Don’t start with habits, finish with them
You may have noticed that there’s a lot written about habits at the moment…
Often this focuses on the perspective that habits are the foundation on which your success is built , and therefore if you want to be more successful, you need to change your habits. The line up of habits to change is conspicuously homogeneous across many of the pieces written:
Get up earlier
Exercise more
Set aside time to plan your work
Meditate
Once we do these, we’ll get more from our day, achieve more, become more. High performance executives do these don’t you know. Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) gets up at 3.45am, so you should too.
Start with changing your little habits and big things will happen.
But realistically, this logic on its own is deeply flawed and ineffective.
Lacking the power of one
Habits are powerful in two ways.
when linked together , and
when linked to something greater.
The first point might sound like semantics, but it’s not. Getting up earlier each day is highly unlikely, by itself, to lead to any improvement in your life or career. In fact, as a recent BBC article points out, it may well be detrimental.
If combined with going to bed earlier and using your new-found morning hours to plan your day, then you might stand a chance of gaining a benefit.
But even then, this still leaves a lot to be desired .
Why? Because of the second point – it’s not linked to something greater. Not a euphoric vision of utopia, but something greater in terms of a clear major goal or the notable and specific improvement in a learned expertise (skill).
Cooking with salt and pepper
Approaching the issues of any kind of improvement by first changing your habits (a ‘bottom-up’ approach) relies on the assumption of perfect knowledge.
That is, that you know exactly which habits are the right ones to change to lead to an optimal outcome.
Yet, when it comes to the complexities of work we often need guidance as to what to change. Simply putting forward our best intentions through creating some minor habit changes is wishful thinking at best, and naïve at worst.
Starting with habits alone is akin to preparing a meal by getting out the salt and pepper and thinking ‘focus on the habit of getting the seasoning right’, with absolutely no idea about what you’re cooking, or what your guests will eat.
Whilst seasoning is no doubt important, far more important as the first hurdle is a clear direction; what are you cooking and why?
Adding in flexibility – people change their orders, so you need to change too
If we think then, that habits are most effective when linked to something greater (a clear direction), the natural question is – what is that something greater?
I don’t know about you, but my days don’t look like they did 5 years ago, let alone my life. The pace of change in the world, in our work and in our daily lives is significant.
The constant is therefore, oxymoronically , the ever-changing demands – of our customers, colleagues and teams. In this state of flux, we need to periodically review our goals, and our habits.
The balance of course, is the ability to maintain consistent focus on a few key goals, whilst keeping the presence of mind to be adaptable when needed.
What this means for our habits, is that we need to regularly take a ‘top-down’ approach. That is, a problem-solving lens that breaks down:
what it the overall objective – the work that matters most?
what are the key milestones on the way to the overall objective ?
what headline behaviours will get us there (e.g. delivering results)?
what are the habits that help make sure we produce those behaviours (e.g. ensuring we have a regular ‘roadblocks’ meeting to identify and solve issues that stop us delivering results)?
In doing so, as objectives and milestones change, so too can the habits which make us successful.
Like salt and pepper, we tweak and adjust. The constant aim is a dish your customers find delicious, not a specific amount of sodium.
Applying this to our teams
So, we’ve worked out:
how we ’re going to determine what habits we need to adopt; and
that we will need to review and change them over time .
Now we can go a step further and think about how we practically apply this when leading or working with others.
The issue of course is that humans are… only human. We only do what we’re say we’re going to do 50% of the time.
This is bad enough when its ourselves, however it can be even more damaging when it comes to managing our teams.
One quick trick to help solve this is through the power of ritualisation.
As Dr Heidi Grant (social psychologist) notes, our brain is well versed in dealing with “if / then logic”.
For example “If it’s Friday, then I need to ask for feedback on how things went this week”.
These granular, task level actions can be the process by which we, and our teams, stick to doing what we said we were going to do.
They are the habits, that, when derived from something bigger and linked together produce progress and success in the areas that matter most. Research shows ‘if/then’ planners achieve both more, and earlier.
This simple breaking down and ritualisation of things that we know we should do, helps us close the gap between intention and action.
It’s worth noting that the habit of asking for feedback also goes some way towards solving our perfect information problem and internal focus. It solicits guidance from those we serve.
Summary
Our habits then can no doubt have a significant effect on our success. The trick of course, is how we choose them.
To be most effective to be our best, our habits in the workplace, and outside of the workplace, should:
Be derived from, and link back up to, the achievement of something greater;
Be linked together to supercharge the effect;
Balance an external and internal lens;
Be informed by others when needed, to ensure we’re doing the right things
Be reviewed over time; and
Close the gap between intention and action.
In doing this we give ourselves and our teams a practical roadmap for achieving the work that matters most, even when that changes over time.
If we can do this, then we create not only habits, but a method to achieve and deliver results personally and professionally.