A typical day: It's 11 a.m., and I'm most of the way through posting my news for the day on the health IT site. I'm feeling a little tired, so I get up and Keurig myself a cup of coffee. I'm the kind of person who doesn't need more than half a cup of coffee to get going, but my 11 a.m. coffee is sometimes my third cup of the day.
So why do I do it?
Having three cups of coffee makes me jumpy and a little unfocused, but I'm almost never deterred. It seems impossible to be derailed from my coffee once I decide to take a break.
Charles Duhigg's "The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business," a New York Times best-seller, explains this habit and more in a simple, three-step cue-behavior-reward system — a "habit loop."
First, there's a cue that sets off the behavior (It's 11 a.m. and I'm writing my news stories for the morning). The behavior occurs (I brew myself a cup of coffee), and the reward is obtained (I feel re-energized to post the news briefs online).
My internal struggle with the Keurig isn't a big deal in the scheme of things. After too much coffee, I'm just a little unfocused. However, habits compound quickly. If everyone at Becker's did what I do every morning, our company would be a jittery mess between 11 and noon every day.
As it turns out, habit loops exist on an organizational level as well. Groups of employees repeating seemingly unrelated actions again and again can create rigid patterns of events, whether failures or successes. This can happen easily without any employee ever realizing he or she is part of a collective contribution to an ingrained organizational outcome. These organization-level habit loops can make the difference between monumental profit and monumental loss of money, reputation and — in healthcare — even lives.
Deconstructing organizational habits is an extremely important exercise — for anyone. If you're struggling, it's a great opportunity to foster success. If you're successful, it's important to understand how and why. So, what should you know about understanding habits in your organization?
1. The worst organizational behaviors can stem from "simpler" underlying systemic habits. Take patient safety as an example. It's supposed to be a number one priority, but incidents happen all the time. While it's a complex problem, maybe the number one contributing factor is as simple as daily communication habits or patterns among staff members, even if they are regularly following safety protocols.
2. Asking "why" is your most valuable tool in deconstructing habit loops. How can you decide which substitute behavior will make for a reformed habit? The secret is in analyzing the motivation behind the desired reward. Why do I drink coffee? My end-game is an energy-boosting break in between writing all morning and posting that writing online. Instead of the coffee, I should try and take a quick walk, grab some water or chat with a coworker.
3. Behavioral substitution is key. Habits are monsters to break. A better solution is to re-work the behavior that comes between a habit's cue and the desired reward. If you ask "why" enough times, you'll get to the roots of the link between habitual behaviors and their rewards. The trick then is to reform the habit loop with a more productive behavior that will return the same reward.
3. Willpower is the keystone habit for individual success. There are some complex factors at play in willpower. How and why genetic and environmental factors play in to individual willpower is not well understood. Regardless, willpower — the ability to stick with something, in spite of obstacles — is the number one predictor of whether an individual will meet his or her goals. In the same vein, organizational willpower bolsters the odds of success.
4. Planning ahead is critical to dealing with pain points. You're bound to hit a snag as you pursue a goal. The crucial step to weathering the wrench in the works is to expect the unexpected. When changing a habit is high-stakes, or even if you don't want to have to try more than once, predict what could go wrong and set out a very specific plan of what you will do when (or if, for the more optimistic mind) things go wrong.
5. Setting goals helps channel ambition and reinforce willpower. Having an idea is great, but having a plan for how you'll execute it is even better. The SMART (specific, measurable, assignable, realistic, timely) framework is great for designing goals as complex as working through organizational change or as simple as accomplishing the morning's to-do list.
6. Autonomy boosts willpower! Few things are more demoralizing than being treated like an expendable piece of a machine. Feeling like a cog greatly reduces individual willpower, while autonomy helps people feel empowered to make the "right" decision.
"It may seem like organizations make rational choices based on deliberate decision making, but that's not really how companies operate at all. Instead, firms are guided by long-held organizational habits, patterns that often emerge from thousands of employees' independent decisions," writes Mr. Duhigg.
Leaders are responsible for giving their employees the tools and incentives to act in a way that advances the organization. This is hard. The idea that willpower can break long before their habits do is the premise of Mr. Duhigg's book. However, with a proper understanding of the less obvious drivers of pervasive habits, even the tricky ones seem like a piece of cake to beat.
Note: I strongly recommend reading Mr. Duhigg's book. It's from 2012, but if you haven't already read it, it contains fabulously researched examples of habit-based personal and professional consequences, both good and bad, from individual and organizational (retail, manufacturing, healthcare) perspectives.