New week, your best self: behavioral science can help you create good habits in turbulent times
Julia Dhar
Managing Director & Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG) | Global Lead, Behavioral Science Lab
As COVID-19 continues to demand large-scale shifts in our ways of working, we are all – deliberately and inadvertently - building new behaviors, habits, and routines. Teams and organizations are embracing trends that make them more agile and adaptable. New habits are being formed and old ones falling by the wayside. Modes of teaming previously considered unworkable have become business-as-usual. Many of us are still working from home, as are our colleagues, friends and family workers. Google has announced that it will allow its staff to work from home until the end of 2020. As many of our readers will have experienced firsthand in the last few weeks, it is challenging to lead and work remotely while remaining productive and engaged. For those not acclimated to working virtually, it can be challenging to be productive on a daily basis. Moreover, remote workers face the challenge of staying connected with colleagues.
When you work remotely, it’s important to optimize productivity. When you lead remotely, it’s even more critical than usual to signal empathy and openness. However, human beings sometimes get in our own way. We might not always operate as our most rational selves, and in the current environment, it can be hard to show up as our best selves. Fortunately, behavioral science offers practical lessons for remote leaders and teams. In their tremendous 2014 Harvard Business School case study, Making stickK Stick, researchers Leslie K. John, Michael Norris and Michael I. Norton outline four steps that can help increase the adoption of desired behaviors: make a plan; make it visible and social; inject 3rd party accountability and impose costs for failure. Their research shows that applying the first two steps means people succeed in achieving their desired behavior change ~30% of the time, but when all 4 steps are used, the success rate more than doubles to 80%. Here in BeSmart, BCG behavioral economics team, we are constantly looking for ways to apply the best of behavioral science research in organizations, teams and leaders. For this Monday, and beyond, we offer you these four steps to help you be the best version of yourself, and to empower those around you to do the same:
1) Make a plan - for yourself
Commitments can cause significant shifts in enabling behavior change. Human beings seek to be consistent with our promises and are motivated to maintain a positive self image. Once we commit to a plan, we are more likely to follow through even if there are no consequences for noncompliance.
Develop a goal list, not just a to-do list – Write down your priorities and put the list in a place that is visible from your dedicated workspace. Focus on the small number of critical things that must happen, not the large number of things you can do. And cross them off - it feels good! We are constantly hearing from clients that teams are working much longer while working remotely - and we feel it ourselves. While deciding on priorities, focus on the output produced rather than the hours spent. Putting pressure on hours worked ends up creating inefficiency. When we focus on outputs, we also tend to be more innovative. Take a few moments each day to commit to what you won't do.
2) Make goals - and successes - visible and social
Creating transparency on what other people are doing is one of the most powerful ways to drive adoption of new behaviors. It’s common for individuals to conform to group behavior, and to look at the norms of a group for a reference point. It reassures us when they are making decisions that others have done the same thing and succeeded.
Develop an achievement board/appreciation mechanism - Leaders in the organization can create a culture of appreciation alongside a culture of achievement. Building moments of appreciation into workplace routines can take the form of 10 minutes in the agenda to express gratitude, sending positive feedback, or encouraging people to express their appreciation of one another. Receiving appreciation can both boost our sense of social worth and motivate us to perform better. And as management techniques go, this one is easy and free - you can start this morning!
Create operational transparency (leader’s approach) - When teams are physically dispersed, it might be difficult to know what the contribution of each team member has been. Leaders can solve this by creating full visibility into focus areas along with the names of team members assigned to those areas. When we see other members take on more tasks, we are motivated to contribute more. At the same time, leaders should strive to create a culture of transparency where employees feel comfortable letting the broader group know if they are unable to complete a task due to personal situations.
Create operational transparency (individual approach) – You don’t have to wait for your manager or leader to create the opportunity for transparency. Be transparent about what you are working on and trying to achieve with your manager or colleagues. Socialize your plan for your priority outcomes. This can also help other team members as they can see what you are doing and achieving and might use that as inspiration to achieve more themselves.
3) Be accountable to someone else
Accountability works as a social contract to overcome barriers to achieving our goals. Human beings do not want to fail in front of our peers, so we go all out to fulfill the targets we shared with them. Mutual accountability helps increase the likelihood of achieving outcomes. In addition to fulfilling our goals, staying connected with peers reduces feelings of isolation.
Peer buddy: Have a peer buddy who you commit to connect with for 30 minutes every week. Leaders can also use this model to ramp-up the learning curve of those struggling to perform by pairing them with a high-performing team member. This model will provide an opportunity to discuss progress on goals with a peer, share best practices and challenges, and hold each other accountable. It doesn't have to be a friend, someone you know well, or even someone that you necessarily like. Some of the strongest peer coaching relationships we have seen have arisen between executives who had low levels of mutual trust to begin with, and who grew close by pushing each other to grow faster and further each week.
Create a WhatsApp/Slack group: Create a broader virtual accountability group that uses the digital application to facilitate discussions about progress toward commitments. This can be used to set explicit expectations about the work that needs to be delivered. Use the platform to celebrate success and offer timely reminders to complete activities.
4) Make it meaningful - create consequences
Individuals, either consciously or subconsciously, assess how meaningful an intervention is to their own situation and self image. Determining for yourself what successful behavior change looks like is important because our emotions are influenced by the “Ikea effect”—we place higher value on something we have partially created. As Professors John, Norris and Norton show, it is not enough to have a goal, to socialize it, and to create accountability. Human beings are highly responsive to consequences. One of the foundational principles of behavioral economics is "loss aversion" - we are about twice as sensitive to a loss as we are to a similarly-sized gain. It's no surprise then that a consequence that involves the potential for "loss" or downside risk has a greater chance of success than the promise of reward.
Nominate a consequence: Invite your team members to select the consequences that will empower them to stretch themselves, while respecting an individual's agency. The right consequences for your team will not be the same as for anyone else's, and they might differ for individual's on their team. They might also be smaller than you imagine. We worked with one executive who shared his progress on his goals with his direct reports by email every week. Just the chance that he would have to report low progress was enough to keep him motivated. We have seen executive leadership teams make huge strides by competing not to be the person to bring the cake or coffee to the next leadership team meeting.
These are testing times for all of us. They are also an opportunity to reflect and regroup - on new habits that we'd like to embed and on old ones that we'd like to cast off. We hope this helps you and your organization think about how you can navigate your way through working remotely. We’d love to hear about what has worked for you. Comment below or reach out to [email protected] for more information.
Authors | Julia Dhar, Katie Rice and Sukriti Singh
Organization Design, Digital HR & Future of Work at Boston Consulting Group
4 年Great read! Developing an achievement board is a wonderful idea and is more critical than ever in these times!
Julia and team - fantastic words to live by! I would add that for the more senior leaders this is even harder. With every promotion leaders are being told that their behaviors as is are perfect and the more senior they get, the less real time feedback they get. The sum total of which leads to calcified old behaviors. So the plan making, peer accountability, etc. is even harder. The right coach can help bring those senior leaders along your path of behavioral-science-based wisdom! Thanks for teeing up the dialog!
Executive Coach & Strategic Partner
4 年Excellent advice for leaders. Thank you, Julia.
Inclusion, Talent, OD & Change Strategist
4 年Very helpful. Thank you for sharing.