Even the best business strategies can fail to produce the results intended. That’s because strategies are ineffective if employees’ behaviours don’t change.
At an Ivey Idea Forum in Toronto on March 18 Steve Jacobs, Chairman and Senior Partner of The Continuous Learning Group consultancy and author of The Behavior Breakthrough: Leading Your Organization to a New Competitive, gave advice on how companies can gain a competitive advantage by creating sustainable behaviour change.
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“All behaviour is rational if you know what the drivers are,” he said. “You need to change the drivers to get a new set of behaviours.”
He cited how a global petrochemical company reduced the number of fires at one of its plants by motivating employees to strive for a “perfect day” in terms of safety just once a month. Within nine months, the number of environmental incidents at the plant had decreased by 70 per cent.
“They realized that their employees saw the safety targets they had in place as impossible to reach, but a perfect day every once in a while seemed achievable,” he said. “The lesson is, don’t try to change all behaviours all at once. Pick your top three things.”
Jacobs gave four tips for driving new behaviours at an organization:
- Incorporate behaviour change in the organization’s annual plan;
- Observe people’s performance;
- Ask what’s getting in the way; and
- Adopt a 4:1 feedback ratio. For every one thing that you say could be improved about someone also say four things that you appreciate about that person.
“Driving a new set of behaviours should be one of your organization’s top priorities or it won’t work,” he said.
