Charles Duhigg, in his brilliant book “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business” explains how habits are critical to human survival but, at the same time, can be destructive to personal careers and to organizations. Duhigg describes a part of the brain called the basal ganglia that stores habits. The basal ganglia helps make the human brain more efficient because it “allows us to stop thinking constantly about basic behaviors, such as walking and choosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy to inventing spears, irrigation systems and, eventually, airplanes and video games.”

The basal ganglia, however, is not selective in terms of what it stores. For example, if I started a routine 15 years ago that I constantly repeated, it ended up stored in this part of the brain. However, if conditions change today, I likely will be resistant to changing my routine because it is so entrenched in my brain.  I will not be conscientious of this and the reason that I am reluctant to change my behavior. The basal ganglia is doing its job – storing routines so I can concentrate on thinking about more important things. Unfortunately, this is the start of a bad habit – failing to change despite what is going on around me.

This same pattern holds true for entire teams, departments and organizations. Duhigg writes that “Firms are guided by long-held organizational habits, patterns that often emerge from thousands of employees’ independent decisions.” He makes a compelling case that both individuals and organizations must be aware of the neuroscience of habits – the fact that bad habits form naturally and can be destructive in the face of recurring change.  The key is to do a regular audit of one’s routines and behaviours and to assess which ones have become out-of-date and potentially harmful. The good news is that, with the tools, methods and processes that are available today, we can recognize and break bad habits and start and reinforce new ones that end up stored in that mass of neurological tissue called the basal ganglia.