From disruption to continuity
In today’s working world, change isn’t an interruption – it’s a rhythm.
Companies are constantly have to adapt to new circumstances shaped by markets, politics, consumer values and evolving workforce needs. These shifts aren’t about reacting to single events - they’re about continually recalibrating. Each new focus brings fresh goals, different pressures, and sometimes completely rethinking what “good” looks like.
But real change doesn’t start from scratch. It arrives in the middle of a thousand other things: the day-to-day demands, the culture of “this is how we do things,” the unspoken norms that shape behaviour.
So, when you ask people to act differently, you’re not giving them a clean slate. You’re writing a new line in a story that’s already being told.
What real change looks like
- We recently worked with a client and their global sales teams - high-performing teams built on confidence, assertiveness and results. However, they were now being asked to behave differently as a result of a compliance incident that had evoked a lot of extra regulatory scrutiny. It wasn’t a new sales process they needed to understand and comply with. It was help with understanding why the standards had changed, and how to succeed in a new environment.
- A major public sector legal body we worked with needed to shift focus in a different way. Their lawyers were experts in law – some had been there for 20+ years – but they were being asked to do something much harder: listen differently to victims facing a turbulent time. Show empathy. Know when to refer clients to wellbeing support. For some, that was a fundamental redefinition of professionalism.
- And then there was the client rethinking what leadership looked like across the organisation. Leadership had been associated with seniority or formal titles, but they wanted to shift the focus to everyday influence – encouraging people at all levels to take ownership, support others, and lead through action, not just hierarchy. For many, it meant seeing themselves as leaders for the first time ever and letting go of old assumptions about who gets to lead and how.
Effective change starts with behavioural insight
When you’re designing interventions or communications, it’s easy to focus on what people need to do differently. But unless you also speak to why it matters, and how it connects to what they already know, the change won’t stick.
This is why BAD uses behavioural science to shape every stage of the process – from how a message is introduced, to the small cues that reinforce it over time.
We think about how people learn, how they interpret a new direction, and how they decide whether to take it seriously.
We design for human realities: busy calendars, competing priorities, and deeply ingrained habits.
The workshops we run at the start of projects are led by behavioural strategists and designers. In them, we explore the challenges organisations face, define the behaviours they want to see, and identify the barriers standing in the way.
After agreeing on an intervention strategy, our studio team then brings these insights to life through the intervention they design and build – whether that’s a simple poster, an animated explainer, a digital learning experience or a high end interactive video drama.
Connecting the past to the future
Every new initiative, policy or purpose builds on what came before. The job isn’t to erase the past – it’s to show how the next chapter fits into the story. When we connect with that reality, people don’t just receive information: they believe it, act on it, and carry it forward.
That’s because change isn’t a single announcement. It’s a conversation that respects history, builds trust and brings people with you – one moment at a time.
And because change happens in busy teams, legacy systems, and real human contexts, that’s where behavioural science comes in.
At BAD, we bring:
- Expertise in diagnosing behavioural barriers
- Tools for designing effective interventions
- Designers who can make beautiful experiences
- Methods for measuring and sustaining change
Whether it's rethinking leadership, culture, compliance or care, we help organisations bring their next chapter to life by designing for how people truly think, feel and work.
If you're ready to build change that sticks, let’s start the conversation.
