With the practice of professional project management having a well-defined structure, it should be clear to see that establishing good institutional habits and routines will help facilitate success. The Power of Habit – Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, By Charles Duhigg is a book that explains how habits work in the minds and lives of people, in the organizational context of business, and in society. While this is a book that applies to a general audience, I thought that it would be valuable to share the ideas Duhigg shares in the context of project management. What follows are my notes on the book, chapter by chapter, with a brief statement about the application in managing projects.

Chapter 1: The Habit Loop

• Basal ganglia activity in the brain indicate the formation of habits
• Brain activity is very high when encountering circumstances in which habits are not formed
• When habits are active, brain activity is high during the cue that initiates a routine, low during the performance of the routine, and high again when the reward is achieved.
• The three main components of the habit loop are the cue, routine, and reward
• Once a habit is established, it is never eliminated, and can easily be picked up again without having to relearn the habit
• Habits are delicate. Slight changes to the cues that initiate a routine can prevent a habit from taking place

Project management implication

Knowing that team members and stakeholders involved in a project are subject to these rules of habits, it can be used to make projects run smoothly. Setting patterns to be followed regularly, such as through the communication plan for communicating, can aide in reducing the amount of mental effort involved in participating in a project and increase efficiency. It is also helpful to know that bad habits that emerge can be managed through controlling the habit loop.

Chapter 2: The Craving Brain

• Craving and anticipation powers the habit loop to be initiated.
• Claud Hopkins established that finding a simple cue and clearly defining the rewards are the key to establishing a habit. However, these two elements alone are insufficient.
• Experience in the loop creates a craving and anticipation of the whole experience
• Overpowering a habit requires identifying the craving
• Creating a craving of accomplished cleanliness is what made Frebreeze sell successfully (p. 55)
• Hopkins got lucky in his ad campaign with Pepsodent because it stimulated a sensation of tingling that people craved (p. 57)

Project management implication

To build in a stimulation that triggers a desire to participate in a routine when running projects is a challenge, but it is possible. By establishing routines that demonstrate progress on the project and show delivered value provides a reward for everyone.

Chapter 3: Golden Rule of Habit Change

• Tony Dungy made the Tampa Bay Buccaneers succeed because he changed the routines of players in the habit loop (p. 63)
• His focus was on excellence of execution – being fast in the way that plays were made (p. 64)
• Alcoholics Anonymous attacks habits surrounding alcohol abuse (p. 69)
• AA generates the same rewards through changing the routine, but not the cue or the reward (p. 72)
• A competing response to a cue is what changes a habit (p. 76)
• Belief that a change is possible is often the difference between a successful habit change and a failed attempt (p. 89)

Project management implication

When bad habits emerge in the way that a project is run, it is the responsibility of the project manager to figure out how to fix it. Retrospectives and lessons learned sessions can help to identify the habits that need to be changed. Implementing a change in the habit will be successful when focusing on changing the routine of the habit loop that takes place when a cue triggers the habit.

Chapter 4: Keystone Habits or The Ballad of Paul O’Neill

• Paul O’Neill reformed Alcoa by focusing on safety metrics (p. 99)
• One habit changed and caused a ripple effect throughout the organization that supported it (p. 100)
• Organizational routines are the analogue of habits – Geoffrey Hodgson (p. 103)
• Safety was a measure that indicated there were process problems in the organization (p. 107)
• Keystone habit changes are small wins that have a large impact (p. 112)
• Root cause analysis helped reduce infant mortality in the United States by discovering that teacher training was the best place to improve (p. 118)
• Structures to support keystone habit change cause other habits to emerge that are consistent (p. 121)

Project management implication

Root cause analysis is a classing project management technique that can be used to isolate problems that have a wide-ranging effect. By applying this practice to the establishment of good institutional routines and correcting bad habits that emerge in the project, a large impact can be made. For example, establishing a Standup meeting where communication rules are applied can have a tremendous impact in how other functions of a project team are performed.

Chapter 5: Starbucks and the Habit of Success

• Willpower is important to change, but it is not a skill that people inherently have. Willpower is more like a muscle that can become weary with use (p. 135)
• Starbucks made self-discipline a habit, knowing that the success of the business required sustained willpower to provide good service (p. 141)
• Coming up with plans to overcome obstacles helps to enable willpower to be effective, even when weary (p. 143)
• Willpower habit loops involve plans for how to respond when encountering an obstacle (p.145)
• Granting authority and autonomy to people makes it easier to sustain willpower because the ability to control a situation is entrusted (p.151)

Project management implication

In Agile methodologies, a self-organizing team is vital to the success of a project. The fact that willpower is strengthened when autonomy is entrusted reinforces this practice. When executing a project, especially when performing under pressure, the temptation of team members to take shortcuts is ever-present. Willpower is needed to overcome those temptations, and it is more likely to be successful when each team member has control over the way the product is built.

Chapter 6: The Power of a Crisis

• Dysfunctional patters and routines emerge when leaders avoid working on culture and let it develop without guidance (pp. 159-160)
• Organizational routines create truces between internally competitive factions (p. 162)
• Balancing authority helps with creating truces, but habits that create it and show clear responsibility are important too (p.166)
• Truces must not come at the cost of ambiguity of authority.
• Crises make habits malleable in an organization (p. 175)

Project management implication

The practice of performing retrospectives to discover lessons learned provides a team with the mechanism to discover patterns that lie at the root cause of a problem. Decisions to change routines during these sessions are more likely to take root and be effective if they are acknowledged. It is also noteworthy that the structure of project management frameworks and methodologies establish a culture for how teams interact and function, rather than letting it emerge without guidance.

Chapter 7: How Target Knows What You Want Before You Do

• Target uses data collection and statistics to identify habits of people’s shopping patterns (p. 188)
• Shopping habits change with major life events (p. 191)
• Even when predictors successfully indicate a shopping habit, causing behavior change that the predictors indicate requires considering the entire context of behavior. Just because a song has a high predictive score of being successful, if it is too different than what people are used to listening to, they will not naturally listen (p. 203)
• Change of a habit needs to be embedded into a familiar pattern (p. 206)
• If you dress something new in the metaphorical clothing of the old habits, it is easier for the public to accept it. (p. 210)

Project management implication

When adopting new project management methodologies or practices, it can be difficult to accept the change and it normally takes a considerable amount of time to become proficient. Transitions might be more successful if some familiar aspects are held constant. Small changes have a greater likelihood of being accepted.

Chapter 8: Saddleback Church and the Montgomery Bus Boycott

• Rosa Parks had social ties that had strong connections in many strata of society, which differentiated her experience from others who encountered identical prejudice (p. 220)
• The civil rights movement spread as a result of social obligation through the influence of weak ties (p. 222)
• Weak ties tend to be better at landing a job (p. 224)
• Combining strong and weak ties make changes happen most effectively (p. 226)
• Social groups that are aligned with a purpose create the right kind of peer pressure to motivate change in behavior (p. 229)
• Rick Warren attracted people to his church by making sure not to disrupt people’s social fabric (pp. 233-235)
• Social habits drive movement by becoming self-propelling. (p 239)

Project management implication

People and their relationships are at the heart of projects. Establishing a healthy set of routines that support the success of a project require that a social structure and culture are nurtured to strengthen healthy routines.

Chapter 9: Neurology of Free Will

• Some habits create patterns of behavior that is arguably impossible to control the response to, such as gambling addiction and sleep walking (p. 251)
• “Some habits are so powerful that they overwhelm our capacity to make choices, and this we’re not responsible for what we do (p. 253)
• There is a difficult distinction to be made between behaviors like gambling that have a semblance of being controllable, and sleepwalking, which is not something that can be controlled. The way the brain works, there is no clear difference. (p. 259)
• Habits can be changed but we must decide to do so (p. 270)
• William James is cited as making the point that if you believe you can change and make it a habit, it then becomes real (p. 273)

Project management implication

The principles of this chapter are difficult to directly apply in the context of project management. However, since processes are applied in the practice of project management, explicitly leading a change in routine will aide in communicating expectations. Providing the team with the vision for a reason why the change will be effective will help them to believe in it, and support it. The fact that some habits and routines are extremely hard to overcome should be considered when dealing with deeply rooted institutional behaviors.

Appendix

The appendix provides an excellent framework for changing a habit

1. Identify the routine. Figure out the habit loop, especially the cue and the reward. (p. 288)
2. Experiment with rewards. Keep the habit, but plan to change the reward first, write down words that come to mind 15 minutes after the habit routine. This helps to isolate and identify the reward that is actively being craved. (p. 290)
3. Isolate the que – most habits have cues that involve location, time, emotional state, or other people that are encountered preceding the action. Record these circumstances to find patterns (p. 292)
4. Have a plan. Experiment with the routine change until it is effective (p. 296)

Project management implication

When bad practices perpetuate on a project team, this framework can help to systematically gain control and make a change.

Conclusion

The Power of Habit is a very good book designed to help understand how we function as human beings. After reading the book, I now see how patterns of habits exist in everyone’s life and can work to improve or destroy, depending on how they are handled. When managing projects, I think that it is helpful to acknowledge the practices as habits, so that they can be taken advantage of to help everyone succeed and be fulfilled.