Dan Ariely: How to Change Your Behaviour for the Better

When a team is functioning well it’s obvious, both to the team itself and to those around it. There’s a clear buzz and things get done, quickly and seemingly with less effort. So how can we create this? Patrick Lencioni uses a story format to highlight some of the behaviours that ban work against successful teams. Like many things in life it seems so obvious, except when it isn’t.

Employees make decisions, take actions and behave in ways that impact our businesses, other employees, customers and other stakeholders. Their level of engagement is therefore critical to business performance and agility in the face of change.

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Accelerating business change and increasing the agility of an organisation has much to learn from sport. As any athlete will tell you, good to great is about the details. It’s applying the latest science and striving for marginal gains that, when applied over time, lead to the improvements that get noticed. Those that win awards and launch careers.

Most of us regularly do things that we know aren’t great for us, whether it’s eating more than we should, not exercising enough, drinking too much, too much time on social media etc. We know it rationally and yet our behaviour doesn’t always match our good intentions. So what’s stopping us making those behaviour changes, despite knowing they will be good for us?

When making change that matters, what lessons can we learn from David Attenborough and the BBC?