Habits, work and cultures — do we need to think more about the basics?

I’ve joined a new book club.

I joined because I wanted to break a habit of just buying a book, skimming it, not digesting it and moving onto the next thing. I’m using it as an accountability tool to help me actually change as as result of what I read.

With no hint of irony the first book to read is “the power of habit by Charles Duhigg”. I’ll do it a great dis-service and summarise it in one paragraph.

Many of our actions are completely habitual. These actions kick into place in response to cues. These actions give us rewards.

Take smoking as an example. The cue could be that it’s after lunch when you usually have a cigarette. The action is to have a cigarette. The reward is the nicotine release in your body.

These habits save us mental energy. If we have to think about how to get dressed every day then that’s mental energy used. But getting dressed is habitual and we do it on autopilot. The cue is to get out of bed, the action is to get dressed and the reward is to be dressed and ready to do something. That’s a healthy habit that saves us time, effort and gives the outcome that we need. Some habits are bad though.

There’s a really nice chapter about organisations and how habits work within them. That’s something that I’m interested in. The example is where Starbucks actually train their Baristas to hide certain habits and they do it so often the new habit becomes wired in. It’s where a customer is rude to the Barista (the cue), the Barista is rude back (the action) and the outcome is bad for everyone involved. Starbucks, from day 1, acknowledges that this is a common routine for its staff and trains the Barista teams so that the action is different — they teach them how to respond so that the action becomes a courteous response.

This is what the Wolf of Wall Street did. He knew the actions he wanted to see. He worked out the cues and programmed his team to respond to them. The rewards (cash) were quick to come and the feedback loop was cemented. His team were able to relate the actions that Jordan Belfort had taught them with the instant rewards of big cash returns. Their brains were reprogrammed to relate the two together. I’m certainly not condoning what he did. But there are some interesting lessons in how he did it.

So what?

There are so many things that we do at work that we have never been taught. We have all picked up different habits so responses to cues can vary widely. In a large organisation that’s potentially 50,000 (or more) different habits that don’t always align. It’s no wonder that large organisations seem to lose that sense of common culture.

I’ve got a few habits that I know and probably lots that other people know but I don’t:

When I get into work at 8.00 am (the cue) the first task I do is to check my e-mails (the action). I know that I could spend my time better than this and do some more productive work. But I don’t.
When I’m not concentrating (the cue) I’m always looking at my phone (the action). Nothing is happening on it. Twitter’s full of people talking. My e-mails are a combination of non-urgent things. My mates are talking on Whatsapp. Nothing on my phone cannot wait. I’ve found an app that locks the phone and tells me how long I’ve gone without touching it. For someone who is driven by metrics, the reward is seeing how long I’ve managed to hold out for (the record in the day is 5hrs 47 mins if you’re interested).
I like to say yes. So I do. Then it all stacks up and I have to let people down. That’s over-promising and under-delivering. I’m practicing saying no more and becoming ruthless in prioritisation.
I twiddle my hair. I do it more when I’m stressed or tired.
I like to pop a meeting in. “We need to think about [x], can we have a chat about it”. When the meeting time arrives, I cancel it because it didn’t have a clear aim and objective to it. That links to the point above because I think I’m going to do all of these meetings plus some proper work as well as running, getting home at a reasonable hour and everything else I need to do. This is a habit that people have mixed views on. It can annoy them because I’m messing them about. But it can sometimes be received well because people have a “bonus” hour back in their day. I’m trying to change my habit away from defaulting to meetings. Meetings are expensive in many ways.
Lots more but now isn’t the time…

Thinking about others rather than just me, I’ve noticed lots in my 12 year career in the Civil Service. It’s not stuff that gets picked up formally. You’ll only be talking about it in the pub when you’re laughing about how weird work is.

Commenting on peoples work. We comment so broadly on other peoples work that the costs of including those comments exceed the benefits to that person. We’re all wasting time doing it as we do. “I think we need to take a step back and more clearly articulate the vision”. For some examples that’s a good comment. But not always. Habits don’t always get the circumstance right. I’ve noticed other companies calling it “reviewing” work. There’s a subtle nuance there.
Last minute issuing of work to ask for comments. At 4pm the e-mail comes in. “Can I have comments by 10am tomorrow please?”. The person isn’t really asking, they’re telling. If I, as a receiver of that e-mail, doesn’t have any free time until 10am then they might as well say “I’m expecting you to do this in your spare time tonight”.
Reaching straight for the solution. “This is what I need to do. I need more people to do it”. There might be other ways to achieve the same effect. Interestingly, I’ve seen this in some places in the Civil Service far more than I have others.

A conclusion

If we want to change organisational cultures, we need to be far clearer about the rules of the game. How does an organisation actually want us to do things? If scenario x happens, how does it actually want us to respond? When are customer does [x], what’s the best way to respond to that? Learning and development then needs to teach these responses and make sure they are understood. But how do you do that without taking away the feeling of autonomy and mastery? That’s a fine line.
When we talk about feedback, framing it in habits might be an easier way to do it. “Leader x doesn’t lead the way in diversity” v “Leader x has a habit of shouting down ideas that aren’t from people like him/her”. The second statement gives that leader far more tangible feedback that they can address. A good 360 degree feedback question — that I have never seen asked anywhere — could be “what do I do that really annoys/worries you and can give you give me examples of when I have done that”. Or “what bad habits does person [x] have that you would like to see them change?”
Learning and development is event based. It might teach you what a habit should be. But it does very little to reprogram the mind to create a good habit. That’s often put down to the line manger to do. But when the line manger doesn’t know what good looks like themselves or how to actually change behaviour for the long-term, they stand no chance. We might even need to acknowledge that line managers need to become behavioural change experts. The role of the organisation as a whole is to make it easy for them and to teach them how to do it. That’s something we’re not doing well.

A cultural change programme with the aim of breaking all these bad habits. That appeals to me.

Stu Bennett