Behavioral Change in Organizations
A fascinating book called “The small big” written by Steve J. Martin, Noah Goldstein, Robert Cialdini which is recently published. A book which its main insight comes from its title “how the smallest change could lead to the biggest effect”, usually this small Behavioral change almost cost nothing.
By just changing the way you say the phrase would spike the compliance rate from twenty till 70%. A small change of price labeling would increase sales of the item by 7%. A small shifting of the commitment from being private to a public one would lead to decrease missing appointments by 25%.
The first question that comes to the mind of the readers is how come with all those prominent facts, why companies and business owners or even the individuals don’t apply those techniques in their various sectors especially as it proved efficiency for many businesses? Although many companies do spend a lot for trainings for their staff in a different training programs, but still a problem of applying the methods of persuasion isn’t used in the way it brings profit to the organization. So, what is the reason for such phenomenon?
The resistance to behavioral change is the main reason for not turning the consumed information into a habit that becomes a human behavior that needs no thinking while executing it. In other words our minds tend to prefer laziness. There was a research that showed an insidious problem that many people suffer from which is the tendency to take the path of “the least mental resistance”.
Minds tend to reduce energy consumption as much as they can. So, for instance, after inculcating a new skill to the staff in order to use new techniques of persuasion to influence their clients, this learned skill may pass through those mental shortcuts so the outcome is the permanence of the old way of doing the task rather the new one, and then you listen to the famous saying of people attend to training when they say “Training was good but It made no effect on my attitude”. So, the real challenge of the trainers is to find out how to overcome this problem that stands as a big barrier between the learning process and the desired behavioral change due to this learning.
One of the best methods used to do this behavioral change has been introduced in the book called “Influencer: The Power to Change Anything” written by Joseph Grenny and others, which integrated some techniques that help to behavioral change the behavior in any discipline by focusing in some factors precisely six factors, when the one who is seeking to change try to apply as much of those six factors so change would come to reality step by step. And the new learned skill becomes a permanent skill which is turned to be a habit that remains for good. Those factors are called “The six source of influence” and they are plotted below.
Figure1: The six source of influence
Many people did a substantial change through their lives like quitting smoking or breaking any bad habit and they attribute their change to completely abandoning their old friends which they shared with them doing this habit along, and they exchanged them with other friends that help them to foster their new, opposite, good habit. So, this change is relevant to square number three in the chart which is to harness the peer pressure. Others who did succeeded in their school exams attributed their success in studying by changing completely the environment they used to study at, and this is relevant to the square number six, change the environment. Others who did changed their way of persuading others to improve their knowledge about something, they did attribute their success of doing so is by establishing a system of rewarding once they achieve a good step and self-punishment for laziness, and this is relevant to the square number five, design rewards and demand accountability.
So, what if we apply as much of the six sources of influence while coaching the staff of the organization to learn new skills or to apply some error managements techniques or whatever training that aims to alter and improve the productivity of the employees, for sure organizations will experience a real shift from just acquiring theoretical skills on papers into a new habit that is being inculcated into the minds and the hearts of the staff which in turn, leads to the continuous progress of the staff performance and hence the flourishing of the organization as a whole.
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