How Do We Create Lasting Change When Old Habits Die Hard?
After successfully helping to transfer a business from a runaway disaster into a total success by creating controls, budgets, profitability, and stability, after helping the owners learn how to project, evaluate, plan and control their business, after developing all the tracking and monitoring requirements needed, setting up executive meetings to review basic reports and respond appropriately, I recently visited my clients and to my shock and dismay, there was a reversion to old habits. The information was not being tracked, the reports were meaningless, and the controls nonexistent. They had no idea what their cash position was. It was like the old days, they were flying by the seat of their pants.
Damn. I thought this was behind us. I thought we had made the transition once and for all. We went from a situation out of control to one in order and with great success in hand, yet the clients reverted to their old habits. Is it that hard to change when the changes are so comforting and supportive, when progress and success was so clear? Apparently it is.
What do we do to make changes stick? I would thought that with a transformation so significant the changes would become addictive, but apparently I was wrong. What do I say to my clients to reignite their commitment to successful management procedures when they have already seen and understood the difference between a failing effort and a successful program? There was absolute understanding. The appropriate procedures were being done effectively, the results were in hand and they were excellent and still, they fell off the wagon and reverted back to their previous bad business style!
Perhaps that’s the appropriate analogy–falling off the wagon, as an alcoholic does when he takes a drink after years of abstinence. Why would that ever happen? Maybe because we are never totally cured of our bad habits but we merely control them with a conscious effort, learning how to live with them but never quite ridding ourselves of their potential to reemerge. It is possible that old habits are never more then a scratch away from the surface, that one can always fall off the wagon, but just as true is the fact that we can also get right back up and start again, clean up the mess and recommit to the right way, the best way, the way we know will work. No real harm has been done and the matter can be repaired.
Perhaps I will simply return next week and tell them a story, the story of a man who fell off the wagon and then got right back up and recommitted again. That’s a story with a happy ending, a story I would love to tell again.
