Driving Change into Daily Life

One of the principles of achieving effective change is to embed it into the habits and practices of everyday life.

• If you want to lose weight (e.g., change your weight)—then watch everything that goes into your mouth. Every spoonful counts. Every day.
• If you want to get fitter (e.g., change your fitness level)—then put your exercise avenue of choice on your calendar every day, whether that’s a swim, a bike ride through the mountains, a spin class, a long run, a weights session at the gym, or a walk with a friend (dogs count too).
• If you want to achieve a long-range goal that can’t be done in a single day, then do something every day that moves you closer to the realisation of that goal. If it’s writing a book, write a page a day. If it’s becoming a blogger, write a post a day. If it’s saving money, transfer something every day into your savings account. If it’s reading a book a week, read 1-2 chapters every day.

As consultants and advisors on a particular type of change—working with people and organisations on adopting new technology that helps them get better—we really love the principle of every day. New ways of working, new ways of collaborating, better ways of interacting and driving forward the pursuit of the organisation, has to be an everyday event (or it’s just words on the wall). In some cases, “every day” doesn’t work because that’s not the cadence, and so “every time” is the perfectly acceptable alternative.

Here are some examples of where every day / every time can be used:

• You are calling a meeting. Every time you do, prepare an agenda—because an agenda is one of the most important keys to more effective meetings. Every time.
• You are the leader of a group, and you are championing a change in toolset to achieve a better result set. Every time you meeting with your group, talk about the change, find out how things are progressing, identify any roadblocks, and mitigate where possible. Every time.
• Your organisation is introducing Microsoft Teams, and you see the power of Teams to drive greater transparency in communication, greater consistency in coordination, and greater options for seamless collaboration. Open Teams every day, see what is happening, respond and comment, and do your own work for the team inside Teams. Every day.

Tiny Habits, one of the adoption strategies we introduce to our clients, is all about changing behaviour by changing what you do when triggered. A trigger such as “I need to check my email” leads to the behaviour of checking your email, but if you change your response to that trigger—”I need to check in with my team in Microsoft Teams”—then initial behaviour starts to shift and change long-term outcomes. Tiny Habits is every time, which probably happens multiple times every day.

Every day. Every time. Welcome to the new.

Originally published on the Silverside Blog.