Want to see the real-life results of small changes?

At the core of all GRIST interventions are micro-behaviours. These small, specific, targeted actions enable big change when they are demonstrated well and consistently.

Micro-behaviours are small actions that you can see or hear; i.e. they are definable, observable, assessable, repeatable and 100% within the control of the individual. Micro-behaviours are easy for people to understand and do, easy for leaders to coach, and most importantly, designed to be predictive of performance outcomes.

Incremental improvement

Micro-behaviours identify what needs to be done differently to improve and allows for an objective assessment of capability. They enable small incremental steps of development – a roadmap if you like – that underpins effective on-the-job learning and brings your organisation’s vision to life. They are the small degrees of change that enable your people and organisation to achieve excellence.

We all action thousands of micro-behaviours every day. How to pick which ones to focus on?

It would be fair to think, ‘surely there are thousands of micro-behaviours required to change capability?’. You’re right; often a change requires a large combination of micro-behaviours. If you distill change down to its simplest form; however, you’d be surprised at how few micro-behaviours are required to initiate ‘aggregation of marginal gains’, and shift capability and performance.

The first step is to identify what your desired outcome is. The second is to keep it simple by thinking of one small thing you can do (a micro-behaviour) to dramatically increase the likelihood of achieving your desired outcome. And the third step is to focus on making that one small thing happen.

For example:

Step 1: your desired outcome

To make a valuable contribution to a strategic project that is over and above my day job.

Step 2: one small thing

Put a 15 minute catch up in the diary each week with my leader to assess progress.

Step 3: make it happen

Discuss with my leader and send recurring calendar invitation.

By taking a similar approach to organisational change we increase the rate of change and decrease change fatigue.

See it in action: Energy Australia case study

Approach: GRIST implemented a detailed micro-behavioural approach that included identifying micro-behaviours, behavioural analytics, ingraining micro-behaviours as habit, and tracking the quality and consistency of coaching conversations. Teams across the Energy Australia contact centre consequently had a shared understanding of the drivers of current and desired behaviours and results.

Goal: one key goal for the team was NPS. A secondary focus was conversion.

Micro-behavioural focus: to lift NPS, a focus ‘ripple’ micro-behaviour was introduced; to ask for immediate feedback from the customer at the end of the call. By focusing on this micro-behaviour, and knowing they’d ask for feedback in the moment, the consultants lifted the quality of multiple micro-behaviours across the conversation.

Results: through the program, teams developed a shared understanding within the business of the drivers of current and desired behaviours and results, the gap between the two, and what needed to be done to close the gap. Over a period of weeks, a small number of key micro-behaviours were introduced, including the one above. The uplift on NPS and conversion for the period was significant, as below:

If you’d like to know more about how Energy Australia improved sales by improving customer conversations, you can read the full case study here.