In my previous post, we talked about Changing our Habits, to be able to successfully make any real impact with your transformation change initiatives.
Let us review how we can make these habit changes really possible and sticky.
In his book, The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg, talks about why habits exist and how they can be changed. He talks about how changing our habits can be done and how we can start to think scientifically, which would help us in our large scale transformations.
Critical steps for Changing our Habits
As a first step, the author talks about looking for the Cues which are the starting point for the Routine/Habit, that you wish to change.
But possibly the habits that you need to change, are mostly the KEY Habits, which are really required for your Transformation.
But this is where most transformations are stuck ! as you and your teams cannot seem to change these Habits. So you need to identify these routines/habits.
Then you would need to find out what is the Reward that you are getting from this routine/habit. The reward can take various forms and you may need to be able to articulate the same very clearly.
Here’s a Common Scenario to reflect –
Are you asking for Status reports – because you have to simply share information with your boss or you are not confident about your teams capability or you need to take an executive decision, etc.?
Discovering your Triggers and Rewards is the KEY to changing your Habits!
So if you can see that your team is not doing peer reviews, not running unit tests, or not merging their code base continuously, and you want to CHANGE this Habit. It would be goo to now reflect and introspect and see what are the cues, rewards which lead them to forming these habits.
Sometimes it helps to facilitate this conversation in the team retrospectives and trigger the difficult dialogues, to make a lasting impact on your transformation journey.
So what has been your experience in breaking team habits?
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