95% Of Your Day

I'd like you to do me a favour. When you get home this evening, just before you go to sleep I'd like you to look back on your day and ask yourself the following question: How much of today did I deliberately, consciously decide on what I'm going to do and, how much just happened automatically? Likelihood is you'll find around 50% to 95% of your day consists of automatic behaviours that don't demand your concentration, they just happen automatically, we could call these behaviours habits. Old habits are things like your repeatable routine for getting out of bed each morning. New habits are things you may have just learnt and repeat, for me a new habit is video blogging.

So What?

Now this matters because when it comes to changing behaviours in organisations we tend to focus our effort on what appeals in a rational argument i.e. tell people what to do, persuade them of your argument's merits and people should follow the advice delivered. Unfortunately most of what we do isn't governed by this kind of clear thinking, rather it consists of habits already formed by our past experience (something that is very helpful, allowing us to focus our minds on those things that matter most to us at that moment). 

Organisational Resilience

So, next time you're looking to produce an intervention, perhaps resources aren't best committed to cogent arguments, rather they should be directed toward asking what are our existing organisational habits and how do we modify or build new desirable habits? 

Sources

If you're interested in habit I recommend the following sources:

Charles Duhigg: The Power of Habit https://charlesduhigg.com/the-power-of-habit/

Nir Eyal: Hooked https://www.nirandfar.com/hooked

BJ Fogg https://www.behaviorgrid.org/