Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 30 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The habit should serve the mission
— From Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
In their book Switch, brothers Chip and Dan Heath talk about change and what it takes to make it happen for the better of people, teams and processes. One of the tools to shape the path of change is forming habits.
“Habits are behavioral autopilot, and that’s why they’re such a critical tool for leaders. Leaders who can instill habits that reinforce their teams’ goals are essentially making progress for free. They’ve changed behavior in a way that doesn’t draw down the [habit doer’s] reserves of self-control.”
The authors focus on the fact that habits will form inevitably, whether intentionally or not. And they point to all of us creating lots of team habits, albeit unwittingly: “If your staff meetings always start out with genial small talk, then you’ve created a habit. You’ve designed your meeting autopilot to yield a few minutes of warm-up small talk.”
The key, and the main question for the leaders, “is not how to form habits but which habits to encourage.” And thus the authors cite the example of General William “Gus” Pagonis, who led the logistics operation for the Gulf War (Desert Storm) under President George H. W. Bush.
“Every morning, General Pagonis held a meeting that started at 8 a.m. and ended at 8:30 a.m. No great innovation there, but Pagonis made two changes to the routine. First, he allowed anyone to attend (and he required that at least one representative from each functional group be present). That way he could ensure a free and open exchange of information across the organization. Second, he required everyone to stand up during the whole meeting.”
Holding the meeting standing up ensured that everyone involved got to the point fast and in a concise manner, and then yielded the floor to the next person. The authors say, “It would have been just as easy for [Pagonis] to enshrine a two-hour, seated blabfest. What’s exciting here is not the existence of the habit, but rather the insight that the habit should serve the mission. … A stand-up meeting won’t guarantee any of that, but it will help and it’s “free”—it’s not any harder to create than the blabfest would have been.”
When looking at creating a habit that supports the change that you’re trying to make, the authors say that there are only two things to think about:
1. The habit needs to advance the mission, as did Pagonis stand-up meetings.
2. The habit needs to be relatively easy to embrace. If it’s too hard, then it creates its own independent change problem.
On this second point, let’s imagine that you’re trying to exercise more and make a habit of “going to the gym.” The Heath brothers point out that you’re only renaming the core problem. It will be more productive and faster to build a simpler habit, such as laying out your workout clothes the evening before or having a workout buddy pick you up on his way to the gym.
In sum, any behavior you select will become habitual if you stick to it. Just remember that the habit should serve the mission as you select which habit to build for optimum purposes.
ACTION
TODAY: Take one habit that you/your team members have built and analyze its effectiveness. How well is it serving your mission? Should you keep it or should you ditch it in favor of another one that better serves you?
FUTURE: When creating a new habit, you may run into opposition (whether your own—as you keep hitting the snooze button—or your team’s reluctance to change). The best way to figure out whether it serves your mission is to try it out for a period of time, say three or six months, or more, depending on your case. Make sure you can measure the results vs. the old way of doing things, so that you can have a baseline for comparison. If it doesn’t work, you’ll know it. Yet if it does work, you may have a full group of enthusiastic supporters (your team) when you see the results.
Please create the habit of sharing these daily ideas with someone who will enjoy reading them! Email, Facebook, Twitter.