Agency Performance Enhancement with the Power of Habit

Imagine the effect on owners, managers, producers and staff if they knew how to improve anything they did by having a good understanding of how specifically the brain enforces great new habits. Managers can assist employees in learning from each other and can provide rewards that reinforce these habits.

Create Habit Loops

Habits are a natural adaptation of the brain to conserve brainpower, capacity and energy. The first time a person does a task, the brain must expend energy and bandwidth figuring out how to do it. Nature has created a system in the brain to build in an automatic playback of the steps required to do the task, so the arduous process does not have to be repeated.

Habits are actually hard-wired into the brain. This process engages the basal ganglia and the creation of neural pathways. To reinforce the behavior and create an automatic response, the brain squirts out a little dopamine to make a person feel good when the task is repeated with positive results.

Charles Duhigg describes in his book “The Power of Habit” what he calls the “habit loop,” a three-step process. First, there is a cue, or trigger, which signals the brain to turn a behavior into an automatic routine. This is followed by the actual routine of the behavior. Finally, there is a “reward” of some type, which is reinforced with the release of dopamine. Without this habit building mechanism, our brains would be in overwhelm-mode all the time.

Once the habit has created a strong neural pathway in the brain, it can focus on other things. “In fact, the brain starts working less and less,” Duhigg said. “The brain can almost completely shut down. And this is a real advantage, because it means a person has all of this mental activity to devote to something else.”

When one thinks about habits, it is often the “bad” habits that come to mind — putting off tough tasks, not calling prospects, constant email checking, etc. Getting rid of these “bad” habits isn’t easy. The good news is that habits can be revised or modified to end in neutral or even positive results.

The framework to change habits starts off with identifying the routine, such as calling prospective new customers for appointments or service staff tackling tough projects first each day. Develop an awareness of the cues or triggers that ignite a craving for a specific reward, for example, the commission a producer receives from a new sale. Sometimes there are multiple cues that can trigger a routine. Triggering events can often have some or all of the following components: time of day, location, emotional state, other people, inflection points.

Identify Important Rewards

Next, identify the reward that is desired. This can be psychological or physiological and is usually not apparent at first. Duhigg describes how he had the habit of leaving his desk at work to go eat a cookie in the cafeteria. At first he thought the reward was the cookie itself, through the sugar entering his system. He tried eating other food at his desk, but he still had the urge to get up. Eventually, through trial and error, he realized he needed human interaction as his reward. Keep in mind that as with cues, there can be multiple rewards from a habit.

Next, find a new routine that provides the feeling of a “reward.” Duhigg suggests that one develop a plan to change the habit. That is to say, prepare to make conscious decisions rather than have automatic behavior when a triggering event occurs. If one feels stressed and gets the urge to smoke a cigarette, a pre-existing plan with alternatives allows one to make other choices. Mentally rehearse new routines. It also helps to engage others and work on building a new routine with a group. Producer or staff meetings can be an excellent place to discuss routines that worked.

Summary

Habits that result in unwanted results can be changed by getting off autopilot to make the decision-making process conscious again. Whenever possible, agency owners can assist employees in creating new, better habits by discussing how people have improved their performance in meetings and providing rewards to reinforce great habits.