The Power Of Habit: Why We Do

The Economist magazine calls this a “first-rate” business book and I agree. Charles Duhigg tells of people – individuals, businesses, and other organizations – who carry out routines and act on habits in recurrent situations. The book puts a spotlight on people who succeed at shedding some habits and bringing new ones to life – in themselves and in people around them. In these pages lie a powerful concept and illustrative stories.

Habits can be efficient. When a habit is activated, we don’t have to think so much about all the steps and breaths we take. Habits can be simple or more complex, making short work of such activities as: brushing one’s teeth while thinking about the workday ahead; driving a car while listening to the radio; or tending to customers, fielding their requests, and responding routinely in a warm, appreciative manner. Routines can do a lot of good when it comes to maintaining desirable habits. But things can get challenging when we would like a habit to be changed.

A big part of the value in this book is its parade of human stories about how people have succeeded in replacing old habits with new ones. There are a few stories, too, about people who tried but failed to change a bad habit. Along the way, the author sketches a do-it-yourself model. He talks about people identifying existing “habit loops” which may include external triggers of time, place, people, and situations. Then, the idea is to interrupt and redirect activity toward the desired goals, eventually forming new habits.

In some examples, small “wins” are shown leading to bigger wins as people build skills and confidence in new ways of doing things. And in stories of organizational or cultural habits, positive changes are shown sometimes to set off a ripple effect, where new habits spread to more people in a kind of social contagion.

Charles Duhigg is a New York Times journalist and a graduate of Harvard Business School. He draws together a sampling of psychological research and real-life examples in business and other organizational endeavors. “The Power of Habit” delivers Duhigg’s report in the form of a book full of good stories about people who exemplify the concept of “habit” in action, including direct interviews with some of the players in the stories. With this Duhigg presents a psychological concept of habits that a general audience might apply in everyday business and personal life. This book, if it reaches a large readership, may follow in the grooves of what journalist and psychologist Daniel Goleman’s books did to popularize “emotional intelligence” and “EQ.” (Goleman focuses on business applications of emotional intelligence in his 1998 book, Working with Emotional Intelligence.)

Duhigg’s stories are interesting in their own right, easy to understand, and memorable. They run the gamut from sports to neurosurgery, and from marketing toothpaste to overhauling the managerial culture of a heavy industrial corporation.

For example, chapter 2 “The Craving Brain: How to Create New Habits,” showcases breakthroughs in consumer marketing (and in one case, the dental health of a whole society) connected to habit changes. The examples cover a variety of marketing obstacles and breakaway solutions including Pepsodent toothpaste, Schlitz beer, and Febreze household deodorizer.

Chapter 5, “Starbucks and the Habit of Success: When Willpower Becomes Automatic,” talks about staff training programs that have been credited with enhancing customer service and tuning up whole organizational cultures. Examples besides Starbucks include Deloitte Consulting and the Container Store.

Perhaps the most colorful and intriguing business story in the book is about the managerial successes of Paul O’Neill when he was CEO of the aluminum company Alcoa. (He later went on to serve as U.S. Treasury Secretary.) This is told mostly in Chapter 4, “Keystone Habits, or the Ballad of Paul O’Neill: Which Habits Matter Most.” When O’Neill became CEO of Alcoa in 1987, he spearheaded the company on a headlong drive to achieve an error-free standard of employee safety. He rallied employees up and down the hierarchy, and across functions, to the cause of becoming “the safest company in America… [despite that]… employees work with metals that are 1500 degrees and can rip a man’s arm off.” (p. 98)

At first, Alcoa’s investors and employees alike were skeptical, seeing O’Neill’s radical quest for superiority in employee safety as too narrow, quixotic, and off-center. O’Neill conceived of the safety charge as a focal point that would trigger all sorts of changes in routines and habits of accountability throughout the company. Preventing employee injuries became a “keystone habit” in Duhigg’s lingo, that would set off a ripple effect leading to an upswing in total corporate performance.

It worked. Within a year, Alcoa’s profits reached an all-time high. Over a 13-year run with O’Neill at the helm, profits and the stock price both increased by 400%. Time lost to worker injuries declined to one-twentieth the U.S. average. Duhigg’s book cites interviews with O’Neill himself and other Alcoa people who were there, and mentions that Alcoa stands as a case study in business schools.

“The Power of Habit” shines a bright light on organizational habits, but not only that. Duhigg serves up stories that point to individual habits, with relevance for personal success, such as interrupting a snacking habit or ending addictions. I see Duhigg’s concept of habit loops as compatible with and complementary to the work of food and marketing psychologist Brian Wansink in his excellent book, Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think (2006). At the other end of the scale, Duhigg talks about habits changing at a societal level of attitudes and behavior, offering an analysis of the civil rights movement’s Montgomery bus boycott as an example.

The one disappointment I find is a lack of chapter summaries and sub-chapter headings. While the book certainly is accessible “as is,” such aids would make it easier to tie together diverse examples, remember themes and links, and go back to them later. The Audible.com version in particular is harder going without summaries and sub-headings because one is not looking at pages with the chapter heading in the upper right, nor is the listener just a page flip away from glancing at the book’s table of contents. The Audible.com version also could do a better job of mentioning the printed book’s many visual diagrams for listeners who are interested enough to cross-refer.

The book begins and ends with fitting references to the 19th-century writings of an American philosopher and psychologist, William James, who elucidated the concept of habit before there was much science behind it. James was a prime mover in establishing two major streams of modern social science and philosophy: 1.) behavioral psychology – that is, putting a scientific focus on observable behavior and developing interventions to help people shape their lives according to their better ideals; and 2.) the philosophy of pragmatism – which for James meant evaluating scientific theories according to their “cash-value.” In James’s pragmatist view, a good theory is one that does good work in the minds of those who use it.

James saw “habit,” like Duhigg does, as a core aspect of human nature. Duhigg draws attention to success stories in habit replacement, from dental hygiene to aluminum manufacture. In keeping with the philosophical pulse of James the pragmatist, I give Duhigg’s “The Power of Habit” a five-star rating for its eye-opening reports on useful research, chock full of real-world examples. Plus the book is written in a style that is vivid and inviting.

Ótimo livro!

Habits are things that can raise us up to the pinnacle of heaven or plunge us to the depths of misery. The author examines the habit loop and gives a thorough analysis of how it impacts our life and how we can use this influence to make positive changes. Thorough research was done in the writing of this book. Companies like Starbucks, Febreze, Pepsodent and and Alcoa were looked at as models of success and how the habit loop works. They also make for very entertaining reading on what might be a very dry subject.

The part of the brain responsible for habits is the basal ganglia, not memory. The habit loop itself is a circular model that starts with a cue,then proceeds with a routine and then finishes with a reward. To create positive habits and /or eradicate new habits one must tweak the elements of the habit loop. The most effective habit changes involve modifying the routine part of the habit loop. In a sense you are already modifying a current habit. So to start a new habit you need to get in a new routine. Before the advent of Pepsodent, people really did not brush their teeth. Yeah that meant bad breath and a film over your teeth. Gross and yuck and yeah the nation suffered from poor hygiene. To sell toothpaste though you needed a new habit and yeah this one caught on. The reward part was manipulated here and thee reward was white teeth (which could be obtained by eating an apple) and that sharps sparkling taste in your mouth when you are done. The lather in shampoo serves the same function. Febreze used it as well. It was discovered on accident in a lab. It did such a great job killing odors that once you used it you put it in the closet and forgot about it. Not great for sales so you tweak the reward. After a good cleaning people liked a heavily perfumed spray just to finish things off. The company modified the formula.

But sometimes changing the routine is not enough. In alcoholics anonymous which is a spiritual program they work with two or three things. One is the inventory which helps you identify the cues that make you want to drink. The second part is belief, you have to believe that things can get better . That is where the belief in a higher power comes in. Another example of belief playing a role was the team called the Bucs, a losing football team. The coach came in and taught them to memorize a few key plays by wrote. They drilled these routines to death until they knew them cold. They were successful all the way until the finals and then they started slipping up. They did not win the super bowl and the coach ended up transferring to another team he repeated the same process but with the new team something changed. The change was a a death in the coaches family of his son. It forced the team to pull together and believe. They won the super bowl. Belief and a support group.

Starbucks has one of the best training programs hands down and they treat their employees right. The training not only gives them great work skills some of which can be used for college credit but they also give you life skills. One worker could not even hold down a job. He was the product of a broken family and his inner anger lead to temper flare ups at work among other things. Starbucks had something called a notebook where you write up a problem that arises then you write down your solution to the problem and then you practice it. This guy ended up getting a position in management. Bravo Starbucks. The book also analyzes how Howard Schultz bought the company and built it up to what it is today.

A new CEO steps up at Alcoa. He totally shocks everyone by telling them he is going to focus on safety. A real turn off because people really care about money not worker safety. The CEO sets up a communication system that allows for employees to communicate with their supervisors and even the CEO himself. It also calls for interdepartmental communication. They end up with a near perfect safety record and they also boost productivity and stock values soar. This shows the power of changing key habits to change the over all scene.

An analysis of how markets work is included by showcasing how Target Dept. Stores use computer to track consumer spending habits so they could determine which coupon they should send to you. They were so accurate that it creeped out the customer. Solution make it appear more random, so instead of sending a pregnant woman a bunch of ads for diapers and baby products they would mix it up with ads and coupons for a lawn mower. Make everything regular and familiar. Of course they use this to sell you stuff you will want in the future even before you know you’ll want it. Familiarity and regularizes also help hit songs become successful.

The last two chapters focus on societal habits by examining the growth of the Saddle Back Church and the Montgomery bus strike involving Rosa Parks. This first chapter puts the leadership not in the hand of one person but in the hands of the people and it works. The Saddle back Church focuses on small weekday study groups that meet in people’s homes with or without the pastor. In the Montgomery Bus strike it showed the power of Personal Connections and also what is called weak links or what I call loose associations. We know it as peer pressure to invoke change.

Finally there is the trick Casinos use.They reward you with all sorts of bonuses to get you to come to their casino. The flush of winning, free travel feel good. You also end up gambling away your life savings. Are you free to stop are you compelled to keep gambling. The story is contrasted to night terrors and sleep walking. Habit happen unconsiously when we sleep. fortunately for most our brain paralyzes us so we cannot move but for other they at function does not works. The subconscious is free to cause you to sleep walk, act out in violent fear. Force of habit.