How to Change Behavior to Change Outcomes

I’m always surprised how quickly we can go from acknowledging the path we may need to take, back to justifying what we are doing.

Discussions I’ve had with smart people often start with the recognition of the need to implement a focused strategy or take a more targeted approach to a job search, but end up back at spray and pray - the tried and failing path.   

As I wrote in a recent article for CommPRO, Why is Change so Difficult?,  labelling it so “can easily become an excuse not to do what we need to do to take ourselves and our businesses down new and potentially far more productive paths.”

And despite the saying, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result,” more often than not that’s exactly what we do.     

In the past I have written about the simplicity principle which is based on the idea that our brains are wired to make a complex world simpler. This “wiring” allows us to process the world around us and is a way for us to save mental energy. It also leads us to patterns of behavior that are hard to change.   

If we want to change, we have to break out of these patterns. As I note in the CommPRO article, this takes work. Here are a few keys to our ability to take a different direction:    

1. The recognition of the need to change: The desire to change is the starting point for the work that needs to be done. Without it nothing will happen. 

2. The incentive for change needs to be explicit and significant: In business and our careers, we need to map out the benefits of change to make them explicit. Actions such as putting a dollar value against a new strategy or being clear about other benefits are framing tools to drive change. The benefits have to be significant enough to propel us forward.     

3. We need people we trust to help us on the change journey: For all difficult paths, walking with others is far easier than walking alone. But don’t expect those around you to volunteer their help; you must actively seek it out and give them permission to tell you what you need to hear.            

4. Lots of small changes can add up to a new direction: The funds or skillsets may not be available to do a 180-degree shift in strategy or pivot to a new market. So be realistic, but don’t use this as a reason for not doing something that must be done. As with most individual behavior changes, incremental change doesn’t have to be a bet-the-ranch decision. Lots of small changes, that incorporate user-feedback over time, will add up to a new path.

Change is hard, but it is possible. Driven by purpose, a clear sense of desired outcomes, a support system, and realizable goals, we can make the changes required to put ourselves on a better path and realize the goals we seek. 

Simon Erskine Locke is founder & CEO of communications agency and professional search and services platform, CommunicationsMatch™, a CommPRO partner. He is vice president of the Foreign Press Association, agency founder, and has held head of communications roles at Morgan Stanley, Prudential Financial and Deutsche Bank. CommunicationsMatch’ s technology helps clients search, shortlist and hire agencies and professionals by industry and communications expertise, location, size, diversity and designations. CommunicationsMatch developed the industry’s first integrated agency search and RFP tools, Agency Select™, with RFP Associates. CommunicationsMatch™ powers PRSA’s Find a Firm agency search tools.