Where is Your Leadership Reinforcing Unhelpful Organisational Habits and Preventing Change?

We all know, or at least I hope we do. That it’s not the organisation that changes but the people who are in them who change. That’s either because the people change their behaviour or they leave and are replaced with new team members who have a better ‘fit’.

Creatures of Habit

We are all creatures of habit, which is why implementing anything new can be a challenge. As human beings we will always revert to our established way of doing things. Unless we make a conscious effort to change and practice something new, new habits are not built.

Our habits are our conditioned autopilot and whilst we may know what these are for ourselves are we consciously aware of what these are with in the organisation.

What habits are there in your organisation that as a leader you perpetuate?

Meetings are often the easiest place to start observing organisational habits:

Do you always have meetings with start with small talk before you get into the agenda?  

Is it OK for people to turn up late?

Is there a formal agenda and do you stick to it?

Do you set a time limit for the meeting?

Other habits may be:

When something goes wrong you look for someone to blame.

All new ideas are listened to and presented to a committee.

Elements of the dress code are not enforced.

The question when introducing something new is to decide which current habits are helpful and which are disruptive.

Signposting Change

What I see most organisations doing if they want a change in behaviour is make a statement that is generic such as, more customer focussed, or celebrate success, or value our people more, or more efficient…

This is great for pointing out the direction of travel, however what people need is more specific tangible instructions on what to do differently.

You may have the best strategy in the world, but if you haven’t considered the behaviour(s) that are required to support it you may not succeed.

Worse still if those behaviours are not present in your organisation, you can be sure the strategy will fail.

Building new Habits

If you are in a position where you are about to lead a change project or are about to implement something new here are 3 steps to take:

1. Identify the 5 most important routines (habits) that will enable the strategy to succeed? Get really specific about what these need to look like.
2. Consider what current organisational habits will support you and identify those that will limit you.
3. Then identify what specifically needs to change so you can clearly direct people on what is required.

I want to stress here this is about keeping things simple. If it’s over complicated you’re going to have trouble communicating with clarity. If there are too many changes for people to focus on behaviourally they’ll either give up or choose one that is less important for you and the change initiative.  

If you are struggling to get your head around this feel free to give me a call.

I can also recommend a great book on change management: Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath. They also have a very good website: www.switchthebook.com/resources

 

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”

Peter Drucker