Because It IS Hard

I have spent upwards of 20 years talking with clients and colleagues about how to identify and change behaviors in order to drive business results.  Invariably, someone will say that it’s easy… just pay them more or give them something or threaten to fire them.  All of these will work.  For a while.  Behavior will change but then will drop back to previous levels (or in some cases lower levels.)

People are not stupid.  People are not Pavlov’s Dogs.  People are complex.  And finding the best way to align and change behavior is very difficult.

I read this post on Tom Peter’s blog today and initially thought the author was saying that changing behavior was easy.  But on reflection I think the subtext is that there is a real "knowing – doing" gap when it comes to getting organizations (whether your own employees or a channel partner) to adopt a new way of doing something.  The author says in her best Nike-ese – Just Do It!  But I think she’s really pointing out that it is difficult and the first step is to recognize that.

The leaders of many organizations think that getting the idea that something needs to change is the difficult step.  I submit – and the author of the referenced post I think would concur -  that’s easy.  Changing behavior is hard.  Companies should put as much investment in the effort to change a behavior as they did to do the research to know they need the behavior change in the first place.

Again – performance improvement is hard – that is why it is mission critical.