Continuously improving habits

(logo whooshing) - Hey there, welcome back. In this module, we're going to continue our discussion of habits by focusing on how we might go about attacking bad habits from an individual and organizational perspective. Well, specifically, by the end of this module, you'll understand the best way to modify habits at both the personal and organizational level. Okay, well, in our last module, we learned how habits consist of a cue, routine, and reward. And we also learned about keystone habits, which as a review, are small changes or habits that people introduce into their routines that unintentionally carry over into other aspects of their daily lives or work. From there we learned how Alcoa's keystone habit of improving employee safety managed to help transform all aspects of their business in less than a year. Now, this is because the only way to get to zero safety incidents was to make a radical change to all aspects of their business. In other words, focusing everyone on safety so intensely created a ripple effect into just about every other Alcoa process, which in turn helped turn the company around. And while these success stories are always nice to hear, many of us are left wondering what to do about those bad habits we may not be so proud of. Now, these bad habits may be at the personal level, but there's a good chance that the organization you work for may have some bad habits of their own to deal with. That's the bad news. The good news is there's hope. You see, while it's unlikely any of us will ever be able to totally eliminate our own bad habits, there are ways to modify or change them. You see, neuroscientists have found the most powerful aspects of the habit loop are actually the cue and reward. So, for example, let's say you have a bad habit of eating sugary junk food in the afternoon while in chat with colleagues. Let's also say this occurs around 3:30 p.m. since that's when you and your work friends take your afternoon break. So in this example, the time of day and meeting coworkers in a break area near the candy likely acts as the cue. Let's then say the reward you believe you receive is the yummy taste and chemical kick you receive from the junk food. And while the food likely does play an important part in the reward process, you decide to run an experiment. Well, instead of eating junk food, you decide to enjoy a healthy fruit smoothie. You also make it a point to sit down at a table with some of your favorite coworkers for a quick visit like you've always done. What you discover is it only takes a few days to not miss the junk food since in the end the best part of this habit loop seem to be how you got to visit with your friends. So while eating junk food was indeed one aspect of your old habit loop, it was easily replaced with another sweet but healthy food since the real reward you had been seeking was fellowship and not just a short-term sugar kick. But what about at the organizational level? Can bad organizational habits be modified? Well, let's say that you feel your leadership team has far too many meetings. In fact, let's say upon examination, you realize that you and your leadership team spend close to 50% of your work week in meetings, giving you very little time to do any of the work you talk so much about during these meetings. Now, my guess is many of you are smiling right now since you feel like you have too many meetings yourself or know of people that do. Well, while every situation is different, let's say you work to identify the cues and rewards of all these meetings. Now, the cues may be a certain time of the day, week, month, or year. Or perhaps the cue could be before a certain event or a problem that triggers worry and anxiety. Let's then examine what the rewards or perceived rewards of these meetings could be. Or perhaps the general manager of the plant feels the need to have this many meetings in order to feel in control of the business. Or perhaps he or she calls these meetings as a way to head off problems before they get out of control. Again, there could be many different cues and rewards for a problem like this. But like we mentioned earlier, we don't need to actually change the cue or rewards. Instead, what we need to do is attempt to recognize what they are so that we can focus on changing the routine aspect of the habit loop. So, in this example, one potential experiment could be to replace one meeting with a scheduled Gemba walk by each leader throughout the workplace. Well, for those that don't know, a Gemba walk is a planned walk throughout the Gemba, or the place the work is done, allowing leaders to find out what's really going on by observing and asking questions. If this experiment is successful, the leaders of the business can still leverage the same cue while also receiving the same reward they were seeking with the meetings they were having. But now instead of being locked away inside of a boardroom, they're actually spending more time on the Gemba or the place the work is done. Now with this said, there was one extremely important piece of advice that we'd like to share with you as you attempt to modify a bad habit at the personal or organizational level. Don't do it alone. You see, habits are much easier to change in groups. Now, people may know or feel they know that they can do something, but emotionally there's going to be times that person needs the support of others. In fact, this is part of the reason the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step process relies so much on group meetings and personal accountability partners. In the end, the AA process is all about habit modification. But obviously it's not easy. So most of the success stories from AA have one thing in common. They didn't do it alone. So, in summary, the key to modifying any habit is to first recognize the cues and rewards of these habits, allowing you to experiment with replacing the routine with something better for yourself and/or your organization. Now, with all this said, as long-time lead thinkers know, and we explore in many other Gemba Academy courses, identifying, working to, and attempting to constantly improve standardized work is an important aspect of any culture of kaizen. Now, when strong and consistent standards are in place, it's much easier to develop and reinforce excellent working habits. Of course, again, since standards are meant to be improved, there may be times standards need to be updated. So when you find people resisting making changes or improvements to standards, be sure to remember how habits are nothing more than cues, routines, and rewards. Also, don't forget that the cue and reward don't need to change so long as the routine does. Okay, and that wraps up this module. We hope you'll try to continuously improve habits in your life and together with the people in your organization. Now, in our next module, we're going to dive even deeper into some practical ways leaders can positively impact the people around them. So we'll speak to you soon.