You've got to make a change...

My job has a strong organisational change dimension to it. This makes my job paradoxically both interesting and challenging for one reason: organisational change is hard won. Whilst organisations consist to some degree of processes, systems and rules, they largely consist of people and behaviours.  And behavioural change is particularly hard won because given enough time behaviours become habits. We all know that old habits die hard: a cliché, but also a truism.  Depending on which dictionary you prefer, a habit can be defined as "a settled or regular tendency or practice, especially one that is hard to give up", "an established disposition of character" or "an acquired behaviour pattern regularly followed until it has become almost involuntary".  

In fact, behaviours become so engrained over time that we start to confuse behavior with personality –  we persuade ourselves that it is not just what we do, it's who we are.  "I can't change who I am" is a familiar refrain to anyone concerned with behavioural change.  To which the response is: true – but you can change what you do. 

A fundamental issue that needs to be understood by anyone wishing to change behavior is that "making a change" implies it is a one-off event. That in itself is misleading.  Change is a process, something that has to happen continuously, over time, with a degree of consistency and discipline until the new behavioural state is attained.  Some studies have suggested that 30 continual days' worth of the desired behaviour is the minimum required to engrain it as a new habit.

A recent article in Harvard Business Review suggested we could do worse than look to the painter Pablo Picasso for inspiration. Picasso famously said his approach to becoming great at his art was to ensure that he practiced continuously.  For him this meant committing to painting every day. Crucially though Picasso said that rather than have to decide, every day, that he would paint, he decided just once that he would paint every day, and then consciously and deliberately structured his daily routine in such a way that he could easily do so.

This logic can be applied to anything: whether its committing to exercising more, keeping in better touch with friends and family, interacting more with colleagues or giving regular feedback at work.  Constructing a routine, putting in place rituals and setting up your working day so that these things happen as part of your routine as a matter of course mean that behavioural change needn't become a battle of willpower or a matter of self-discipline.  Some of the most famous "change" programmes in the world involve twelve steps, but maybe three steps are all that's required: first, decide what you want to do more of, less of or differently; second, construct a routine and introduce rituals so that it becomes easy for you to do that. Third: enjoy the feeling of change.

Willpower and discipline or routine and ritual? I'd say less willpower is required than we might think, but perhaps a wee bit more creative thinking.   

So the question is, what will you change?