1. Manufacture PURPOSE & URGENCY 

“An object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.”

— Newton's First Law of Motion

Behaviour change usually requires external force. This is true for both the laws of physics and for changing singular or organizational human behaviour - it is both axiomatic and supported by research. Dr. Kurt Lewin asserts that an organization must first be “unfrozen” before a new norm is established. Peter Senge, author of one of the seminal works on system thinking asserts that an organizational system is optimized not to change, and that change requires external force or pressure. Kotter’s model’s first step to organizational change is to create urgency and purpose. 

There are two types of forces that create urgency and purpose; uncontrolled and manufactured. Uncontrolled forces as those that are out of the control of the department or the company; market downturns, currency crises, and internal software failure. These are events that are not planned or manufactured but force the organization to react. Most companies are usually equipped to deal with these events. These events usually amplify the best and worst parts of the culture.

However, it falls on the shoulders of leadership to utilize a manufactured sense of urgency and purpose. It never ceases to amaze me how rarely this is done right. The primary tool still utilized to create purpose and urgency is the carrot and stick - fear of loss of the job or position or promotion coupled with the promise of some sort of remuneration. That is because the alternative is difficult - creating a genuine drive. Dan Pink’s Drive equation is simple yet useful here; to create drive in an organization, people need three things: Autonomy, Mastery, and Purpose. Roughly translated, management need to hire great people, give them purpose, and leave them alone.

Rather than constantly reacting to stress and responding to an extrinsic force, manufacture the same necessary force on your terms. 3-5 years is simply too long of a time horizon. 3-6 months makes the objective far more real provided it is doable and not a stretch objective. 

The key is to ensure that the organization does not resort to toxic behaviours to deliver.

2. Do EXPERIMENTS (not Projects)

"Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. One fails toward success." 

— Charles Kettering

The idea of failure seems more popular than ever these days. It has reached cliché status. Kent Beck, founder of Extreme Programming and a thought leader in the software industry tells a story of something that happened while he worked at Facebook. An engineer made a mistake that cost Facebook $21M. What happened as a result? Nothing. The engineer’s management referred to the error as a $21M learning opportunity. Their rationale was that if engineers are afraid, they will not take risks. If they do not take risks, they will not innovate, and if they do not innovate then. 

Juxtaposed to the Facebook response, I was once working with a major bank that had built a cutting-edge cloud platform designed to radically reduce operation and maintenance costs by millions while allowing for rapid prototyping. Hundreds of millions of dollars were invested. Yet, few internal organizations would use it. As I investigated, the root cause pointed to a fear of failure or making mistakes, and that management and developers were too risk-averse to migrate to the new platform. In fact, the control gates put in place institutionalized fear. These control gates were born out of need and a real-world scenario - an event in the history of the organization that resulted in a senior leader probably saying, “I need assurance that this will never happen again!”

In my experience, most mature organizations, optimized to maintain their position, will not behave like Facebook. Failure will be painful and most times will be punished. No one likes or wants to fail. The cost is usually too high because the bets are too big. The solution lies in experimenting within a quick feedback cycle - trying something in short intervals, failing, recording observations, and moving on. The organization does not have to contend with sunk cost fallacy. For example, “Let’s try something for the next month. If it doesn’t work, we will try something different” Vs. “We are going to invest 400 million dollars over the next 5 years to build Y” all the while praying Y works out. The major difference is the cost of failure. Losing a month of time and resources but gaining learning and experience can be considered a net gain. Losing 5 years of opportunity cost and 400 million dollars cannot.

3. Manage FRICTION by removing and creating it

“Continuous Improvement is not about the things you do well – that’s work. Continuous Improvement is about removing the things that get in the way of your work. The headaches, the things that slow you down, that’s what Continuous Improvement is all about.”

— Bruce Hamilton

I first heard of this idea from a friend of mine when we were discussing diet and training. During one of our conversations, I asked him what his secret to success was. “Friction” was his response. “I remove friction from the behaviours I want, and I create friction in those I don’t want.”

To remove friction, he prepares all his fitness clothing and checks his equipment the week before, schedules all his training in his Outlook calendar, and marks it as ‘out of office’.  The idea is to remove as much friction as possible from his desired behaviour, which is not to miss a training session.  Diet is where he creates friction. He loves food, but the behaviour he wishes to create friction in is eating foods that are not good for him. So he removes all the junk food from his house. There is friction created between him and a tub of Ben and Jerries.

It may seem like a lot of work and overhead. There is overhead and setup work, but the reward is that it helps overcome decision fatigue and is a small price to pay to achieve your desired behaviour change. What are 2-3 hours on Sunday to enable positive new behaviours and stop toxic behaviours? It takes a little bit of upfront discipline to help enable a week of discipline when you just don’t feel like it. 

His laws of friction can be summarized as follows:

• Determine what behaviours you are trying to start and stop

• Make it as easy as possible to establish the desired behaviours

• Make it as difficult as possible to stop toxic behaviours

• A little bit of upfront discipline pays dividends 

As luck would have it, I have worked with Graeme on a few occasions transforming his organizations. The question we had was how to apply laws of friction to his organization. An organization’s transformation at its basic level is stopping toxic bad behaviours and starting positive behaviours. After determining what behaviours we wanted to stop and start, we created friction in three ways:

1. Created constraints

2. Measured, visualized, and socialized the constraints

3. Removed friction and supported new behaviours through:

• Training

• Tooling

• Management support

• Communication

• Coaching

4. Small NEAR-TERM WINS that snowball into MASSIVE WINS

“Stretch goals can be terribly demotivating. When stretch goals seem overwhelming and unattainable, they sap employees’ intrinsic motivation. The enormity of the problem causes people to freeze up, and the extrinsic motivator of money crowds out the intrinsic motivators of learning and growth.”

— Daniel Markovitz

Almost all organizations I work with are engaged in some large program to deliver some transformational project that is almost always delivering in 3 years and costs 10s of millions if not 100s of millions of dollars. In my experience, almost all of these efforts lead to failure and demoralized staff. According to the 2015 CHAOS Report, only 29% of all projects were successfully completed on time and budget.

I prefer the idea of small near-term (3-6 month) deliveries that deliver value and built momentum. In software products that translates to frequent deliveries to the customer.

The idea that small, near-term wins can be more effective in motivating people and driving progress is supported by various studies and theories in psychology and organizational science. This concept is often associated with the idea of "quick wins" or "small wins", suggesting that achieving immediate, visible results can build momentum, boost morale, and foster further engagement. According to this theory proposed by Edwin Locke and Gary Latham, setting specific and challenging goals leads to higher performance than easy or vague goals. Moreover, when these goals are broken down into smaller, manageable tasks (small wins), individuals are more likely to achieve them, providing consistent motivation and a sense of achievement.

Albert Bandura's self-efficacy theory posits that an individual's belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations affects their motivation and behavior. Small wins can boost self-efficacy, as they provide evidence of one's competence. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, in their book "The Progress Principle," present their research showing that the single most powerful motivator at work is the sense of making progress in meaningful work. Even small progress can increase an individual's engagement, productivity, creativity, and happiness.

The nature of the task, individual preferences, and workplace culture can also influence the effectiveness of small wins. For some people and in certain contexts, long-term, bigger goals may be more motivating. It's important to consider a balanced approach, leveraging the power of both small, near-term wins and long-term goals based on the specific circumstances.

5. Change VERY LITTLE but change the RIGHT BEHAVIOUR

"Sudden and overwhelming change can trigger fundamental survival instincts. Effective leaders recognize this and move quickly to help followers regain a sense of balance and equilibrium."

— Gary Bradt

Stable systems, by default, do not want to change. "They did too much too fast," "we needed evolution not revolution," "they didn't understand our culture" are statements I have heard numerous times. A key question I have had in my work related to change of any sort is how much change to introduce. I have studied this question and even looked to political science for questions. The best answer I can come up with is it depends on the following factors:

• The urgency for change, intrinsic or extrinsic 

• The ability of leadership to absorb the blowback of the change from the system

Research indicates that introducing too many changes at once can be counterproductive. Established models by the likes of John Kotter and Kurt Lewin support an incremental change process to prevent overwhelming employees. Moreover, studies highlight that excessive simultaneous changes can lead to change fatigue, resistance, and reduced change capacity. Thus, strategic and gradual implementation is crucial in effective change management.

Various studies and theories suggest that trying to change too many behaviors at once during an organizational change initiative may be less effective or even counterproductive. This is related to the concepts of change fatigue, resistance to change, and the capacity to absorb change. Here are a few key studies and concepts:

• John Kotter's 8-Step Change Model emphasizes the importance of implementing change in a stepwise manner to prevent overwhelming employees. Kotter argues that trying to change too much at once can lead to resistance and confusion.

• Kurt Lewin's model, one of the cornerstone models of change management, argues for a gradual process of "unfreezing" old behaviors, "changing" to new behaviors, and then "refreezing" those new behaviors into place. This gradual process can help ensure change is manageable and sustainable.

• Organizational change can often lead to change fatigue, which occurs when employees are asked to follow through on too many changes at once. A study published in the Journal of Organizational Change Management in 2010 found that change fatigue can lead to reduced change capacity and cynicism about change efforts. Neuroscience research also supports the idea that trying to change too many behaviors at once can be overwhelming. The brain prefers routine and certainty, and too much change can create stress and resistance. This concept in organizational theory, coined by Cohen and Levinthal, refers to a firm's ability to recognize the value of new information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends. Too many changes at once can overwhelm an organization's absorptive capacity, making change initiatives less effective.

The key question is then which behaviours should an organization target?

6. Actively MANAGE the CULTURE

“You have to manage a system. The system doesn’t manage itself.”

— W. Edwards Deming

How often do top executives worry about culture in their organization? Stock price, profit, and loss will take center stage in their headspace. Culture is usually relegated to something HR would worry about. I believe that managing the culture of the organization is the principal responsibility of top executives, everything else follows from there. 

Lou Gerstner, the former CEO of IBM, said, "Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game."

Frances Frei and Anne Morriss, in their book "Uncommon Service," said, "Culture guides discretionary behavior and it picks up where the employee handbook leaves off. Culture tells us how to respond to an unprecedented service request. It tells us whether to risk telling our bosses about our new ideas, and whether to surface or hide problems. Employees make hundreds of decisions on their own every day, and culture is our guide. Culture tells us what to do when the CEO isn’t in the room, which is of course most of the time."

There is a substantial body of research that suggests leaders play a crucial role in actively managing and influencing organizational culture. Leadership styles, behavior, and communication can shape the values, norms, and behaviors that constitute an organization's culture.

Edgar Schein, a well-known researcher in the field of organizational culture, proposed a model suggesting that leaders are the primary architects of organizational culture. Leaders initiate and manage culture by establishing and communicating the values, beliefs, and assumptions that shape the organization's practices and behaviors.

The Competing Values Framework: Developed by Quinn and Rohrbaugh (1983), this framework outlines four types of organizational cultures (clan, adhocracy, market, and hierarchy), each associated with different leadership styles. Leaders, according to this model, influence their organization's culture by embodying and promoting the behaviors and values associated with their leadership style.