A story about ineffective work routines… And what to do about them
In the process of buying my first house in Norway, I realised how old-fashioned we are as human beings. We like to “do things as we’ve always done them”. We have the greatest confidence in our existing procedures. But why make it so hard when technology can make life so much easier for us?
This post is about how we can improve old work routines by understanding how our brain and emotions affect our motivation for doing things in a new way.
As mentioned, I recently bought a house. Thanks to Thomas, my real estate agent and good friend, dealing with the paperwork of buying a house was a surprisingly smooth process. Thomas invited me to his office, he “translated” the contract — and told me where to sign.
What I didn’t realise was that my smooth process is by virtue of Thomas’ extremely heavy (yet normal) procedure.
During the whole day Thomas had been occupied with filling out the contract template, emailing back and forth, printing, translating, scanning, signing, scanning, emailing, before he, at the end of the day, could enjoy a beer. And mind you, I drew a simplified version of Thomas’ normal procedure.
I had to ask poor Thomas: ”What do you think about your work routines?” (I wondered how it is to work with a system that is working against you)
Thomas’ answer was truly Norwegian: “Nei. Det er greit!” (Translated: “Nah, it’s OK!”)
WHAT?! No way is this a smart way of working. If you ask me, it is counterproductive, painful and depressing.
So why do we lean against these old-fashioned habits when technology and digital services, can help us improve our old routines? The reason: We like to do things as we’ve always done them.
Our brain will always try to take the path of least resistance
Here is the (simplified) explanation of what is actually going on in our brain:
Our brain is made up of 100 billion neurons (brain cells)
Neurons help us store and transmit information by communicating with each other. When neurons communicate frequently, the connections between them strengthen and they make up pathways. You can visualise neural pathways by imagining a well-trodden path in a field. Every time a behaviour is repeated it is the same as someone walking over the same patch of ground in that field.
Think about an activity you have engaged in throughout your life. Think about how many times you have repeated that activity or thought process. Now imagine walking over a patch of grass in a field that amount of times. Imagine the path you would create and how deeply entrenched that path would become.
Thomas’ brain has formed a deep solid neural pathway for “how to create and archive a contract”. This pathway just plays out without his conscious control. That’s why a complicated process like this
does not bother him. At all. Even though it takes a whole day, his brain takes the path of least resistance. And when his brain is repeating these routines, he gets the feeling of running on autopilot and he doesn’t need to use much energy.
The prefrontal cortex — the old rational decision maker
Now for the fun part: if we want Thomas to work in a smarter way, we need to mess with his prefrontal cortex. Because right now, the prefrontal cortex is watching Thomas’ moves in horror like “WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?!”
The prefrontal cortex is used for higher level skills like paying attention to difficult tasks or learning new routines. It requires larger amounts of energy and has to be highly motivated if it cares about changing old behaviours. When we are stressed or tired, our prefrontal cortex disengages and we are shown back down the path of habit. So when the prefrontal cortex is motivated and energized, Thomas can focus on changing his routines. When it isn’t motivated, he slip into old habits.
Motivation is the key
Now, who knows something about how to change behaviour and build motivation?
Good old Maslow!
A brief reminder for those of you who forgot:
Maslow defined the Hierarchy of Needs: The model that demonstrates that each of us is motivated by needs.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs states that we must satisfy each need in turn, starting with the basic needs (food, water, air, warmth, rest). Only when the lower order needs of physical and emotional well-being are satisfied are we concerned with the higher order needs of influence and personal development. Conversely, if the things that satisfy our lower order needs are swept away, we no longer care about the maintenance of our higher order needs.
The model has over the years been applied to different work situations like healthcare, education, sports. And recently tech!
Let me walk you through the “tech-hierarchy of needs”:
The model demonstrates that when we are introduced to a new digital service, we first and foremost care about some basic functionalities BEFORE we care about even looking at the WOW-factors — functionalities that speak to our emotions and that engage us. Our prefrontal cortex sees the benefits of changing old routines into new and smarter ones when the functional and emotional needs are satisfied.
And then, we climb to life-changing situations.
Now back to my good friend Thomas: When Thomas is introduced to a new service that can improve his old routines and make him work in a smarter way, he does not really care about it. He’d rather do things like he always have done them (his brain switches to autopilot, old pathways).
HOWEVER, if he immediately senses that this service has some basic functionalities that help him save time, simplify his routines, reduces hassles etc., he is hit by motivation and feels that this service is worth the effort.
A practical example
I used this framework when working for a Norwegian legal tech company called Lawbotics. Lawbotics offers digital B2B services that give users the power to manage legal documents in the same place, thereby improving the whole process of creating and archiving contracts. In other words: it gives people the power to improve old work routines.
The company had already launched their beta solution when I started working for them. It contained a lot of cool features that had been verified against user needs. But. Still no users?! Why?
Through dialog with the users we learned that we had neglected their lower functional needs and that they had no interest in the great functionalities we were presenting to them.
For example, when showing users the first version of the platform — which included a lot of good information and great functionalities — the feedback we got was that it was “too much”.
“Too much text. Too many colors. Too many buttons.” Simply way too much.
So we removed…
…a lot…
Why didn’t they appreciate this service with cool features?
Remember that the prefrontal cortex will only kick in if it makes A LOT OF sense to kick in. That means, if something looks like it takes too much time, the prefrontal cortex won’t bother. If something looks like it is easy to use, it’s an immediate motivation to start learning. What people, filling out a contract, actually want is very basic: to fill out the information in that contract and get on with their lives.
When the basic functionalities were in place we could focus on how to make the service engaging and less stressful for the user. Remember that the prefrontal cortex requires large amounts of energy while stress and tiredness minimise our brain’s resources.
Usually we are engaged by doing things we are familiar with. And we feel anxious when something is new to us:
Thank God for experts.
To increase engagement and reduce the anxiety that comes from doing something new is by getting support from experts. We provided simple help texts, step by step aid-at-hand if you need a bit more guidance about the input you should enter into the contract and give users the ability to request help from a legal expect.
How does an online service become life changing to a user?
Change takes time. And even more time, when up against a whole company of brains thinking “this is how we do things and always have done” — throw in stressful work days and settled cultures. The brain doesn’t know the difference between life-or-death threats and social threats. Among others, we created a thorough on-boarding programme, an internal support team and hired a psychologist. The digital service that was all about technology had now become all about culture and change.
When our brain and emotions guide technology and innovation
I have showed you a few simple examples of how we prioritised development of a digital platform by understanding how our brain and emotions affect our motivation for changing old work routines into new ones. We often forget the fact that people are mammals and that our behaviour is a product of chemicals in our brain. Taking that into account can sometimes explain why we behave in old-fashioned ways and have a hard time adopting new and smarter routines.
The point is that even though new digital services seems to solve a bunch of problems in companies. The main challenge is to trigger peoples’ motivation for changing their old routines. We can do that by satisfying lower to higher order needs. Because we know that this motivation triggers our prefrontal cortex (the old rational decision-maker) so that we can focus on building new habits, new neural pathways, that are less time consuming and more efficient.
Why is this important? An average person spends more than 90,000 hours in their lifetime at work. Time that they could spend elsewhere, doing fun and motivating tasks instead. Thomas doesn’t need to occupy his life with boring routine work that takes all his time. In fact, he can change his old routines into newer smarter ones (life changing). But he needs to take it step by step.
Sources:
https://changecom.wordpress.com/2016/05/16/maslows-hierarchy-of-needs-motivational-model/
https://drsoph.com/blog/2018/7/6/why-it-is-so-hard-to-change-the-neuroscience-madesimple
https://waitbutwhy.com/2017/04/neuralink.html
https://www.bain.com/insights/eov-b2c-infographic/
https://www.businessinsider.com/disturbing-facts-about-your-job-2011-2?r=US&IR=T
https://www.lexolve.com/
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