The Road to Performance is Paved with Intentions – The Implementation Kind

While the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, performance can actually be improved based on good intentions.  I’m not making any moral comment on whether goal attainment and hell are analogous – just that research shows this to be true.

If you don’t follow Inside Influence you should.  The blog/newsletter/site run by Influence At Work.  IAW is the consultancy started by Dr. Robert Cialdini who authored “Influence – Science and Practice” – now in its 5th edition.  This book is always by my side and should be in your manager’s toolbox as well.

Recently they had a post on their site about increasing voting turnout by asking people to think about how they would get to the polls.  Excerpted from their post:

"The Voting Plan Script (i.e. implementation intentions script) was identical to the Self-Prediction Script but also asked three follow-up questions designed to encourage individuals to create a voting plan on the spot. These questions were, “What time will you vote?” “Where will you be coming from?” and “What will you be doing beforehand?” The notion here is that by answering these questions, individuals will be able to generate a concrete plan that actually takes into consideration all of their other obligations that day, one that will be simple to follow come Election Day."

The results showed that those that were asked about their plan to vote were more likely to vote than those that didn’t have to think about it.  While the lift was small (they have some good ideas as to why) it was still enough to indicate that planning influenced implementation.

How to Use With Your People

You can use this technique with your own staff.  When asking about goals and objectives – even small ones that normally wouldn’t require a big implementation exercise – ask the person how they would go about accomplishing the goal.  Ask what they would do first, second, third.  Get them to start visualizing the process ahead of time.  Creating the plan – even informally – will help with their follow through.

Sales people are routinely given goals and objectives.  I’ve been one (sales person) and had them every year.  I can say that in most cases however, I was never asked about how I planned on attaining them.  I always hit my goals (I’m special) but in many cases it would have been much easier had I spent just a few minutes thinking through the process right then.

Next time you talk about goals and objectives, get the people to outline their plan.  The plan doesn’t have to be perfect – just enough to start to position their behavior toward the goal as something that has already been decided (another commitment.)  

Go check out the post and subscribe to their updates.  I’ll close with what they closed with:

"This research makes it very clear that simply hearing “Yes” from another person is just a starting point, rather than an ending point, for persuasion. To optimize the likelihood that others will follow through with their intentions, consider specifically asking them how they plan to go about accomplishing the goal they’ve promised to pursue. This doesn’t need to be done in a micro-managing or demanding way. Rather, you could ask about the details as they relate to whether or not there are specific aspects of the tasks with which you can help."

So – how are you going to use this information?  What’s your plan?