Why We Fail to Change
Behavior change is an essential skill for leaders and leadership teams. So why does it so often fail?
This is a reboot of edition 8 of this newsletter, from way back in 2021 when it was called Peak Performance. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve written. I’ve updated it to be more specifically for leaders and leadership teams.
I've spent a lot of time thinking about why attempts to change behavior fail.
There's no shortage of research on the topic. There are books upon books and psychological models upon psychological models explaining the science and psychology of behavior change.
If you know me, you know I'm a huge fan of Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s my go-to recommendation for optimizing the tactical implementation of behavior change. It's based on the psychological model of Cue-Craving-Response-Reward and is jam packed with science and tactical advice.
I'm also a big fan of BJ Fogg's Model: B=MAP. From Fogg's website:
Here's the simplest way to explain it: "Behavior (B) happens when Motivation (M), Ability (A), and a Prompt (P) come together at the same moment."
I find these resources incredibly useful. And yet I've seen, in myself and others, attempts to change behavior fail even when nearly every element of the implementation is optimized according to these models. This raises the question: Why does behavior change fail when, tactically, we seem to be doing everything right?
As leaders, developing a mastery of change is a foundational skill. One of the central determinants of your success as a leader, leadership team, and company is adaptability. As a leader, it’s essential that you are able to skillfully adapt yourself and your team to whatever the current circumstance requires. And yet over and over we see it fail, despite optimizing according to best practices.
In this essay, I want to explore why individuals struggle with behavior change. I want to illuminate why you might find yourself struggling with behavior change personally and explore how you can use this knowledge to help those you work with when they are too.
As with all things, when the tactical fails it means we need to go deeper, diving into what is happening in our unconscious. What happens inside of us that makes it so we are unable to skillfully adapt, and how does that apply to leadership?
In my exploration, I've found three possible causes of failure:
Wrong Thing: The outcome of the behavior change isn't something that we really want
Wrong Time: The outcome of the change IS something that we really want, but is too unimportant in our hierarchy of unmet needs
Uncertainty: The outcome of the behavior change is something that we truly want and is most relevant on our hierarchy of unmet needs, but we are sufficiently uncertain that the behavior or process will create the desired outcome
The Wrong Thing: Not the outcome we want or need
As people, we like to think that we know what we want. More often than not we don't.
A common error in western thinking is the belief that we can know what we want a priori (prior to experience) or from first principles (reason alone). This belief gets embedded early in life. We’re asked "what do you want to be when you grow up" as children, as if that question is remotely useful. What a ridiculous notion! How the hell can we know what we want without having tried it in earnest?
Tim Urban at Wait but Why has an amazing article on the uniqueness of Elon Musk's style of thinking. One important element of it is that Elon constructs every layer of his thinking as a dynamic feedback loop. The summarizing visual captures it well:
This model of thinking illuminates one big reason why behavior change fails: when we pursue an outcome and change our behavior, we only have a hypothesis that this is what we want. After we begin, we may gather data that indicates that it's not what we want after all.
Whether socially adopted or just plan mistaken, our beliefs about what we want are consistently mistaken.
Embracing this reality as a healthy part of the process is essential for effective behavior change. If you want to effectively change, you must be willing to discard paths that don't feel right after you set out on them. This doesn’t mean you’ve given up. It means that you've invalidated a hypothesis and learned something about yourself. This is valuable in its own right.
I did this with at least three different professions in college. I committed, started studying, interviewed professionals in the field, and realized "fuck no", I do not want to work alone in a lab/write useless, masturbatory papers in an ivory tower/rot in a corporate cubicle.
Leadership Applications
If you want to drive change across your organization, that change needs to align with something that your people really want. Not what you imagine they want. And not necessarily what they’ve told you they want. But something that they really want.
To get your people totally enrolled in change, invest time in getting to know their motivations. What really drives them at work? Where do they want to go in their career and life? What excites them? Find a way to align the change you are creating with their deeper motivations.
If you find someone struggling, consider that their current path isn’t aligned with an exciting outcome for them. They may be telling you it is. Let yourself get curious. Dig in deeper. What do they really want? What would be really exciting to them? If not what they’re targeting now, what might it be?
I remember a story from the last company I worked at before setting out on my own They really didn’t want me to leave, so much so that they scheduled a last ditch call for the CEO to try and convince me to stay. He made it very clear that there was money on the table if I wanted it. What he was blind to was that money wasn’t really what I wanted. While the offer was tempting, the reality was that I had a different vision for work—a new career path and new way of working—that staying there was completely misaligned with. No amount of money could change that.
As a leader, misunderstand your people’s motivations at your own peril. Understanding what drives your people is essential for driving change.
The Wrong Time: Subjugated by more pressing needs
What's going on when there are things that we know we want deep at our core but delay them for months, years, or decades?
For background, I'd like to introduce Maslow's hierarchy of needs:
You can read a summary of Maslow's theory here, but for the tl;dr: the above pyramid represents a hierarchy of human needs. Humans must meet needs from the bottom up, and needs lower down in the pyramid must be met before higher tiers can be pursued.
I think this provides a huge reason for why a lot of behavior change fails: you're aspiring for something that is too high on the pyramid, so your unconscious mind fights you every step of the way.
Of course you want to learn the cello, but if you feel financially insecure or psychologically unsafe in your relationships, you're gonna get into a hell of a fight with your unconscious mind to table working on those things while you practice concertos.
This is an argument for sequencing. You can easily spend years or decades of your life locked in a battle with yourself, wondering the entire time why you keep failing. With this model, the solution is simple: put first things first.
Tend to your mental health. Work toward financial security. Build your community.
It's okay to table more actualizing needs while you work on your foundation. Don't feel guilty! You're a human animal, and this is a piece of the puzzle. In the end, many of those lower needs are what you really want anyway.
One caveat: needs being met doesn't mean that needs are perfectly met. You don't need to be making the big bucks and have the perfect friend group to transcend to higher levels of the hierarchy. Needs simply need to be met, not optimized. So really, pay attention. I've found that you can feel when higher levels start to become accessible. The key is to be patient, and then enthusiastically jump in when you feel it.
Leadership Applications
A client I worked with noticed an employee of hers was struggling. This employee was asking to take on more and more, yet things kept falling apart. What was going on?
The reality was that, despite wanting to take on more responsibility, the employee wasn’t ready. She needed to develop the skills and capacity around her current core set of responsibilities before trying to do more. The more pressing need was stability and growth where she was at, not taking on more.
I’ve seen this happen to entire companies. They set out on a bold new initiative, only to quickly realize that the company needed to dial in their current capacities first. It’s hard to innovate when you’re struggling to keep your head above water.
If your team is struggling with change, ask yourself: what more primary need isn’t being met that is sabotaging your attempts at change? How can you slow down and address that before seeking to create change?
Uncertainty in the Process
Now the final layer: Why does behavior change fail when it's something that we authentically want, the timing is right, AND our tactical implementation is strong?
Simple: you don't trust the process. You don't have sufficient belief that your course of action will get you to where you want to go.
Why do countless gym goers who have new-year-resolved to revolutionize their health starting January stop going to the gym by February?
Some of them don't really want to improve their health. But many do.
For some the timing is wrong. But for many the timing, from a needs standpoint, is as good as it could be!
And for others the tactical implementation is the problem. But plenty get that right too.
For many of these folks, it's the simple fact that they don't have a process that they believe can get them to where they want to go. They show up to the gym, blindly working out to some routine they read about in a blog on the internet. They adjust their diet to the newest fad. They piecemeal their health program together from unproven sources without developing an understanding of how improving your health works. When they aren't seeing results a month in, they have no clue if that's normal, if they're doing something right or wrong, or how to adjust.
They don't have a process in which they have either:
A sufficient causal or mechanistic understanding of the underlying dynamics to know what will move them toward the outcome they want
A sufficient demonstration of success by others
They want it badly, but they are alone wandering in a dark room. At this point, the solutions are simple:
Hard mode: Self-educate. Learn the underlying dynamics and construct a reliable process yourself.
Easy mode: Find someone who has either recently accomplished the change you want or has demonstrated success helping people like you achieve the change. Follow their advice or process. Use them for accountability.
Leadership Applications
If you or your people don’t buy that your approach will work, change will be sabotaged every step of the way.
Buyin is essential. The beautiful thing as a leader is that you can use dissent to create a stronger plan. Do that. Not because you need consensus, but because when people doubt the approach, sabotage is inevitable.
When you have belief, the outcome is inevitable.
The Change Formula
Last year, I was introduced to The Change Formula through the Conscious Leadership Group.
The change formula looks like this: (V x D) + FS > r =C
Vision x Dissatisfaction + First Steps > Resistance = Change.
The idea is simple: for change to happen, you need a positive vision of what the change will bring, dissatisfaction with the status quo, and clear first steps. This all must be greater than your resistance to change. When that happens, change results. If it doesn’t, it’s either because resistance was too big, there weren’t clear first steps, or the combination of vision and dissatisfaction was inadequate.
This maps nicely to the above:
Vision x Dissatisfaction → The change is something that you really want
First Steps → I have a process with clear first steps that I can take
Resistance = I do not have resistance via some other unmet need or doubt in the process
When you or your team are struggling with change, ask yourself:
Have I created a clear compelling vision and demonstrated to everyone how it aligns with their personal motivations? Do I and my team believe it?
Have we gotten clear on the costs of keeping things the way they currently are?
Have we surfaced resistance and discussed it in order to vet our plan and make it even better?
Does everyone understand the first steps they can take to enact the change?
This set of questions, while simple, almost always points to a missing link in the process of change.
In Summary
Want to become an all-star at behavior change, for yourself and others? My advice:
Learn the fundamentals of tactical excellence at behavior change. Read Atomic Habits. Learn about models of behavior change like BJ Fogg's.
Give yourself permission to adjust goals if they feel wrong. Minimize time-wasted when things don't feel right. Get to know your people’s true goals so you can support them in getting aligned.
Give yourself permission to shelve things if they don't feel sufficiently important. Once more, don't waste time. Give yourself permission to work up the hierarchy of needs. It's actually the fastest way to get things done. As a leader, identify the primary need blocking your people and get them supported there, first.
If everything else is right but you're still swimming in uncertainty, find a process that YOU BELIEVE will work. The most important element is that you truly believe it will get you where you want to be. It doesn't need to be perfect. But if you've seen a demonstrated track record of success and believe it'll work for you, commit and get after it. Vet your people for doubts to generate as much belief is possible.
Use the Change Formula. Is there sufficient vision and dissatisfaction? Is everyone clear on next steps? What are the sources of resistance and can you reduce them?
Challenge
Identify an area of your leadership where you are seeking change and it isn’t happening how you’d like. Go down the list:
Am I targeting the change that I really seek, or do I need to adjust my target?
Are my people’s motivations aligned with what I’ve set us out to do?
Is there some more primary unmet need here, for me or my team?
Do we have sufficient belief in the process? Do I know what the doubts are and have I used them to make execution stronger?
Leverage the change formula:
How can I create a stronger vision for my people to get excited about?
How can I make the costs of staying where we are clearer?
How can I make sure everyone has clear next steps?
Am I clear on sources of resistance? How can I identify and mitigate them?
And get to work!
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