Pilar Jerico » Change

10 rules for changing habits: the Habit Formula

admin — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:55:07 +0000

The formula: H=N+F+K

Habit = Need + Frequency + Knowledge

Take stock of your situation… I need to change!
Choose and define the habit you want to acquire. Choose only one!
Stop making excuses, and analyse the ‘bad’ habits of yours that are going to make acquiring the new one difficult.
Decide how you are going to reinforce the new habit through repetition. Design your own system!
Spend at least 5 minutes a day, every day, on your new habit.
Get the support of others. Tell those close to you about what you are trying to achieve.
Seek out the right conditions to start the process. Don’t make things more difficult for yourself than they need to be.
Keep a record of your actions and talk to those close to you about your successes and setbacks.
Pavlov works, and endorphins do, too… So give yourself rewards from time to time!
Keep on persevering and repeating … and in 21 days you’ll have created a new habit!

Rebel!

Pilar — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:53:42 +0000

“The Young Ladies of Avignon” is considered to be the first masterpiece of the 20^th century, although Picasso was harshly criticized when it was first exhibited. Monet didn’t have an easy time of it either with his ground-breaking paintings, so much so that he event attempted suicide, driven on by his apparent failure. And what can we say about van Gogh, who only managed to sell one painting in his lifetime? Many of the great artists were rebels and had to brave the criticism or lack of understanding of their contemporaries; and this was not always an easy path to tread. “Masterpieces” do not appear by chance; questions of genius apart, the great artists undertook a common journey: they learnt in schools or studios (which explains the lack of women among the “greats” as, until the middle of the 19^th century, they were barred from these institutions), they were passionate about their craft, and were dedicated body and soul to it. To the foregoing qualities we need to add another which is difficult to emulate: they were rebels with a cause. All the great artists challenged the status quo and their work changed the way we think about art. And it is precisely in times like the present that an attitude of rebellion is what we most need.

We tend to accept the current state of affairs and although we may criticize it, we do little or nothing to change things. We resign ourselves to the fact that politicians are the way they are, and that the crisis will one day be over. However, we need to take on an attitude of constructive rebellion, the type of rebellion which not only questions but acts as well. In the same way that art is not changed by inaction, neither will we change the way society or companies work with words alone. Constructive rebellion requires hard work and initiative. We Latins have a reputation for being critical and creative, but the crisis has paralyzed us to such an extent that corruption appears “normal” to us. Perhaps the time has come to wake up and realise that what is common is not necessarily normal. Constructive rebellion has not just been the hallmark of artistic geniuses but of all innovators and talented people who have transformed companies and societies. What would happen if such an attitude were fostered in organizations? And in society? Things would be rather different …

If art teaches us anything, it’s that a great painting is the outcome of many hours of work, of impassioned genius, and of rebellion with a cause; and these same qualities pertain in innovative products or those things which help us to develop our talents. All of us can be rebels with a cause, both in our professional and personal lives. This means not blindly accepting the normal way of doings things and, if we are not in agreement, taking action and not just complaining around the coffee machine or in conversations with friends. Without action there is no change. Therein lies the great challenge to each of us, and the way to emerge from this crisis in the quickest way possible.

The triumph of mediocrity

Pilar — Sun, 09 May 2010 18:00:11 +0000

If the current crisis is achieving one thing and nothing else, it’s bringing out the best in some people and, unfortunately, the worst in others. For example, only a few months ago the mantra in the business world was that talent and innovation were priority areas, and office walls were covered with slogans to that effect; however, now that things are getting more difficult, rather different attitudes are making an appearance. In many teams innovation has been shelved out of fear of failure, and the mere thought of questioning anything the boss says makes our hair stand on end, and any desire to be different from the rest of the crowd is discreetly buried.

“Why are companies in Spain not more competitive?” is a question I’ve often asked myself. I think it is partly due to our dislike of change, and partly to the fact that too many organisations are run by people who are afraid of talent, for all that their marketing departments try to sell exactly the opposite idea in Internet forums and on the company’s own website. Gary Hamel, in his book “The Future of Management” (which I highly recommend), explains that companies such as Google, Whole Foods (supermarkets that specialise in organic food), or Gore & Associates (the creators of Gore-Tex) are market leaders precisely because they have ground-breaking policies. For example, the remuneration of the teams in Whole Foods is based on their results relative to other stores in the same chain. This means that when teams take on new staff, they think about the person’s ability to help them win, in the same way that a football or basketball team would. In Gore & Associates the managing director is elected by the employees of the company; and Google has innovation policies that would put most European companies to shame.

Obviously, not all companies are the same, and neither are the managers that run them. Extraordinary companies and exemplary managers do exist. However, there is also a sombre reality (which we don’t always want to talk about) that many people have to live with on a daily basis, and which runs counter to the official pronouncements of managing directors and company chairmen. The sad fact of the matter is that there are many companies where employees merely try to maintain the status quo, keep on the right side of the boss, and avoid anyone having a bad opinion of them. Unfortunately, in the current very tough times, we are losing a golden opportunity to change obsolete systems based on power (without any added value) and/or fear (without a shred of talent). Transparency -by which I mean acknowledging who contributes what- is one of the best ways forward out of the current crisis, but it requires courage on the part managers to implement it. However, if we carry on with the opaque system prevalent in many companies today, we will continue to ignore the contribution of brilliant people, and even end up firing them (I have personal knowledge of several sad examples of this); and mediocrity, which does us so much harm both in the professional and social sphere, will still be king.

Control for control’s sake

Pilar — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 14:53:05 +0000

Control for control’s sake could well be the motto of many companies. A friend of mine, who has just been appointed as the managing director of an American multinational corporation, told me about his own frustrating attempts to improve the people management in his own company. He had aimed to present his strategic plan in person at the main offices of the company around the world. However, owing to the demands of innumerable meetings and videoconferences at the company’s headquarters, he was barely able to move from his seat! I fear that his experience is very much the rule, rather than the exception.

We’ve been speaking for years about managing people from a humanistic, rather than mechanistic, perspective. However, the fact of the matter is that very few companies have been impregnated with this person-centred approach. Instead, many companies are overwhelming their staff with demands for more and more information. No one would deny that information is crucial for effective decision-making. However, how much information do we really need? What is the opportunity cost of swamping different departments with demands for all kinds of reports? Time is a very precious commodity. If people are spending their time cranking out reports, as is the case in many organizations, then they can’t be devoting it to the customer. Quantum mechanics tells us that the observer affects what he observes. So, if as managers we are geared towards analyzing endless streams of data, we will most definitely influence the day-to-day work of our teams.

Years ago, I worked with a manager who insisted that all the purchase orders were input manually into the computer, simply because he couldn’t wait till the next working day to get the automatically generated report! His impatience meant that some poor soul had to spend three hours a day inputting duplicated information. Completely absurd, but all-too-common in many companies even today.

If we want to eliminate this control mania, we need to overcome two main obstacles. First of all, the fear experienced by many managers in these difficult economic times: the greater the crisis, the greater the need for control, which in turn leads to increased stress levels. Secondly, the large number of departments whose raison d’etre is purely to produce and analyze information.

Does control produce genuine added value for companies? We can only hope that the current crisis leads many organizations to re-think the systems which they use, and that they decide to prioritize those areas which create real added value, and not those which merely serve to sooth the anxiety of managers or to justify certain jobs.

Swine flu, the crisis, and black swans

Pilar — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:11:46 +0000

Twenty-five centuries ago, the Greek dramatist Euripides remarked: “The expected does not happen, it’s the unexpected which comes to pass”. This is indeed often the case, both in the economic and social realm. All of a sudden, unexpected events occur which radically change our outlook and leave profound consequences.

The writer Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls these events “black swans”. He takes this metaphor from what happened in Europe in 1697. At that time, everyone thought that swans were only white; however, the first explorers to return from Tasmania brought black swans back with them. Thus, the white swan paradigm was consigned to history. Before the appearance of the black variety, nobody, understandably, was able to foresee the existence of swans which were other than white.

A similar lack of foresight afflicts economists, entrepreneurs, political leaders or managers when a crisis or a pandemic arises (or Google, or the Internet, or any number of other black swans). As Taleb points out, economists are brilliant at explaining what has already happened, and extremely bad at predicting the future. As a curious sidenote, when Taleb presented his theory at the World Bank, some members of the audience were none too pleased.

Why are we so bad at foreseeing the future? There are many reasons which help to explain this. The first is purely biological: our brain is hardwired for survival, and not for complex decision-making and calculating probabilities. In the distant past, you had a better chance of survival if you ran a mile when you saw a lion than if you stopped to contemplate the various courses of action open to you (basically because the lion wouldn’t wait). Secondly, our educational system is based on committing facts to memory, and not on identifying patterns. Third, we live in an increasingly complex world, which makes it more difficult than ever to predict what will happen in the coming months, let alone years.

So, if a black swan event is capable of shattering all the strategies which we have carefully developed over months and months (as occurred on September 11^th,, and as tour operators in Mexico are now finding out), we would be well advised to approach decision-making from a different angle.

The first challenge we face is “learning to learn”. By this, I mean that managers need to focus not so much on what they know as on what they don’t know. We need to contemplate scenarios which take us radically out of our comfort zone, and then take these scenarios into account when defining possible strategies.

The second challenge for companies is to increase their chances of producing “positive black swans”, or in more conventional terminology, of bringing about market-changing innovation. (It’s worth noting in passing that Archimedes’ Law, the discovery of penicillin by Fleming, 3M’s Post-its or Pfizer’s Viagra all came about “by chance”.) However, if we want to produce the next “big thing”, we need to create a favourable environment which facilitates such a breakthrough. Google, for example, implements an innovation-friendly policy in the form of the 70/20/10 rule for the use of staff time: 70% of work time devoted to the core areas of the business, 20% to projects related to the business, and 10% to new ideas where “anything goes”.

Last but not least, we need to address fear of failure. It is evident that, in such a complex world as ours, no one can guarantee immediate success. So the key to paving the way for future innovation is to give people the freedom to experiment: to try out new ideas, to be wrong, and to be continuously learning.

Black swans wait for no man (or woman); either we take the initiative, or we disappear.