Habits (th)at Work

Just finished up The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, The Art of Choosing by Sheena Iyengar and Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman to understand decision making, habit loops and environmental influence.??Why pick these up?

The Power of Habit promotes the notion that success and failure often depends on habitual behaviors influenced by our social environment and relationship with technology.?Corporate culture (what we do at work) and climate (how we feel about work) is shaped by habits promoted by leaders who define what matters most.?A striking example being Alcoa, where new CEO Paul O’Neill adopted safety to transform a company beleaguered by toxic hierarchical culture to exceptional market performance and workforce resilience.

The Art of Choosing explores cultural influences on human behavior, challenging the Western notion of freedom of choice and recommending a more strategic, informed systems approach to pivotal decisions (great TED talk, too).

Thinking Fast and Slow explores how influential our environment is on our decisions, activities and results, how external stressors (both real and imagined) motivate or undermine performance.??

A common thread between the three is The Habit Loop, a way to describe the process whereby someone gets person A to determine they want to do activity B to satisfy a perceived or real need and/or craving C through direct or indirect cues.??In different ways the authors kind of unpack the recipe for intrinsic motivation, a healthy expression of habits, as well as its unhealthy cousin, coercion.

I once had a Professor of Philosophy at college (Dr. George Ball, Whitman) who argued that institutions (like our college) did not exist.?Rather, what gives an institution meaning and existence is when enough people share and cultivate a mutual understanding of what the enterprise means (Whitman) and does, then backs up those beliefs with actions (habits).??

Those of you with kids in college may have a sense of that if you happened to visit a campus last year, with all of the buildings and statues and facilities but none of the people to bring the experience of going there to life.

Chances are your Company is adapting to a changed competitive environment:?purchasing behavior has shifted online to curb COVID transmission risk.?Perhaps your Company has further established a socially distant work environment.?Your office feels like home because it is (as it does for any people you manage or lead via TEAMS or ZOOM).?Corporate climate and cultural lines once reinforced by inspired office environments are now blurred by what home fronts evoke, not to mention the unwanted guest we’re reminded of every time we mask up.

Constituents who make any Company “happen” have experienced a kind of phase shift in their social environment, uprooted from the prior anchors of physical workspace and group dynamics.???Companies and their underlying cultures are fundamentally different now because the social cues and habits reinforcing our closely held corporate beliefs are at risk.?

Leaders and managers will do well to recognize the influence of new social cues, triggers and influencers stemming from Habit Loops unique to a remote work environment.??Consider this week’s Senate hearings featuring a Facebook whistleblower or watch Netflix’ The Social Dilemma to appreciate the network effect has on human behavior.???Who knows, between these reads and an awareness of the new environment influencing the people responsible for the existence of the company, you may be a bridge between Habits at work to Habits that Work!