When we go to a fancy restaurant, we dress different and use a different voice. When we go into a bar, a church, a playground, a library, a shabby place or a beautiful place, we change our behavior according to our environment.
When leaders ask their teams to change their behavior and do something differently, they should also change the environment the team works in.
We forget easily. We take in most information with our eyes (our cameras).
If we see that something is different than it had been, and that “something” supports what the leader asked us to do, then we will less likely forget and more likely change our behavior because we have a constant reminder.
So, if the leader said – “We need to improve our internal standards around here. Please help me keep our shop cleaner.” Then we can paint some walls or add racking to support what we asked them to do.
If the leader asked, “I need production rates to go up because compared to other teams we are falling short”. Then we put up a scoreboard in the middle of the action where everyone can see it with each frontline team member (crew) name on it and we fill in production rates each day.
If we said, “We are going to train you on our process (which we have gotten away from) and we want everyone to do better (be more professional, focus on the customer more or in this way)”, we can clean up the office, rearrange the furniture so it is more conducive to what we want, replace broken/old things in the workplace, make it look better, add a sign/poster that supports our process/values, and celebrate the behavior we are looking for.
People respond to their environment; it’s a visual trigger for “how we do it here”. Everything we see sends a signal. If we ask for new behavior in the same old environment, we won’t likely be successful for long.
Excellent perspective and so true. The change in environment helps to initiate the change and sustain the process. Do that for a few weeks, and soon it becomes the new normal.
Your message today was so timely. Knowing the Friday after the holiday would be a quiet one, I planned to take some time to de-clutter my office which will allow me to focus and be more productive. Thanks for the reminder!
So true. Too many things quickly become part of the landscape of the business. Messy warehouses, piles of tools that require some sort of repair, or messy production trucks. This message instills a sense of urgency in addressing those items to get the best out of human nature and they way we respond to changes for the better.