What Sherlock Holmes knew about behavioral change long before scientists did.
by Tijs Besieux, PhD
In the late 19th century, the detective Sherlock Holmes came to life in the novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
When solving crimes, Sherlock Holmes focused on three things specifically to answer the question “Who did it?”
Means. Motive. Opportunity.
Let’s say Jack, who was very envious of his brother’s lifestyle, threw his brother off a steep cliff while hiking together in a remote mountain range with no one in sight.
Means: Jack could push his brother using blunt force.
Motive: Jealousy sparked a desire to get rid of his brother.
Opportunity: They were hiking together near a steep cliff in a remote area with no witnesses.
If Jack were not strong enough, he might not be able to give his brother the fatal push. If Jack were not envious of his brother, perhaps he would have no desire to get rid of him. And if they were not hiking together near a steep cliff, there might be no right time and right place for Jack to commit the crime.
And so, Sherlock Holmes applied rigorous analysis to uncover the root causes of a person's behavior by collecting data on the means, motive, and opportunity.
Fast forward almost 50 years, and psychologist Kurt Lewin published a “scientific” formula to understand, and thus potentially influence, behavior. I’m putting the word scientific between quotation marks here because Lewin’s formula for behavior was not derived from the scientific method as we know it today in organizational behavior. Think of it as a proposition shaped by years of inquiry and contemplation, rather than a theory built through hypothesis testing, experimentation, and falsification.
B = f (P, E)
Although rather brief, when unpacking Lewin’s formula, one finds plenty of value. B stands for Behavior, meaning an observable and measurable act; f stands for ‘a function of’; P stands for the person’s individual characteristics, such as needs, motives, traits, values, and abilities; and E stands for Environment, meaning the external social, physical, and situational context in which behavior occurs. In other words, Lewin proposed that one’s behavior is a function of one’s personality and environment. The word "and" is crucial here.
This explains why a star soccer player suddenly performs below average after transferring to a new team. This explains why a kid who is regularly bullied at one school gradually belongs to the popular group after switching schools. And this explains why an employee who seems to uphold the highest standards of integrity commits fraud to meet quarterly targets after the company introduced a new, more aggressive bonus system.
The ‘Lewin formula’ is still highly regarded in the community of behavior change practitioners, and I believe rightfully so. To me, Kurt Lewin's major contribution to the field of behavior change lies in the formula's ability to decouple a person from their behavior. This insight, that you are not your behavior, allows for a different kind of dialogue, for instance, when providing feedback.
For instance, “you behaved in a way that frustrated our customer” is different from saying “you’re rude and that hurts customer satisfaction”. Feedback on one’s person (“you are...”) can be way more intimidating and will often trigger defensive responses. While feedback on behavior (“you did...”) creates a space between who you are as a person and how you behaved in a specific context. It offers a different perspective for gaining a deeper understanding of why someone behaved in a specific context, and perhaps how to change that context so that behavior change ultimately follows.
That said, the Lewin formula falls short on two accounts. It lacks specificity (Person and Environment are loosely defined) and lacks a scientific underpinning that helps practitioners move from understanding the root causes of behavior to designing impactful interventions that actually change it.
That’s where Professor Susan Michie comes to the rescue, 75 years after Kurt Lewin proposed his B = f (P, E) formula and 124 years after Sherlock Holmes applied the ‘Means, Motive, Opportunity’ lens to solve crimes.
In 2011, Susan Michie, together with Maartje van Stralen and Robert West, published a paper in Implementation Science titled “The behaviour change wheel: A new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions.”
This publication, I would argue, has become the bedrock of an evidence-based approach to understanding and changing behavior, as it introduced the now-famous COM-B model, which states that Behavior results from three root causes: one’s Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation.
With over 17,000 citations and millions of reads (in a world of mega social media 17,000 ‘reposts’ may seem unimpressive but in the scientific community this is the equivalent to Lionel Messi posting a photo online while holding the World Cup trophy seconds after winning it), the COM-B model has become the standard language for behavior change practitioners to measure behavior, understand its root causes, and implement interventions to change behavior.
The COM-B model offers two major ‘upgrades’ as compared to Lewin’s formula. First, it provides depth and specificity to the root causes that drive behavior, being Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation. Second, the COM-B research stream offers a plethora of evidence-based interventions (often referred to as the ‘change wheel’) to achieve effective behavior change by addressing its underlying root causes.
In homage to Kurt Lewin, one could rewrite COM-B as the following formula:
B = f (C, O, M)
Where continuous interaction and feedback loops between Capability, Opportunity, and Motivation are implied.
Now let’s explore the definitions of these three root causes, and to illustrate, I’ll provide an example of how one team at a bank is more likely to engage in unethical behavior than another.
(1) Capability
Capability is the individual's psychological and physical capacity to perform the behavior in question. It splits into two sub-components. Physical capability is the bodily skill, strength, stamina, or dexterity required to execute the behavior, having the physical wherewithal to actually do the thing. Psychological capability is the knowledge, cognitive skills, comprehension, and capacity to engage in the necessary mental processes, understanding what to do, why it matters, and how to reason through the decisions involved. Capability is not generic intelligence or competence; it is specific to the behavior at hand. A leader might be highly capable in financial analysis but lack the psychological skills (for example, self-awareness, communication techniques, emotional regulation) to deliver difficult feedback effectively. Capability deficits are addressed primarily through training, practice, and education, building the skill or knowledge directly.
(2) Opportunity
Opportunity is everything external to the individual that makes the behavior possible or impossible, the environmental and social conditions surrounding the person, independent of their internal capacity or desire. It also splits into two sub-components. Physical opportunity refers to the environmental and material resources available, including time, money, location, organizational systems, tools, prompts, and physical access. Social opportunity refers to the interpersonal and cultural context: norms, expectations, role modeling by others, and the prevailing attitudes of one's social or organizational group that license or discourage the behavior. A manager may have the skill and the will to delegate more, but if the organizational culture punishes stepping back as a sign of weakness, social opportunity is constraining the behavior. Opportunity deficits are addressed by changing the environment or restructuring the social context, not by trying to convince or train the individual.
(3) Motivation
Motivation is the internal set of brain processes that energizes and directs behavior, not just wanting to, but the full mechanism by which a behavior is selected and prioritized over competing options at the moment of action. It splits into reflective motivation (conscious, deliberate processes: intentions, goals, plans, beliefs about consequences, values tied to identity) and automatic motivation (processes that operate without conscious deliberation: habits, impulses, emotional reactions, and reinforcement built up through repetition).
This distinction matters in practice: a leader can hold a strong, sincere intention (reflective motivation) to listen more in meetings, yet still interrupt out of ingrained habit (automatic motivation) because the reflexive process overrides the deliberate one in the moment. Motivation deficits are addressed differently depending on type: reflective motivation through reframing, goal setting, or making consequences vivid; automatic motivation through repetition, cueing, environmental redesign, or emotional and associative interventions, since automatic processes do not respond well to rational persuasion alone.
Together, the model's premise is that behavior (B) occurs only when all three are sufficiently present at the same time and place; a deficiency in any one is enough to block the behavior, which makes COM-B useful as a diagnostic filter before designing an intervention.
Let’s apply the COM-B model to understand why one team in a bank might commit unethical behavior by mis-selling—defined as selling a product that doesn't genuinely fit the customer's needs—while another does not.
A quick aside on Sherlock Holmes: his detective framework maps onto COM-B with surprising precision. Means is close to Capability, whether someone has what it takes to act. Opportunity is, well, Opportunity, the external conditions that make the act possible. Motive is Motivation, the internal force that drives someone to act in the first place. Holmes was running a behavioral diagnostic nearly a century and a half before behavioral scientists gave it a formal name and an evidence base.
Now, imagine two regional sales teams at the same bank. Which team is more likely to start mis-selling?
Team A
The team has just missed its quarterly target for the third time in a row, and a new low-cost competitor is chipping away at its client base. Every Monday, the manager runs a short huddle where the team flags any deal that doesn't clearly serve the customer's actual need, while it's still in progress, before it actually closes. People interrupt each other in meetings to raise concerns; nobody seems to flinch when they do. There's a shared belief on the team, repeated often enough that it's become a kind of shorthand, that the bank exists to help customers grow, and that a healthy, durable business follows naturally from that, not the other way around. The manager regularly invites the whole team to a collective customer call, where everyone listens in on a real conversation to better understand the customer's needs. Afterward, the team works together to figure out how to deliver on that. The office sits one floor below the executive suite. Leadership walks past several times a day, deals are discussed in the hallway, and compliance drops in with little notice. The KPI dashboard ranks team sales, and the products on offer are the same complex, long-horizon instruments the rest of the bank sells, the kind where a bad fit for the customer might not surface for a year or two.
Team B
The team has missed its quarterly target three times in a row, too, and faces the same new competitor undercutting on price. The manager has an open-door policy in name, but the operating mantra everyone repeats is "don't bring me problems, bring me solutions." Junior staff who've raised concerns about a colleague's sales tactics in the past got a flat "deal with it" in response, so now they don't raise much of anything. Selling the most has become shorthand for being good at the job; the top sellers get the recognition, the praise, and the promotion track. The office is two hours from headquarters, in a satellite location; compliance visits once a quarter, if that. The KPI dashboard ranks individuals by volume sold, and the products are the same complex, long-horizon instruments where the downside to the customer only shows up well after the sale closes.
Applying the COM-B model, it becomes clear that Team B is more likely to engage in unethical behaviors, such as mis-selling, than Team A. A leadership mantra that punishes raising problems has taught the team that silence is safer than honesty (Opportunity, social). Distance has quietly switched off the everyday visibility that might otherwise catch a problem early (Opportunity, physical). Quarter after quarter of missed targets, sharpened by a competitor cutting prices, has put real strain on the team, and a culture that fuses sales volume with self-worth has transformed that strain into a clear desire (Motivation, reflective, and automatic). A product whose potential harm to the customer only surfaces much later removes the one signal that might have stopped someone in the moment, dulling the team's ability to even recognize what they're doing as harmful (Capability, psychological). Capability, opportunity, and motivation factors have all aligned, creating a perfect storm for unethical behavior.
What's worth noting is that these are, plausibly, the same kind of people as Team A. Drop them into Team A's context, with a norm that ties selling back to genuinely helping the customer, a faster feedback loop between a bad sale and its consequences, and everyday visibility from leadership, and there's no obvious reason to expect different conduct. The unethical behavior isn't a property of the individuals. It's a property of the system they're standing in.
Now, 139 years ago, Sherlock Holmes laid the foundation that behavioral scientists would later build on to measure behavior, uncover its root causes, and ultimately implement interventions to make behavior change stick.
When I work with clients to enable customer-first leadership, I apply the COM-B lens to create a vantage point that allows the company to see (i) where leaders currently stand on customer-first leadership behavior, (ii) the contextual root causes that drive and sustain current leadership behavior, and (iii) where the company needs to implement change to make customer-first leadership the ‘easy’ thing to do.
Sherlock Holmes would have known it all along.
Sources:
Edmondson, A. C., & Besieux, T. (2021). Reflections: voice and silence in workplace conversations. Journal of Change Management, 21(3), 269-286.
Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. McGraw-Hill.
Michie, S., Van Stralen, M. M., & West, R. (2011). The behaviour change wheel: a new method for characterising and designing behaviour change interventions. Implementation science, 6(1), 42.
Scholten, W., deVries, F., & Besieux, T. (2022). A better approach to avoiding misconduct. Harvard Business Review, 100(5-6), 104-111.