Why you should know about BJ Fogg

One of the recent breakthrough ideas in human behavior comes out of Stanford University. In 2007 Professor B.J. Fogg began teaching what became known as “the Facebook Class.” Student in Fogg’s class developed apps for Facebook and Zinga resulting in products that made students wealthy overnight. (To see Fogg in action to to www.bjfogg.com and watch the two imbedded videos on his front page or watch his TED talk on Tiny Habits.) Fogg’s insight comes, not from technology but from the behavioral sciences. His insights are so powerful that last month a friend and co-worker of mine in Boulder flew to California to attend Fogg’s Behavior Design Bootcamp at Fogg’s home in Northern California. She said the $3K tuition was more than worth it. Why?

Fogg posits that all behavior is a product of MOTIVATION plus ABILITY plus a TRIGGER—all at the same time. This simple formula is profound it its applications. Take a look at Fogg’s diagram. To study it is to understand it.

• The two vectors are MOTIVATION and ABILITY
• A trigger is an invitation to act to which I can say “yes” or “no”
• It appears that I have to be highly motivated to do really hard things
• It appears that although I need a minimum threshold of MOTIVATION, I don’t need to be that motivated to accomplish something that is easy to do
• There is a threshold to MOTIVATION and ABILITY below which TRIGGERS are ineffective.

To illustrate Fogg uses the illustration of your cell phone ringing—a TRIGGER to respond. Sometimes the phone rings when we are in a meeting or in the shower so although we received a TRIGGER and have the MOTIVATION to answer the phone, we lack the ABILITY to answer the phone. At other times the phone rings and although we have the ABILITY to answer we just don’t have the MOTIVATION to slide that little bar to the right. For a behavior to happen, TRIGGER, MOTIVATION, and ABILITY must happen at the same time.

• If you have the MOTIVATION and ABILITY but there is no TRIGGER (e.g. the phone does not ring) nothing happens
• If you have a TRIGGER and MOTIVATION but no ABILITY nothing happens
• If you have a TRIGGER and ABILITY but no MOTIVATION nothing happens

So what are some practical applications to kingdom ministry?

Now let’s think about evangelism. If you don’t think “Hard to do” evangelism like door-to-door cold-calling, beach evangelism, initiating a gospel conversation about Christ isn’t difficult you’ve never done it. Most of God’s people will do hard evangelism, with somebody else, as part of their training (Evangelism Explosion, Billy Graham training, Cru’s 4 Spiritual Laws training, etc). They have just listened messages on the lost-ness of people and their faith is buoyed up by the others in the training class. They now have the ABILITY to share their faith along with the TRIGGER (“OK we are going to pair up and go to the mall with this spiritual interest survey. Let’s pray….”). And it’s a great day. God’s people have shared their faith and perhaps the church even saw some people trust Christ. The problem is that although these folks now have the ability, they may never again have the motivation to do something that uncomfortable and hard. The few may continue but the majority will not. So what do we do?

What if your church offered different evangelistic strategies all along the “Activation Line” so that everyone could do something at all times…in season and out of season? So even when a person’s motivation (or could we say “faith”) to talk about spiritual things was very low, he or she could still initiate a small act of kindness that might lead to future engagement at another time…or even with another Christ-follower. So what is something easy? Plato said, “Be kind. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle.” Jesus said, “Whoever receives one of these little ones, receives me and whoever receives me, receives him who sent me.” Jesus took note of the widow’s mite, the boy’s lunch, the faith that was only the size of a mustard seed. Mother Teresa said, “Small deeds with great love change the world.” The big idea here is that every Christ-follower could do something at some time to advance kingdom conversations. To do this we must have several different options along the activation line for people to engage in. Could your church design ways of engaging people in spiritual conversations all along the activation line?

My advice: Get to know the big ideas of BJ Fogg.