The increasing emphasis on sustainability and societal issues over recent years has filtered down into businesses, with more and more companies taking steps that encourage social and environmental responsibility. However, successfully implementing and fulfilling such strategies often requires significant behaviour change which can be tricky at the best of times, let alone when you’re looking to change behaviour within companies with deeply ingrained systems and ‘ways of doing things’.
Why is behaviour change so tricky?
The intention-behaviour gap
There are numerous reasons why behaviour change is challenging. Firstly, intention often doesn’t translate into behaviour. Simply persuading people of the need to change their behaviour is unlikely to have much impact. For example, when looking at sustainability within business, one study reported that although 90% of executives consider sustainability to be important, only 60% of companies actually incorporate it in their strategy, and just 25% have incorporated it in their business model. To deliver successful change, this gap between intention and behaviour must be understood and bridged.
Risk aversion and ease
Secondly, people are often reluctant to change their behaviour as it involves uncertainty and risk, which is something humans are innately averse to. Instead people seek to avoid potential losses and take the path of certainty, which is typically to continue behaving as they currently do. Not only does this path of action involve less uncertainty, it is also easier and requires less cognitive effort which is something humans naturally seek to preserve. In order to change behaviour, this deeply ingrained tendency to stick to the status quo must be overcome. One initial step that can be taken to tackle this is to make the desired behaviour easy and/or limited the opportunity to perform the undesired behaviour.
The dilution of responsibility
Another factor that makes behaviour change specifically challenging within businesses is the dilution of responsibility. Numerous studies show that people are less likely to challenge the norm behaviour (even if they disagree with it) when they believe the direction is coming from an authoritative figure. In some cases, individuals may be fearful to challenge those in higher powers but it also reduces the sense of responsibility people feel over their actions; allowing them to hold others accountable instead. Instilling a sense of individual responsibility and identifying key people to drive initiatives within a company is often vital to their success.
Uncovering and targeting the correct areas of focus
Another key to successful behaviour change is identifying what needs to be targeted for the desired behaviour change to occur. This involves understanding what is driving current behaviour and preventing or facilitating the desired behaviour. However, companies all too often face a major problem with this research by asking people direct questions about their behaviour. This approach is based on the flawed assumption that people can both understand and explain their own behaviour. This is problematic as the majority of behaviour is actually driven by factors outside consciousness awareness meaning people do not have accurate insight into what is actually influencing their behaviour. Unsurprisingly people also lie, sometimes purposively (i.e. they provide a response they believe shows them in a preferable light) but often simply because they try to make sense of their behaviour by post rationalising it (e.g. they rationalise that they put their coffee cup in the recycling bin because they care about the environment, not because it was just the closest bin to them). Accurate insights into what is influencing behaviour is the foundation of effective behaviour change.
At Shift Consultancy, we use methodologies that look beyond people’s conscious awareness to uncover the true (not claimed) drivers and influencers of behaviour.
Want to uncover what may be preventing behaviour change within your company and how to address this? Get in touch, we’d be happy to help!