Oftentimes organisations are looking to transform themselves, and that is when they call in a Change Management consultant, someone who can help them build Customer Obsession or Innovation into their DNA.

Change Management is never an easy task. It is a multi pronged effort, and starts with a diagnosis of where the organisation is at, followed by setting clear goals and from-tos, ultimately leading to a charter in terms of how the change can be hardcoded into the very DNA of the organisation, from the senior most leadership down to the feet on street and transcending all functions and departments. Only when this is achieved is the transformation journey complete.

But changing the DNA of an organisation is far from easy. It requires behaviour changes first on a micro level; that gradually evolve and culminate in a macro level, organisation level transformation.

BUILD SALIENCE - 

This is about making sure that the required behaviour is in some way made highly salient within the organisation. It’s a means of ensuring it stays top of mind within the organisation at all points, after all it is said that repetition leads to perfection!

An example of Building Salience is by creating a Cultural Norm for the organisation. With Amazon in their effort to stay Customer Focused in all that they do, they have a successful cultural norm of always keeping a chair in every meeting room for the customer. It subliminally encourages employees to always keep the customer in mind, whatever they’re discussing.

Constant Visual Reminders are another way to build salience, where what’s seen often enough is usually top of mind as well. We’ve used this successfully while trying to drive safety adherence protocol at a manufacturing plant. Having a white board that chronicled both positive as well as negative behaviours, was seen to be a great catalyst for positive change.

BUILD ASPIRATION - 

Being part of the ‘select’ is seen as a privilege, and drives aspiration among the rest to be inducted into this select coterie. By starting the transformation process with a select few, and then cascading gradually to the rest of the organisation, it is possible to build curiosity and interest in the change.

A great example of driving exclusivity is what google did when they first launched gmail. By making it ‘invite only’, they had people clamouring to get access to a gmail account, which was in stark contrast to the typical way of launching a new product or service, requiring sizeable marketing spends.

We’ve used this tenet across our journey towards building a more Customer Centric organisation for one of our clients. By creating a select group of ambassadors who underwent the transformation journey first, and then became catalysts of change within the organisation, the rest of the organisation was both keen to be part of this group, and also, able to get their queries answered by their peers at will.

INCREASE EASE & CONVENIENCE OF DESIRED BEHAVIOUR - 

This is a simple case of breaking down seemingly complex behaviours into standalone, simple steps. Making it a series of simple, easy to follow steps, greatly increases your chances at effecting that behaviour change.

A great example of Breaking it Down, is the initiative by the Brazilian NGO SOS Mata Atlantica, to get folks to conserve water. They realised that avoiding one flush a day can save up to 4,380 litres of water annually. So instead of the tall ask of conserving water overall, they broke it down into a simple step, by asking people to pee in the shower and save the water on that one flush a day.

We’ve found use for this practice across a range of our projects. One example was while driving the Customer Obsession agenda within an organisation, the key problem was how and where to find customers to connect with on a regular and ongoing basis. The first step we took therefore was making customers more accessible to employees. The minute this hurdle was surmounted, keeping the customer at the core of every step in their journey became so much easier for employees.

MAKE IT THE DEFAULT - 

A default option is a pre-set course of action that takes effect if nothing is specified by the decision maker.

A great example of this is the successful organ donation campaign in the UK & US, where the default option was a pre-checked option to donate organs.

We’ve used the default option to force customer interactions at every stage in the journey. Introducing a ‘default step’ of customer interaction in all key processes has worked very well for us at various organisations, as far as Customer Centricity is concerned.

CREATE SOCIAL PROOF - 

Chronicling every small win, recognising these wins publicly, and touting them as examples, is a great way to nudge behaviour. 

A great example of this tenet in practise is what we see at various retail chains. The ‘Employee of the Month’ board is a great way to recognise good performance, and inspire others to try and get their names up on that wall as well.

We’ve used this tenet across all our Change Management engagements with great success. It encourages those responsible for the win, and inspires everyone else.

PEBBLE HOPS / ACHIEVABLE MILESTONES - 

Rather than setting a tall ask that seems almost impossible to surmount, it is proven that breaking it down into individual milestones makes it far easier to drive the change.

As Dan Ariely says, milestones need to be something that’s easily observable by all parties. So creating steps or milestones helps nudge behaviour, and also helps keep track of meaningful progress towards an outcome. So for instance, instead of asking people to overall be careful about their exposure to the sun, given the skin cancer worry, a milestone could be asking them to track how often they remember to use sun screen before heading out.

When we work on behaviour change with organisations, we’ve seen that setting teams up for success by giving them achievable milestones makes it easier for them to see an early win and build forward from there.

RIDE ON EXISTING PRACTISES - 

An effective strategy to drive behaviour change is to piggyback on an existing, strong neural circuit. 

For instance, let’s consider the habit of getting out of office late in the evening. Studies have found that making a diary appointment for when you should be arriving home, and ensuring you keep to it, taps into the existing habit of sticking to one’s calendar, and therefore shows great results.

Rather than create a whole new set of behaviours, building on existing practises and frameworks within the organisation is a far easier way to get folks to adopt the change. Whenever we create either a playbook or framework to manage the transformation for an organisation, we derive it from what already exists within their system.

BIG BIN, LITTLE BIN - 

Engineering constraints to nudge behaviour in a given direction, can help create desired behaviour over time.

This is inspired by the case in the UK where households were given two bins for garbage disposal, the larger one being for recyclables, and the smaller one for non-recyclables. The differing shapes over time led to far more stuff being recycled than not.

In case of a company that needs to start spending more time on customer discovery and on generating empathy, we’ve found that simply focusing a lot more time on that phase in the process, is a good way to ensure that more time is spent on discovery, rather than on solutioning.

TRIAL DRIVES CONVERSION - 

This is the cardinal rule of all cross promos, where getting a person to sample something is a good way to drive purchase thereafter.

The same holds true for behaviour change within an organisation as well. Getting folks to experience the benefits of the suggested change, is a great way to get them hooked on to that behaviour. This is something we’ve tried and tested across multiple organisations and teams, where getting employees to engage first hand with their end customers has been a great way to show them the benefit of this behaviour, so much so that we’ve seen that they typically never lapse back into their prior non-customer focused behaviour.

PAID TO QUIT - INCENTIVISING BEHAVIOUR CHANGE - 

This behavioural nudge works in the form of providing a clear and relevant incentive for a certain behaviour.

This emanates from the behavioural experiment in the Philippines where smokers were provided with a savings account to encourage them to quit. At the end of 6months, those who didn’t have evidence of nicotine in their systems were given the entire value of the savings account.

We’ve used this while working on improving the safety norm adherence on the factory floor. A simple action like putting pictures of the employees’ families where they could easily see them, was a great way to ensure better adherence to safety norms.

SOCIAL NORMS - 

Channelising the early wins and exhorting others to be part of the change is a great way to motivate behaviour. 

This is something we’ve used in various Change Management journeys, where the Change Ambassadors or Change Catalysts do weekly Brown Bags, share their experiences and learnings, to inspire more folks to be part of the change.

THE ENVIRONMENT HAS AN IMPACT - 

Physical environments that resonate the change that is being sought, can positively influence behaviour.

For instance when we’re trying to build a more customer centric organisation, we create war rooms that bring the customer to life. This helps create empathy, and in turn spurs more folks on to spend time with, and better understand their customer.

PRINCIPLE OF LEAST COERCION - 

While engineering behaviour change within an organisation, rather than force the change, it is always preferable to simply point folks in the right direction, and allow them to learn from their own mistakes. 

This is why we always use a coaching approach with teams going through a transformation, rather than enforcing a point of view on them.