Behavioral Selection
Behavioral Selection explicitly involves identifying and prioritizing the specific behaviors that, if adopted by your users, will reliably drive strategic outcomes and measurable success. It is a core process within the broader Behavioral Strategy discipline.
Note: On this site, Behavioral Selection is the umbrella label for a two‑step workflow: Behavior Matching to enumerate candidates, then Behavior Ranking & Selection to decide.
Key Insight
Not all behaviors are equally impactful; rigorous selection clearly identifies behaviors with the highest potential for measurable strategic results.
Example
A subscription-based business aiming to increase renewals may use Behavioral Selection to identify behaviors strongly correlated with retention, such as users engaging weekly with a key feature or sharing content regularly. Clearly targeting these selected behaviors directly improves renewal rates.
Practical Steps
- Clearly define the outcome, population, and context.
- Generate candidate behaviors (use Behavior Matching to enumerate options).
- Screen candidates using the Behavior Fit Assessment (Identity Fit, Capability Fit, Context Fit). All three must be ≥6/10.
- Select the viable behavior with the highest minimum score (tie‑break by expected outcome impact and measurement feasibility).
- Validate the selected behavior in realistic contexts before scaling (field observation + small pilots).
Heuristic: Explicitly select and prioritize behaviors that directly drive your measurable strategic outcomes.
Selection rule (keep it simple)
Behavioral Selection is intentionally constrained:
- Viability first: if any Behavior Fit Assessment dimension is <6, you are forcing, not matching.
- Then prioritize: among viable behaviors, prefer the one with the highest minimum score and the clearest line to the outcome.