Are Social Norms overlooked in Organizational Behavior Change ?
When working on change, we all know that things like process, incentives, tools and motivation are a crucial aspect we need to work on.
As important as it is to understand the individual, it's also important to consider the social environment around them (and the unwritten rules that influence what people do)
Think of it, when someone is at work, they are not making decisions in isolation, they are constantly noticing what others do, what gets rewarded, what gets ignored and what seems expected in that setting.
The first step in working with social norms is to understand that they are often unwritten, many organizations today are good at creating policies, defining values, setting expectations etc...
After that, then it's important to understand what people actually see around them day to day (that may mean looking at what is typical in the team, or what people believe is expected from managers, peers or leaders)
Social norms have layers, for example one related to what people typically do, and the one related to what people feel they are expected to do.
In an organization, employees may arrive 10 minutes late to meetings because they see others doing the same...over time that becomes the unspoken rule.
Or employees may feel they should stay late when their manager is still in the office, because they assume that is what commitment is supposed to look like.
If you want to bring norms to the forefront, it helps to ask questions like:
-What do other people in this team believe ? -What do people here typically do ? What do people think is expected of them ?
If you are working on norms, it is also important to avoid a few common mistakes.
1) Assuming that norms are the only thing driving the behavior, when there may be many other influences involved. 2) Highlighting the negative behavior too much, because this can unintentionally make it feel normal. 3) Trying to impose outside ideas in a very top down way, without understanding the context people are actually working in.
It's clear to me that if you want to change behavior in organizations, you cant ignore the social rules people are responding.
This is something we work on with our clients, helping them understand the social, psychological and system influences around behavior, and creating the conditions for change.
Have you noticed specific norms during a change initiative?
(Image from our Behavior Change Cards...this one a norm backfire)