Committed To Not Changing!

We spend 100’s of millions on SKO speakers, books, and training–all focused on doing the things that drive business, sales and marketing performance. We are inspired by thousands of articles, podcasts, and videos–each offering the same answers to what we have to do to be successful. (I contribute my fair share to the clutter.)

We know what we have to do, and, for the most part, each of us is well intended–we really want to do the things that cause us, our customers, and our companies to be successful.

For example, as sales people, we know–without a doubt that:

• We’ve got to prospect and fill our funnels.
• We’ve got to have high quality funnels.
• We’ve got to be customer focused.
• We’ve got to create value in every interaction.
• We’ve got to move deals through our pipeline.
• We’ve got to retain and grow our customers.
• We’ve got to maximize our share of account.
• We’ve got to align our selling process with the customer’s buying process.
• We’ve got to make our numbers.
• We’ve got to …..

But the chasm between knowing what we should be doing and actual execution is immense. Far too few cross it, though most intend to.

The good news and the bad news is, we aren’t unique–that is, this seems to be the human condition, whether we look at it individually, or organizationally.

Just reflect on the commitments to lose weight, eat healthy, exercise, read more books/watch less TV, spend more time with our families, free ourselves from our devices, being more present, achieving better work/life balance.

The failure rates on any of those are extraordinarily high! Gyms, just like most of the pundits and experts would go out of business if people could just meet their commitments. Sadly, we make more money from people and organizations that dream of changing but are, unintentionally, committed to not changing.

In fairness, we underestimate what it takes to change. It’s not an inspirational speech, a great book, an exciting training program, a new initiative, new programs, or comp plans rewarding the right behaviors.

It’s about changing habits–individually and organizationally. It’s recognizing how difficult it is to change habits–both how to stop doing the bad habits we do and how to create new habits of what we should be doing.

We need to talk less about what we should be doing, but more on how we actually do it. We need to focus on habit changing–in a disciplined and constant way. I’m not an expert at habit changing, I struggle enough with my own bad habits.

Some thoughts:

1. Changing habits is less about intention and more about commitment.
2. Too often, we are captured by the idea of change, but not committed to the work of change. We love talking about it, reading, attending workshops, thinking that we are changing, but we aren’t doing the work that actually creates change.
3. Fear holds us back. Rather than being focused on the things that create success, we worry about failure. We worry, “What happens if I don’t have anything meaningful to say to a customer and they don’t want to meet? What happens if we can’t create value in our interactions? What happens if I can’t find enough quality opportunities for my pipeline?” As managers, we worry about, “What happens if I can’t really coach my people to improve? What happens if I don’t know what to do? What happens if my people recognize I don’t have the answers?” This fear keeps us from moving forward, as a result keeps us from ever figuring out how to deal with these things that we worry about, or recover from failure.
4. The performance improvement community (including me) is not as helpful as we might be. We bludgeon you with “just do it,” without acknowledging what it means to “just do it.” We make you feel guilty for not doing what you know you need to be doing. We tantalize you with the good ideas and the stories of others who have succeeded, but we fail to recognize the difficulty of changing, and the deep down fears we may not be conscious of. Hold us accountable in recognizing each person’s and each organization’s journey is different, challenge us to help you understand not just what to do or how to do it, but how to internalize them into habits.
5. We try to change too many things at once, we have to change one thing at a time. The success rate and elapsed time of changing 3 habits, one at a time, is far higher than changing the same 3 habits simultaneously. Organizationally, this is more important and tougher to focus on than individually.
6. We forget to focus on what habits we are stopping, focusing instead on what new habits we want to create. We can’t make room for the right habits until we first stop the bad habits.
7. We don’t give ourselves the time to lock in and reinforce the habits. I sometime refer to “muscle memory.” We’ve locked in the habit when it becomes the thing we always do, not the thing we have to constantly remind ourselves to do.
8. We have to leverage triggers that help us constantly do things that drive and reinforce good habits. Things as simple as our morning routines, time blocking, and so forth get us into the habit of doing what we know is right. For managers, a establishing a regular coaching cadence, whether it’s 1 on 1s, deal reviews, pipeline reviews drive both good management habits and reinforce great selling behaviors (that’s a “two-fer.”).
9. Study habit creation and apply those principles to what you do every day. A great start is James Clear’s Atomic Habits.

We all know what we should be doing. We even know how we should be doing it. What separates top performers from everyone else is less what they know, but their ability to overcome the fear of not being able to perform. They find the ways to practice, learn, and create new habits.