How to Create New Organizational Habits

Recently at the CEB Sales and Marketing Summit in Last Vegas, Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, spoke about what sales organizations can learn from the science of habit formation. In some ways, many of the goals sales leaders are working towards can be summed up to changing or developing new institutional habits. Whether it is training on Challenger Selling, a new CRM system, or updates to the sales process, half the battle with most new sales initiatives is getting sales reps to adopt new behaviors.

So how much of a seller’s day-to-day life is determined by conscious decision-making versus habit? According to Duhigg, 45% of daily life choices are based on habits. But as Duhigg also pointed out, habits can be changed and new habits can be formed.

Neuroscientists examining how the human brain works have learned that habits are formed in a three part loop: first there must be a trigger or a cue, or the event that occurs and prompts the person to do something. Then there is a routine, or the actions that the person takes when the trigger occurs. And finally, there must be a reward that happens as a result of the actions taken. It is in fact that reward that makes the behavior become automatic.

At the organizational level, knowing how habits are formed can be a powerful weapon for diagnosing group behavior and for influencing change. In particular, Duhigg advised organizations to leverage three learnings as they try to create new organizational habits: 

Crises are an opportunity for change: As a leader try to identify the right moment for the organization to introduce change and think about crises as opportunities to break old habits and introduce new ones. In the mist of chaos, people become both increasingly flexible and willing to rethink “the way things get done around here.”
Habits become culture: Habits define how organizations behave, and therefore changing organizational habits often requires changing the organization’s culture. To increase your chances of success, start by changing your organization’s keystone habits, or the habits that by definition change other habits.
Most powerful habits contain emotional cores: Think about creating a habit loop that relies on intrinsic or emotional rewards. In other words, resist the urge to create organizational habits by setting up transactions for your sales reps that involve reps making changes in exchange for cash rewards. Instead, think creatively about the intrinsic rewards that you can grant your reps that can forge stronger habit routines.

CEB Sales Members, enter here to get more information on CEB’s 2014 Sales and Marketing Summit. Also, review the key findings from our latest research to identify aspects of your sales culture that are acting as barriers to driving new selling behaviors.