling, Enablement
Reflective Motivation    → Education, Persuasion, Incentivisation, Coercion
Automatic Motivation     → Persuasion, Incentivisation, Coercion, Env. restructuring, Modelling, Enablement

Pin this. It is the single most useful table in the toolkit — go straight from your diagnosis to a shortlist.

The seven policy categories

The organisational levers that deliver the functions: communication/marketing · guidelines · fiscal measures · regulation · legislation · environmental/social planning · service provision.

In a corporate setting, translate as: comms, policy & SOPs, budget & incentives, mandated controls, contractual terms, workspace & system design, and what the shared services function actually offers.

APEASE — the filter that kills bad ideas politely

Score every candidate intervention 1–5:

Worked example — new CRM rollout

Behaviour: Account managers log every client call in the CRM within 24 hours.

Wrong response: more training, more emails, a dashboard of shame.

COM-B-led response:

1. Env. restructuring — cut the form to 4 fields; mobile voice-to-text; auto-populate from calendar (Physical Opportunity)
2. Modelling — get the top-billing AM into the design, not the firing line; publish their pipeline gains (Social Opportunity)
3. Persuasion + Enablement — the CRM feeds them a warm-lead list; reframe from reporting to receiving (Reflective Motivation)
4. Education — 1-page “what counts” card (Psych. Capability)
5. Env. restructuring — the Monday pipeline meeting runs off the CRM only. No CRM entry, no discussion. (Automatic Motivation — new cue)

Note that #5 does more than any amount of comms, and costs nothing.

When this is the wrong tool

• When the problem is emotional, not practical — a restructure where people are grieving. Use Bridges Transition Model.
• When you need a 3-minute exec pitch — COM-B is too clinical. Use Switch — Rider Elephant Path.
• When one individual is stuck — use ADKAR — Individual Change.

Do this next

→ Barrier Analysis — COM-B Interview Guide to gather the evidence → Intervention Design Worksheet to convert diagnosis into action → Behavioural Diagnosis Canvas for the one-page version

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