by Peter Bregman | 10:15 PM March 11, 2009
I was on an old, rustic train lumbering through the plains of Harambe, Africa (at Disney’s Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida) when I noticed a majestic lion sitting on a rock on top of a hill, in perfect view.
“Aren’t we lucky the lion is out,” I mused to the “ranger” on the train with us.
“He’s always out there, sitting on that rock,” he responded.
“Really?” I said. “How do you get him to stay in that exact spot?”
The ranger just smiled.
Several years ago I lived in Savannah GA. We moved there from New York City for a variety of reasons, one of which was to enjoy more relaxed, outdoor living.
The very first piece of furniture we bought was an outdoor table. That’s a picture of the back of our house, with the table on the patio. Our kitchen was directly on the other side of those French doors. Our plan was to eat every meal outside.
Our plan failed. Maybe we were lazy. But we always chose to eat in the kitchen, where all the food, drinks, plates, and utensils were.
The idea of eating outside was alluring. But the reality was, apparently, too much effort.
Until, one day, I had a brainstorm. It was an experiment more than anything. I moved the table from the garden to the deck right outside the French doors. Look at the picture; the difference is about ten feet and four steps.
After that, we ate every single meal outside.
A recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health found that the closer teens live to places where alcohol is sold, the greater likelihood they will binge drink and drive under the influence.
On a certain level this may seem obvious. But it’s important. Parents tell teens not to drink. Schools tell teens not to drink. Television ads tell teens not to drink. The law prohibits teens from drinking and prohibits liquor stores from selling to teens. And still, if the liquor store is within walking distance of where the teens live (about half a mile) they will be far more likely to drink. And drive drunk.
Because, to a larger extent than you probably realize, your environment dictates your actions.
It would be lovely to think that we make our own choices and follow through on them, without being too influenced by things around us, but all you need to do is read a little bit of Brian Wansink’s bookMindless Eating to realize just how much our actions are determined by our environment. Brian did a series of fascinating studies that suggest the reasons we eat have little to do with hunger and a tremendous amount to do with the subtle cues that drive us.
For example, if you use a big spoon, you’ll eat more. If you serve yourself on a big plate, you’ll eat more. If you move the small bowl of chocolates on your desk six feet away you’ll eat half as much. If you eat chicken wings and remove the bones from the table, you’ll forget how much you ate and you’ll eat more. If you have a bowl of soup that never gets less than half full, you’ll eat more. And the more people you eat with, the more you’ll eat.
So don’t fight yourself to change your behavior in the midst of the wrong environment; just change the environment. In the case of food, using a salad plate instead of a dinner plate might be all the diet you need.
Marketers already know this. It’s why you get so many catalogs over the year. Of course you could go to their website to shop. Or just use the catalog you already have on the counter. But no, they’ll send you another one two weeks before Valentine’s Day. Or Halloween. Or Christmas. They know when you’re thinking about buying something and they’ll make sure that, just as you have that thought, hey look, a catalog.
In your company, think about what you want people to do and whether the environment around them supports the behavior.
A client was complaining to me that his receptionist was not warm and friendly with people when they walked in. Guess where the receptionist sat? Think bank teller. That’s right. The receptionist satbehind a glass window! Don’t send her to communication training. Just remove the glass.
A friend of mine, the principal of a school in Boston, wanted to increase student engagement. They should talk to each other, he lamented, not just the teacher. He came up with a great solution.
He didn’t send out memos. He didn’t retrain all the teachers. He didn’t print posters and hang them in the classrooms. Instead, he rearranged each classroom, placing the chairs in a semicircle, so the students were facing each other as well as the teacher. Voila.
If you want your employees to talk with each other, knock down the walls. If they sit in ten different countries, use Skype and a video camera permanently attached to their computer so there’s no set-up time and it’s always sitting there, impossible to ignore. It makes a world of a difference.
You want to make it easier to do something you want done and harder not to.
One of my clients wanted everyone in the company to fill out a time sheet, and they were having a very hard time getting people to do it. Their mindset was compliance. They made it very clear that people didn’t have a choice. Everyone was required to do it. That worked for about half the employee population. The rest simply ignored it.
The leaders were about to send out a memo saying no one would get paid unless the time sheet was handed in. But wait, I asked, do we know why they aren’t doing the time sheet? We assumed it was because people didn’t care. But we asked around anyway.
Well, it turns out that people didn’t mind the idea of filling out a timesheet, but they were frustrated by the technology. The online system required people to go through a series of steps (a wizard) in order to put their time in. It was meant to help them, but it took longer and needlessly delayed them. Not by much — 10 seconds at most — but that was enough to dissuade 50% of the people from following through.
Once we changed the form and the technology it was on, everyone started using it. They weren’t being defiant. They simply weren’t walking the 10 feet and four steps to the table. The solution isn’t to explain to people why they should take the walk or force them to take the walk. The solution is far simpler: move the table.
The lion that sat so royally on the rock at the top of the hill, day in and day out, for all the park visitors to see?
It turns out the rock he sat on was temperature controlled. It was warm on cold days, cool on hot days. No need to train the lion or tie him to the rock or hope he likes the view. Just make the rock a place he wants to sit.
PETER BREGMAN
Peter Bregman helps CEOs and their leadership teams tackle their most important priorities together. His next Leadership Week is in October, 2014. His latest book is 18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done. To receive an email when he posts, click here.
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