Habits That Sustain High Performance

A great quarter is worth celebrating. It is also worth protecting. Strong results can become the new normal when the habits behind them are reinforced, because under pressure, or in the flow of the day, people default to habit.

It takes time to create new habits, and people naturally tend to do what is easiest. When something new is put in place, willpower can help people start, but without the discipline of consistently following the new process, they can very easily go back to old processes and therefore get their old results.

If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.

That is why leadership and good processes matter. They create systems that serve the team and help the right habits become normal, so the success the team has achieved becomes easier to repeat.

For leaders, the early signs that momentum needs attention often show up in the little things before they show up in the results. Activities are not done as consistently, or they are not done to the same quality. It can be tempting to explain that away by saying the team is under pressure, or that it is just a one-off thing. But those small deviations from the standard are often the first signs that the habits behind the result need to be reinforced.

Rather than ignoring them, leaders need to check in, understand why the person has deviated from the standard, and offer support and encouragement early. That is how leaders help people stay on track with the little things, before the little things become bigger problems like missed targets and deadlines.

One of the best things a leader can do this week is check that the team is aligned: the goal, the activities required to achieve it, and the measurements of success for those activities.

This matters because leaders can fall under the curse of knowledge. They assume other people know what they know, instead of checking that there is actual clarity and understanding across the whole team.

That check-in can be done formally by sitting down and asking the right questions. It can be done through an audit, a quiz, or even in a fun way, like using Kahoot to make a game of checking people’s knowledge and understanding, both individually and as a team.

The important thing is not the format. The important thing is that the leader checks.

High performance is not maintained by hoping people will remember what matters. It is maintained through clear goals, consistent activities, visible measures, and leaders who keep checking that the right habits are being used.

Success becomes sustainable when the habits behind it are reinforced.