The Consistency Code: from spark to sustainable change. My full interview on the Lekker Network.

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Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast.
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My name is Angela Shorina.
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I'm your host.
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I'm your partner in change, personal and collective transformation, your executive and high performance coach 360, Mind Body Work Better, and just someone who is really passionate about human potential and creating all the conditions to grow and nourish and sprout the best in us.
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Personally, one-on-one and collectively.
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Today's episode is a little different.
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This time, guys, the podcast, the episode you're about to hear, it's I'm the one who's being interviewed on it.
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So I was invited by Kevin Joseph from Lecker, the Lecker Network.
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And if you want to learn more about what the Lecker Network is all about, then you'll find the link in the show notes.
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And in this network, which is for people from South Africa or people passionate about South Africa, all over the world, to connect the people, to add and receive value.
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So the network has this project, Lecker Learnings.
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And Lecker, for those of you who are not familiar, is good, cool.
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That's the rough translation.
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So Lecker Learnings.
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It's um a project, podcast, and YouTube videos all about what people again from South Africa, passionate about South Africa, have to share with the world some value, their experience, their expertise.
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And on this specific episode, I'm gonna be talking about something that's at the core of everything I do: consistency.
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Not motivation, not talent, not luck, but the systems that make our progress inevitable.
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And the progress is not possible without that consistency.
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In this conversation, we unpack what really keeps people and organizations and teams and companies moving forward when the motivation fades, when excitement fades, when we don't feel like doing what we need to get doing to get things done and keep progress happening.
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We're gonna talk about why motivation isn't constant and how to design for that fact so you still make progress even when you don't have any motivation.
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We're gonna talk about how running small pilots, test experiments beats big promises and goals and draconian efforts every time.
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We're gonna unpack what I call the consistency code, a three-pillar formula for lasting behavior change, whether that's behavior change one-on-one, your team, or entire organization.
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We'll explore how biology, psychology, and environment shape the way we show up every day and what we do, and how each of us and leaders can on all levels can design systems that help people do their best, do their best work, or just do their best in life, even when we don't feel like it.
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So if you ever tried to drive change, to drive transformation, start a new habit, or just get your team, your family to follow through, or yourself to follow through on the hard things, on the challenging things, this episode will give you a clear, step-by-step science-back lens and formula and framework to make the change finally happen and stick.
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So, alright, let's jump in.
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Here is my conversation on the Lecquer Network, Lecker Learnings with Kevin Joseph, all about the power of consistency.
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How's it Lecca Network?
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I am Kevin, the host of Lacquer Learnings, meeting with extraordinary South Africans who are bridging gaps between Mzanzi and the world.
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Today I'm joined by Angela Sharina, a leading expert in behavioral science, change management, and people transformation.
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With 17 years of experience coaching execs, entrepreneurs, and teams, Angela helps organizations bridge the gap between strategy and execution by designing systems that drive sustainable behavior-based change.
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Her unique approach combines neuroscience, motivational psychology, and coaching methodologies to empower individuals and businesses to achieve lasting results, even in high-pressure, fast-changing environments.
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If you're ready to turn strategy into action and make lasting change, this lack of learning will give you the key to unlocking consistent, high performance results.
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Angela, thanks so much for coming on.
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Of course, this is very close to my heart as someone who's a behavioral enthusiast as well.
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So I'm very happy to have you.
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Thank you.
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Yeah.
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Thank you so much, Kevin, for having me and for such an amazing introduction.
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Like I'm all dad, already feeling uh a little bit under pressure.
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Yeah, don't, not at all, but I'm actually feeling under pressure, and I'll tell you why.
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Because I had a look at your LinkedIn profile and I saw that you are certified in so many different areas, but especially in health, wellness, fitness.
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It was really impressive to see just all the certifications that you've got and the experience of knowledge that you have in this area.
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So I'm really looking forward to hearing your perspective and for all the lucky members as well on how we can make consistent behavioral change, be better leaders, and have better organizations generally.
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Anyway, just very excited for that.
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Yeah, I'm excited as well.
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Thank you.
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Yeah.
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So let's kick off.
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As I was reading through your work and your profile, one statement that really stuck out was in a world of tools, I help humans transform and culture to evolve.
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This is super interesting because what do you think some of the most important aspects of the human-to-human connection are that a tool can't replace when it comes to leadership development and culture change in companies?
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Yeah, thank you for highlighting this phrase.
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And I I think where my thinking changed a little bit is that tools can be helpful to facilitate that human transformation and culture change if we understand that what we're doing with those tools is improving certain or boosting certain aspects that help humans to transform and change their behavior, like motivation.
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Like very often, especially I I work predominantly in tech industry, some of my background is in technology, and very often people in technology put function and practices first and tools and technology, and humanity or our psychology, our like emotional part is sort of at the background.
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And one of the game, one of the thought leaders in uh game design thinking highlighted this sort of gap where he talks about function-centered design and human-centered design.
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And the difference is, again, people in technology and function-centered design assumes that when you give people the tools, the technology, and everything they need to perform a certain task, then they're just gonna use it just because it's there.
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But human-centered design takes into account these features that we have, our human psychology and specifically the feature of motivation which is not consistent and it goes up and goes down, and you need to design tools and systems to accommodate for that so people actually do what you want them to do and are motivated to do so.
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And that is a tricky part because we have different motivators and sometimes we remember about them, sometimes we don't.
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And so, how do we do it design systems and tools that support that feature of human psychology and human-centered design?
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Yeah.
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You know what I love, I mean, the motivation up and down thing, I talk about this quite a bit because there were studies that showed that even the weather impacts your mood, and your mood can affect how you make a decision and how motivated you are to do a particular task.
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So we really underestimate how motivation is wanes, ebbs and flows, even throughout the day.
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No, it's also, you know, you mentioned that you saw that I have uh certifications and experience in health and well-being.
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And actually, you know, speaking about weather, our biology, our evolutionary biology is wired that way, so we pay attention to the weather.
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Because in you know, evolutionary times, if the weather was bad, there probably was it was more difficult to get resources, or you needed to stack up on resources and maybe save your energy for a better day.
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And that's why our decision making is so affected by the weather, by the environment, because for us it means like the resources, the energy, how available are those, and what is what is the future from the perspective of today and right now looks like, and then based on that, uh how much energy we can extend and how much energy we need to save.
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And that's like just an ongoing conversation, right?
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So our psychology is interlinked with our biology, and we also need to make sure that we understand that we are not separate, our brain doesn't function separately from our body, and that's where I think I have a sort of distinct advantage because I know how this link works better than a lot of other people in technology and leadership and people who design like be either behavioral intervention or any sort of intervention for human behavior.
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In your experience, why do so many people struggle with setting clear, actionable goals?
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And how do you guide them in making these goals more measurable and achievable?
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You made such a great point there, measurable goals.
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Right?
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It's not that people have difficulty with setting those once they're aware, it's just very often when we have more, I guess, long-term and loftier goals, it's just harder to translate them into numbers and we sort of give up on that altogether.
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Like for example, let's take an example from corporate culture.
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We decide to become a more innovative organization, right?
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And let's say our company is already established and we have a lot of systems and processes that work amazing and we are in a stable state, everyone has salary, we have product market feed and all of that, right?
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And there is not much incentive to do things differently, but we know that long term, based on data, if the company doesn't innovate, then it becomes obsolete and irrelevant in the market.
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And so we need to create a culture that also innovates, and we need to transition there.
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And so, how do we become more innovative culture?
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How do we measure that aspect of innovation?
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It's a little bit more difficult to measure it, not impossible, but it takes a little bit of thinking to design to measure those softer definitions and uh cultural aspects, like how to how do we measure values, right?
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Or the progression or the change of those values.
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And I again I as in my work and in a lot of uh business case studies, uh, I know that companies do that, that it can be done, but it's just a little bit more challenging and it requires a leader to be focused on that.
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Like we need if we want to improve that, and if we are serious of changing that, that we need to learn how to measure it.
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You know, like the foundation of management.
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What you what gets measured gets managed.
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So if you don't measure the stuff that you want to change or you want to improve or you want to work on somehow, then it's not gonna go if somewhere consistently or predictably.
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Okay, so is that something that you recommend to your clients?
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Like how to put in measures so that they can actually track the change in the behavior and also so that they know what's working and what's not working, right?
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Yes, exactly.
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Measuring helps you to know what's working, what's not working, and also it helps you to measure the progression from state A to state B.
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And let's say someone wants to uh leadership wants to become more inclusive, right?
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If you want to improve something, you gotta understand where you are, and usually when it comes to any values, the only thing you can really measure is the behaviors and then the effect that people have.
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So how do how inclusive do you feel our culture is or leadership is, right?
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So you can measure that, but then you need to say how do how did we arrive there?
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Like with that assessment, let's say it's low in inclusivity.
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So what are the behaviors that contribute to that?
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Those are the things that you can measure.
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And once you measure based on data, on best like practices, based on your own history, once you can measure it, you think okay, this is a state A, and we're here because of that.
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And now this is a state B, so we need to do certain behaviors in again in our theory or our thesis.
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We need to do certain behaviors to improve that measurement of inclusivity, right?
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And then you run a pilot, and you're like, okay, we do these behaviors that we measure, and then you do the assessment again.
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And did we arrive there?
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And if not, you gotta do something else.
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And if you don't measure it, obviously you might do a bunch of things and you never know if something improved or not.
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Slight detour as well.
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You mentioned doing pilots.
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Now, experimentation in business, I think is something that is often still lacking.
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We know about doing A-B tests on emails and stuff like that, but how important do you think it is for businesses and maybe even for individuals to set up business experiments in their teams?
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It's an essential part.
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We might have a lot of theories about what is possible, what we can do, what people will do.
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That's whether personally or team-wide or company-wide.
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But we never really know, and we never really know because it's a different people.
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We might read about it, you know, somewhere or somebody did something, might be different people, might be different sector of business, might be different environment, whether that's maybe a different country or maybe different time, before AI, after AI, completely different context.
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And so you plug something in, and there is a high probability that it's not gonna work because of all of this aspects.
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And that's why, you know, also business education in general is so challenging because implementation so highly depends on the context.
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If something worked in one setting, it is not a guarantee that it is gonna work in your setting.
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So the best hope you can have is that it works, but in order to know that, you need to run a pilot and actually test it as close to the scale stage as possible.
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Meaning if you run a pilot, the closer it is to the outcome you want to like the scale and the context, the higher there is a probability that it's gonna scale as well.
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And pilots are very important because also if you design pilot that is you know cheap and easy to do and short, and you find that something doesn't work, like it's so much more economical.
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You then won't have to waste so much energy and time and resources that sometimes, especially if the business is at the beginning or doesn't have a lot of cushion, can end up in killing your business.
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And on a personal level, it can kill your motivation, and you might think, well, nothing ever gonna work, so why try again?
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Right.
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So pilots, yeah.
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Good pilots are so very important.
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Yeah.
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I love what you mentioned because context is so important, and a lot of the research, as an example in the behavioral sciences, is done with weird.
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Have you heard the the uh I E R D?
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So it's westernized, but it's a very particular subsect of the population.
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It mainly comes from Northern America, and it's mainly white westernized people within a certain age range, and a lot of it is done with college kids because the professors that are doing the research, yeah, it's very easy to get that sample.
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Now, when we come to South Africa, we have an entirely different culture and context, and the people here may behave very differently to the people in that subsector of the population.
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So doing pilots here for South Africans and with the South African context is so important to see what's working with people in the global south.
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Yeah.
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And it's I think very important.
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What makes it super important to understand the context is people in different cultures are motivated by different things.
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So let's say we would take West, it's a very individualistic culture.
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So when you say person, you know, very few achieve success, or you get or you're gonna be one of the few.
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It can motivate a person.
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But if you talk to an Easterner and tell them, you know, very few people do that, or something along that line, and that is a very communal kind of culture, for them it's gonna be demotivating because, like, I don't want to be the only one, I actually want to be a part of the craft.
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So that's why, you know, also where it was applied is so important because it changes this aspect of human motivation.
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And they did a lot of studies in behavioral science, right?
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When they would come give people comparisons to a group of people, like people in X group do this, and that's why you might, you know, want to do that as well, whether that's saving energy or not wasting stuff.
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But that assumes that people are motivated by that group of people.
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And if they're not, they're gonna be put off by that same example.
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Yeah, that's such a great example.
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So let's let's chat a little bit, let's dive a little bit deeper into that actually, because we're on the we talk about motivation and how we can make sure that we get to the goals.
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So you've developed the consistency code based on your extensive coaching experience.
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Can you explain the consistency code and how it helps individuals and organizations achieve lasting change?
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Yes.
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Consistency core code, if you will simplify it to its bare bones, it's working on three aspects.
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You have your awareness that people need to have.
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Here we're talking about what needs to be done, why it needs to be done, how it's gonna be done.
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So all the stories that people need to create clarity in order to pursue a course of action.
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Like the brain needs those things in order to do anything.
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But then you have the second is enabling, the second pillar.
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When you create when you design a system that makes what people want to do, what you make what you want people to do easy and accessible and uh just possible in the first place.
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So that's like enabling the like a system to support the desired action.
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And then the third pillar is praise motivation reinforcement, and that is where you design a set of reminders, a set of incentives, non-monetory, and also things that help people to see their progress and praising the right kind of behavior.
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I like to call the whole system seed to sprout.
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You put the awareness, you put the seed in, right?
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Then you design the soil to support the growth, and then you in the sprouting stage, you nourish the growth by different incentive, and again, monetary uh progress and autonomy and purpose and praise.
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When you have all of this in place, there is a high probability that you're gonna achieve success and the success that's gonna be consistent, and all of that is at the background measured and tracked.
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Because, as we mentioned, if you don't measure it, chances are you're not gonna be able to shape the journey and figure out what's working, what's not working, how well it's working, and whether it's worth continuing the same course of action.
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There was a lot of work in terms of what motivates people to do their best work.
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For example, there is a book, The Progress Principle.
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And analyzing 12,000 of work diaries, what they learned is progress is amidst the most motivating things for human beings, progress towards meaningful goals.
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And because of that, we need to design systems to track and measure and make that progress visible.
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One of the big mistakes that you mentioned before when we chatted is that people try to take on too much at one time and then get very overwhelmed by the pressure.
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And you talk about this like making it easy.
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So how important is it to not to to do one thing at a time when you're trying to make change happen?
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Yes, such a great point, Kevin.
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I sometimes forget to mention it because for me it feels like such a common thing to do.
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But leaders and companies are usually quite ambitious, and that's good at the strategy planning stage.
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But then once we get down to implementation, we understand we need to understand this feature of human psychology as attention.
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We can only attend to very few things because of our cognitive load, because of our lives already busy, the environment has so many distractions.
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And there is a lot of research showing that the more things people try to do at once, the less chance of success each item that they attempt to do has.
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So what it means, like play language, the more you try to do, the less you are able to do.
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And the more goals you have, the more goals you pursue, the less chance that you actually get any of them done at all.
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It's there is the saying, you know, try to catch two rabbits and you catch like none.
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So the same kind of thing goes here.
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We don't have attention and limited attention.
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We have limits on our ability to pay attention and distribute our resources like energy and time to anything.
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That's one thing.
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But then also, if you attempt to do a lot of things at the same time, then it's hard to say what actually worked towards you achieving that goal.
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If I try to change culture and I implement, try to implement 10 behaviors all at once and it works, but how do you know now what actually works?
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And when you have less time and energy and resources, how do you know where to shrink your effort and what was essential for the change in the first place and what you can drop when you need to switch your attention to something else?
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Right?
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It's like I mean when I also Yeah, go ahead.
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Yeah, no, carry on, please.
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That's uh of the simple example.
00:23:46.960 --> 00:23:56.240
I also work in health coaching, and some of my clients would say, Okay, I'm taking these supplements, and there are like 10 on 15 of them, but which ones do I actually need?
00:23:56.480 --> 00:24:00.960
Because I I can't imagine to take them till the rest of my life, all 15, right?
00:24:01.039 --> 00:24:04.799
So when I need to drop unnecessary stuff, like which ones do I drop?
00:24:04.960 --> 00:24:11.680
And if we didn't have good research and scientists trying to figure out what's actually essential, I wouldn't even know.
00:24:11.759 --> 00:24:17.680
But because we have great people doing great science, they can say, yeah, you know, these things are not essential, you can drop them anytime.
00:24:17.839 --> 00:24:29.839
And so when back to your question, original question, when you try to implement all of the things all at once, and God, you know, send you luck and you improved and you progressed, but then what work?
00:24:30.160 --> 00:24:31.920
And then what can you stop?
00:24:32.000 --> 00:24:36.240
And what do you what do you need to build up on because resources are always limited?
00:24:36.480 --> 00:24:36.640
Yeah.
00:24:36.799 --> 00:24:58.000
I guess to round it out, that what you're saying is that for like let's say if you have a kind uh you're a business owner and you're trying to do something like this in your company, it's run a pilot, but test one thing at a time, because if you test too many things, you don't know what worked, and you could actually be costing money on things that have very little impact, whereas it's one thing that has an impact.
00:24:58.160 --> 00:25:22.400
And at an individual level, it's I have all these goals, I'm very ambitious, but what's best to do is to do is to tackle one goal at a time, get that right, and then move on to the next one so that you're not totally overwhelmed, so that your focus and your attention is solely put into developing yourself in that one area, because otherwise you spread yourself too thin and you actually end up not getting any of them.
00:25:22.480 --> 00:25:22.880
Is that right?
00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:24.400
Yes, that's exactly right.
00:25:25.039 --> 00:25:27.759
That's amazing how uh well you summarized it.
00:25:28.480 --> 00:25:37.200
Again, business owners know that you have limited resources, like human resources, energy, money, everything is limited.
00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:48.640
If you don't figure out what's your ROI on anything that you do, and if you don't make sure that you do only the most effective things, then you're gonna be out of business pretty soon.
00:25:48.799 --> 00:25:58.400
That's why it's so important to run the pilot and run fewer things and do your best to focus on what brings maximum return on investment with anything that you do.
00:25:58.720 --> 00:25:58.960
Okay.
00:25:59.200 --> 00:26:07.200
One of the other things, so this is a quick insight that I found recently was that you mentioned so progress, like the progress principle.
00:26:07.359 --> 00:26:11.039
So another big one that I found was accountability.
00:26:11.279 --> 00:26:16.160
So, how important is accountability to behavior change?
00:26:16.319 --> 00:26:25.039
And are there any methods that you recommend to your clients to ensure that they stay accountable both with the goals that they set for themselves and within their teams?
00:26:25.359 --> 00:26:31.759
Yeah, so again, such an important aspect that uh I don't always remember to mention from the start.
00:26:32.000 --> 00:26:42.160
But accountability in simple plain language, we humans do a lot more and a lot better when we are feeling like we are what being watched, especially watched by the people that we care about.
00:26:42.400 --> 00:26:48.079
As we mentioned at the beginning, our motivation will go up and down, up and down, so that's a given.
00:26:48.480 --> 00:27:02.640
But if you feel like that there is someone watching you and you actually would like that person or a group of people to think well of you, you are much more likely to feel motivated to do it even when you don't feel like it, when you don't have energy.
00:27:02.960 --> 00:27:05.519
And uh yeah, that's the last thing on your mind.
00:27:05.599 --> 00:27:08.720
So accountability is very important for human psychology.
00:27:08.799 --> 00:27:17.119
We are social creatures, and when we feel that others might watch what we do, we're gonna do a lot more and a lot better.
00:27:17.359 --> 00:27:29.839
And a simple way to make sure that people feel accountable is to make what they are responsible for visible, like the work that they do and the quality of their work.
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.079
You can do you can have different dashboards, and a lot of businesses have that.
00:27:34.240 --> 00:27:47.680
If you wanna, for example, increase innovation and you wanna have more tasks run by each team, you can create a dashboard where every team can put the experiments, what they did, how they did it, what's the result, right?
00:27:47.759 --> 00:28:10.799
And you can then at the end of the week or months say, like, oh, the highlight the team who did the most experiments because hey, we like different badges and winning and and leading, but then also everyone would feel that their actions are being watched and they will feel like they are accountable for what they do, and therefore they're gonna do more of the things.
00:28:10.880 --> 00:28:14.880
It's just the again the feature of human psychology that we have.
00:28:15.119 --> 00:28:30.880
And you know, that's why also coaching works a lot of time, not so much because you do a lot of magic there, but because people simply feel like I cannot go to a session and say week after week after week that I did nothing, right?
00:28:31.039 --> 00:28:34.000
That I said I'm gonna do this and I didn't do that.
00:28:34.160 --> 00:28:35.440
Like what kind of person I am?
00:28:35.599 --> 00:28:45.519
So the more visibility you can add to any behavior that you wanna encourage in a team in the organization, the better contability gonna work.
00:28:45.839 --> 00:28:47.359
And some of the great examples, right?
00:28:47.519 --> 00:28:50.559
Leaderboards, progress charts, you merge them, like make it very visual.
00:28:50.960 --> 00:28:52.079
Social recognition.
00:28:52.319 --> 00:29:00.079
Just having someone recognize your efforts, the fact that you're being watched, you know, in a sense, being watched, you know, a bit like cameras.
00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:05.440
But but the fact that someone has recognized what you are doing is really motivating.
00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:06.799
Yes.
00:29:07.039 --> 00:29:19.599
And then also, you know, when you highlight, you subconsciously tell a person that, ah, you're such a great contributor, and I expect more like this from you.
00:29:19.759 --> 00:29:24.880
And then people feel like, well, I set the standard, I have to keep it up, otherwise it's not me.
00:29:24.960 --> 00:29:30.480
Or like I'm betraying my own identity that I've just built up my reputation with these people.
00:29:30.720 --> 00:29:38.880
And then people want to do more and better, and they put pressure on themselves without you doing anything, just saying good stuff about it.
00:29:39.039 --> 00:29:40.160
Identity is so important.
00:29:40.400 --> 00:29:42.079
Yeah, identity is so important.
00:29:42.240 --> 00:29:46.960
And and on that, because I think the two are linked, but we'll see what you I'm interested to hear your perspective.
00:29:47.200 --> 00:29:52.319
How important is understanding the why behind behaviors when trying to create change?
00:29:52.480 --> 00:29:58.319
And what role does that have in in in motivation and the way that we work towards things?
00:29:58.640 --> 00:29:59.680
Why, Simon Cynic.
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:11.359
TED Talk about why uh has been either second or third or somewhere their most watched TED Talks ever, still after like more than 10 years.
00:30:11.759 --> 00:30:23.920
And the reason is because it's based in our human psychology and it's fundamentally highlights something that is fundamental to being a human.
00:30:24.000 --> 00:30:27.759
And what I'm talking about is your brain is always calculating one thing.
00:30:28.000 --> 00:30:37.200
The effort I'm about to exert for pursuing any specific goal or doing a behavior, how well is it justified from the perspective of energy cost?
00:30:37.440 --> 00:30:39.519
Like energy is the currency of life.
00:30:39.920 --> 00:30:44.799
You know, no matter what you do, your brain translates it into energy spent on that.
00:30:44.960 --> 00:30:48.480
And so why answers this fundamental question?
00:30:48.720 --> 00:30:49.920
What's in it for me?
00:30:50.079 --> 00:30:52.079
What am I gonna get on the other side?
00:30:52.319 --> 00:31:05.279
Whether that's a bigger picture, well, I'm gonna be uh contributing to a bigger cause or well-being of my community, even the community of the entire world, like is it justifiable with the effort that I'm asked to exert?
00:31:05.519 --> 00:31:05.920
Right?
00:31:06.160 --> 00:31:25.359
And when your brain doesn't have the answer to the question, why it's important, why it's worth it, why the energy I'm about to spend worth that goal, then you're not gonna get green light from your own brain for taking action, especially not consistently.
00:31:25.519 --> 00:31:43.359
And that is why it's so fundamental to have clarity around like why this behavior that I want people to do, I want myself to do, why is this important and what it gives to the person who performs the action, whether that's myself or my team or my organization.
00:31:43.519 --> 00:31:56.000
And human beings have two kinds of like primary motivation: what's in it for me, and also how does this serve bigger community or me serving the world?
00:31:56.240 --> 00:32:09.920
Because we are made that way that we are not entirely selfish, we have a selfish part, like I take care of myself, and we have a non-selfish part, I need to also serve the community, the world that I'm living in, you know, for many different reasons.
00:32:10.160 --> 00:32:20.559
And so when you can combine two of those, why for myself, what's in it for me, and then why, how does it how do I serve others with that behavior that you tell me?
00:32:20.799 --> 00:32:31.200
If you can link that to the behavior that you want people to do consistently, and you will remind that consistently, then people will do the behavior.
00:32:31.359 --> 00:32:33.519
I would argue that that is the biggest thing.
00:32:33.599 --> 00:32:38.480
You know, Nietzsche said when you have a big enough why, you'll figure out how.
00:32:38.640 --> 00:32:41.680
So it's not the exact code, but it's along those lines.
00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:52.799
Very long time ago, all the philosophers and like people in self-development noticed that if you give people a good enough reason, they would freaking do anything.
00:32:53.039 --> 00:32:55.279
It doesn't matter how much energy it will take.
00:32:55.440 --> 00:33:14.640
You know, BJ Fog in Stanford, he is a behavioral scientist, really big in habit formation, has this graph that shows the uh relationship between motivation and ability, which basically says the more motivation a person has, the harder the action can be and they will still do it.
00:33:14.960 --> 00:33:21.200
But the less the motivation you have, the easiest it has to be for the person to perform the action.
00:33:21.440 --> 00:33:24.480
And as we as we talked about, motivation goes up and down.
00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:31.519
And so that's why it's important to make things easy, so because people are not gonna feel all that motivated all the time.
00:33:31.680 --> 00:33:32.000
Right?
00:33:32.079 --> 00:33:48.799
But then the second part of it is remind people of their of the importance of the action so their motivation gets a boost a lot more often when they decide to do the action because again, without motivation, like without the drive, you cannot expect people consistently to do anything.
00:33:49.039 --> 00:33:49.279
Yeah.
00:33:49.440 --> 00:34:05.440
So Angela, for the business leaders and the owners in the Lacker Network, what's one actionable strategy that you could advise to everybody here that they can implement immediately to drive more consistent behavior change in their teams and for themselves?
00:34:05.599 --> 00:34:05.759
Yeah.
00:34:06.160 --> 00:34:07.519
Yeah, it's it's it's a great question.
00:34:07.599 --> 00:34:15.599
You know, we always need to take some actions and we can only start with one at any given point, ideally, if we want to make it effective.
00:34:15.760 --> 00:34:20.639
But I'd say if you're a leader, put that by principle in action.
00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:42.000
And the way to start it is to do, depending on the size of your organization or your team, individually or through assessment and then through reminders to triggers, first ask people what they care about, why it is important for them to excel in their work, to deliver on KPIs or OKRs, whatever the company does.
00:34:42.159 --> 00:34:53.199
So learn about what motivates people in your company, like really understand what they care about and help them to connect what they care about to the bigger purpose of the organization.
00:34:53.360 --> 00:34:58.400
And you do it through meetings on a team level, you do it through, you know, stand-ups.
00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:08.639
I don't know if you do those every Monday, you have this on in your Slack channel, you might have a trigger like why it is important for you to excel at your work today, right?
00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:13.679
So first figure out what your people care about and then remind them of that consistently.
00:35:13.840 --> 00:35:22.239
And because we live in the era of AI, you can actually scale the personalized connection to what people care about.
00:35:22.480 --> 00:35:37.440
Meaning, if I care about, I don't know, changing the world and building systems for human thriving, then remind me of how my work connects to that, and I'll be every day driven beyond measure to do my absolute best.
00:35:37.679 --> 00:35:44.159
So put this principle why in in in practice, figure out what your people care about and remind them of that often.
00:35:44.559 --> 00:35:47.280
So this has been actually a master class in human behavior.
00:35:47.360 --> 00:35:58.000
I'm gonna try and sum up some key issues, and I hope I don't leave anything out because you've given such a great explanation of just the basics of human psychology and how it works for behavior change.
00:35:58.159 --> 00:36:16.639
But in terms of the consistency code, find your clarity of why, make sure that the people in your teams are connected to what's important and not just from what what uh I get out of it, but you also mentioned it's how I can help on a broader level, so even on a on a social level.
00:36:16.800 --> 00:36:25.039
So and if you can match those two things, you're in the money, then make it very easy to do because our motivation wanes, it's never stable.
00:36:25.199 --> 00:36:31.440
So you mentioned making that super easy so that when our motivation is very low, it's very easy to still do the action.
00:36:31.519 --> 00:36:33.760
Because if it was hard, I mean we just wouldn't do it.
00:36:33.920 --> 00:36:37.119
And the last one of your consistency code is reinforcement, right?
00:36:37.280 --> 00:36:59.199
So remind people, continue to remind them of the connection that they have for this greater purpose or what they get out of it, and reinforce the behaviors that they're doing so that we can p continue to be consistent and towards them, because as you mentioned, progress is the one thing that we need to see in order for us to continue to improve and be better.
00:36:59.440 --> 00:37:02.159
I hope that I rounded out that nicely.
00:37:02.400 --> 00:37:06.719
Out of all the insights that you've given us today, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on.
00:37:06.880 --> 00:37:19.280
If anybody's interested in really getting insight into human behavior for their teams and even for themselves, please go and look up Angela Sharina and the consistency code and go and check her out.
00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:20.159
Thank you, Angela.
00:37:20.239 --> 00:37:21.039
It's been an absolute pleasure.
00:37:21.280 --> 00:37:22.719
Yeah, thank you, Kevin, for having me.
00:37:22.800 --> 00:37:25.119
It's uh yeah, absolutely enjoyed it.