Safety 2014 keynote speaker Charles Duhigg, author of the New York Times best-seller The Power of Habit, engaged the audience with his insights on how much of human behavior is habit and how OSH professionals can harness that knowledge to ignite culture change. Citing research on neurological activities, Duhigg noted that 40% to 45% of our behaviors are habit rather than decisions. The most important among those habits are known as keystone habits.
Why are they so powerful? Duhigg explains that keystone habits (for example, exercising every day) can "set of a chain of events that can change other habits as well." The process of identifying these habits is to understand the cues that trigger the routing and lead to some desired reward. To do this, Duhigg said, you have to figure out what reward will create the habit. In other words, "You have to make sure the reward is actually rewarding to encourage the behavior that you want to become automatic." Said another way, "The most powerful rewards deliver emotional payoff" and that's what helps employees envision the habits you are rewarding as the culture.
Duhigg shared the example of Paul O'Neill and Alcoa. Upon taking over as CEO of Alcoa, O'Neill got on stage and announced that he was going to talk about safety. Instead of discussing profits and other business buzzwords, O'Neill stated his intention to make Alcoa the safest company in the world. In other words, safety was the keystone habit O'Neill decided to change across the corporation. "If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at our workplace safety figures," O'Neill said. The results were telling--Alcoa's profits soared. "It spilled into a habit of excellence," Duhigg explained.
Duhigg also shared how Starbucks learned from a public relations debacle involving poor customer service to teach its employees better habits--including making will power a habit. "Will power is the single greatest correlate to future success," he said.
In the end, it's about values, Duhigg said. "Keystone habits are a new way of talking to each other about our values. Our habits reflect our values."
A Blog From the American Society of Safety Engineers
