While there is ongoing debate about whether it was the chicken or the egg that came first when it comes to creating and sustaining change there is no debate. New routines precede new outcomes.
As regular readers of my blog will likely know about 5 years ago I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (if you’re interested you can read more about it here). Learning that I had type 2 diabetes was one of the most difficult days of my life, however, in retrospect, it was also one of the best as it was the trigger that caused me to learn a lot about myself, about my body and about what it takes to actively create a desired future.
One of the key things learnt is the importance of underlying routines. This included the simple acts of recording blood sugar levels and what I ate and drank and ensuring I got regular daily exercise. As long as I did these things my diabetes went from uncontrolled to controlled and even non-existent. Perhaps more powerfully it taught me through a very powerful experience that new routines were key to achieving powerful new results.
Of course the trick to maintaining those results is continuing to do the routines. I have discovered that is easier said than done and after several years of successfully executing the same routine, it begins to get a bit old and a bit boring. Worse, you learn that if you miss a day here or a day there it doesn’t matter that much because it does not impact your long-term results. The problem is it’s the top of a slippery slide from having solid routines and results to those routines and the results they created slowly disappearing from your life. It’s easy. Missing every now and then becomes one bad day a week, which becomes two and before you know it you’ve stopped even noticing.
By now you’ve probably guessed where this blog is going. My diabetes has returned. Nowhere near as bad as it was but it’s back and it needs to be dealt with. My response is to return to my routines. It sounds easy, and conceptually it is, but practically it has been much harder than I could have imagined. I seem to have unlearned many things over the last couple of years and it is taking me several months to relearn what’s needed and to gain the urgency required to put my routines back into practice. As I have done so I have been astounded by some of the things I have started noticing again. There are two in particular. The first is the extent which I stopped walking, as my primary mode of transportation, and have started using the car again. This is a massive problem as walking is the key to get in the exercise I need. Second is the amount of red wine I have been drinking. I never purposely stopped drinking, but when you write down on a daily basis what you eat and drink, it’s surprising how that simple act modifies your behaviour. When you stop writing it down you slowly lose consciousness of what’s happening and what happens just happens.
I’m pleased to report that I’m slowly getting my routine back in place and I’m beginning to see the positive results.
With this going on in the background, I recently had a conversation with a client about a number of issues that he and his team were experiencing. To cut a long story short, they were experiencing a significant increase in their volume of calls, their service levels were falling and the complaints from customers was on the increase. This was new to the team as they have built a reputation of providing great service to their customers. As he was telling me about this I couldn’t help thinking about my current situation. It occurred to me that while the issue we were trying to manage was different the core problem appeared to be the same. Neither of us had effective routines that underpinned the outcomes we desired.
Once he had finished explaining his situation, I asked a simple question. What routines do you have in place to maintain the service levels your team’s are providing to your customers? To illustrate I provided him with an overview of a weekly review that I had implemented as a CIO. It didn’t take long because it was very simple. Every Monday my leadership team and I reviewed the previous week’s performance and planned critical actions for the week to come. This included reviewing call volumes, SLAs, open calls and active projects to ensure we were on track and that there were no critical or emerging issues. Initially, these meetings were quite long and arduous and often took well over an hour to complete. Over time, however, as performance improved and as our meeting protocols improved these meetings seldom took the 30 minutes we allowed. At one point having achieved a good ongoing level of consistency in performance, we stopped doing these meetings because we thought they were no longer necessary. Initially this seemed to be the case as performance levels held, however, it didn’t take long before deterioration set in. We had stopped noticing the performance. I reinstated those Monday meetings and no matter how good our performance was we maintained those meetings.
There was a pause in the conversation once I had completed this overview, then the reply came. “We used to do something similar” my client told me. “In our case, ” he continued, “we had a Monday review and planning day and a Friday check in to ensure all critical actions have been taken care of but we stopped doing them because everything was under control and we couldn’t see the value of continuing these meetings.”
After this conversation he reinstated this management routine. The results were remarkable and lead to an almost immediate improvement in performance and they are now well into the next pay for this routine, which is continuing to refine it and maintain it over time.
As I reflect on these examples I’m stunned by the power of routines. Effective routines appear to be the trigger of high performance and perhaps even world-class performance and we should seek to use their power. It begs the question….
What routines do you and your team use to underpin your success?