This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Tuning a System
Behavior change initiatives are often treated as a campaign, a class, or an event, but in the Salesforce.com example, they found that one correction was not enough. Instead, they have built up ongoing systems and publicly release their outcomes every year on their website.
We tend to view training classes as a Start > Learn > Finish process. You now know the thing you needed to learn and move on to the next thing or go out and use your knowledge.
Behavior change efforts may not always work like that. It may be an ongoing effort to reinforce and adjust. The metaphor may not be a journey, but more of a garden that needs tending as it grows or a thermostat that needs adjusting over time.
If that’s too vague, we can use the example of cybersecurity. The behavior is that learners should create strong, unique passwords. There’s a class that’s really fun and engaging, and people come up with the hardest passwords they can imagine, and everybody leaves ready to do the right thing. That lasts for maybe six weeks or so, and then the behavior of weaker, reused passwords starts to creep back in.
I don’t want to get into solutions here, but there are many kinds of behaviors that may never be a one-and-done training solution.