Sitting is the new smoking - and the implications for your teams
Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future success. Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash
You may have heard that "sitting is the new smoking". In other words, the health implications of inactivity and sitting at our desk for long periods of time is akin to the public health challenges of smoking cigarettes. I'm not across all of the research, but it's an interesting concept. Last week I wrote about this - in the sense that:
For many teams, inactivity is more costly than activity.
That's all well and good, but one thing that we know is that it takes less energy to do nothing (or follow established habits) than it does to do something. This is especially true if that something is new or different. It makes sense, then, to design ways with your teams for it to be easier to take action. Here are two suggestions that you can adopt:
Make learning goals, not outcome goals
Often, we expect that a change in our behaviour is going to provide a significant, lasting and positive impact. When it doesn't work out that way, we get disappointed, frustrated and return to our previous ways of operating. Ever been frustrated that your new diet wasn't working within a week and then given up? Me either, but my friend Larry has! Maybe you have a friend like Larry.
I digress - if the goal of your team's behaviour change is more about learning what works and less about implementing what you assume will definitely work, you can both go hard at the experiment and be less attached to whether it works or not. There is plenty of research that suggests that in complex environments learning goals are far more effective than specific outcome goals. If you learn that it's working, keep going. If you learn that it's not working you can change.
This is a great approach to shifting the inertia and aversion to trying something new.
Change your default option
In the instance of my back and reducing sitting, it makes much more sense to get a standing desk (and decide when to take a break with sitting) than to try to have a break from sitting by standing occasionally. It is actually both easier and more effective to do it this way. A little bit of investment of time, thinking and money lead to long term benefits.
My company crush, Atlassian, talk a lot about "working open". They recommend that all information be available to everyone as a default and only limited if it definitely needs restriction. If your team is struggling to collaborate and share information, this sort of shift in the default could make a huge difference.
Some questions for you to consider in your teams:
How can you encourage your teams to pursue learning goals and not just outcome goals?
What is one default option that you could change as a learning experiment in your teams?