Tritsch, Joanne L.

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Organization Management Journal Volume 13 Issue 1 Article 8 1-2-2016 RESEARCH OF NOTE: BOOK REVIEW The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg Joanne L. Tritsch University of Maryland University College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.shu.edu/omj  Part of the Organizational Behavior and Theory Commons, and the Organizational Communication Commons Recommended Citation Tritsch, Joanne L. (2016) "RESEARCH OF NOTE: BOOK REVIEW The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg," Organization Management Journal: Vol. 13: Iss. 1, Article 8. Available at: https://scholarship.shu.edu/omj/vol13/iss1/8 RESEARCH OF NOTE: BOOK REVIEWThe Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg, Random House TradePaperbacks, New York, 2014, 371 pp., $16 (paperback), ISBN-13: 978-0812981605In his book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What WeDo in Life and Business, Charles Duhigg looks at gettingresults from the perspective of habits. The research thatsupports this book is drawn from the seminal work oftheorists, more recent scholarly studies and businessreporting, and hundreds of in-person interviews. Thebook lays out some well-documented processes foridentifying daily patterns in order to tweak the sequen-cing and to establish new habits that can improve ourpersonal, organizational and communal lives.Duhigg is a journalist who has won multiple awardsfor his reporting, including a Pulitzer Prize for his workon the New York Times’ series of articles about Apple,Inc. The Power of the Habit is Duhigg’s first book; whenreleased in 2012, it made the annual best business booklists for the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.The book remained on the New York Times BestsellerList for over 60 weeks. Following its 2014 reissue withnew material, it remains number 14 on Amazon.com’sbestseller list of books on business and money andnumber 5 on the New York Times business bestsellers.Discoveries over the past decade in the field ofneuroscience have shed light on how the brainfunctions during routine, everyday tasks. One of thoseroutines is the one we use to form habits throughcreating pathways in the brain. The Power of Habitexplores these studies, as well as the emerging field ofhabit formation research in business, education, andpublic health, to provide the reader with real-worldevidence along with concrete steps to help identify,evaluate, and change habits in order to improveindividual, organizational, and community outcomesranging from improving personal habits, to deepeningemployee engagement, and increasing voter turnout.Duhigg moves beyond the use of willpower to breakbad habits, to focus on establishing new habits toreplace the old. Duhigg notes that his interest inhabits comes from a fascination with the U.S. Army;his book provides examples from a range of sources inbusiness and sports to show the continual importanceof patterns, routines, and habits. Duhigg points out thatbeing able to identify fundamental, keystone patternsis the essential first step in any transformation of indi-viduals and companies. To change behavior, currentpatterns must be understood. Once behavior is chan-ged, with repetition of a new pattern after a week, thosepatterns can become automatic behaviors. Duhigg citesa 2006 research study from Duke University conductedby Bas Verplanken and Wendy Wood (2006) thatfound that up to 40% of our daily actions are basednot on conscious decisions, but on established patternsand habits (Duhigg, 2014, notes).Duhigg states that to break a habit, you need todiagnose the three parts of the habit: the cue, thereward, and the routine. In terms of the cue, whenyou feel the urge for your “bad” habit, analyze thesituation. Ask yourself about the time, location, pre-sent company, current events, and personal feelings.In terms of the reward, determine the craving the“bad” habit serves to satisfy and then test your theoryby substituting the “bad” with something more posi-tive. For example, does the craving for a sweet pastryease by substituting coffee for a doughnut? The pur-pose of this exercise is to find a “good” substitutethat satisfies the craving. Once you have a workingtheory, the challenge is to repeat the new routine tosatisfy the cue in order to establish a new habit. Toreinforce the new habit, write down the sequence ofthe cue, the routine, and the reward. A key here is torecognize that you can never truly kill a habit, butyou can change it. “If you use the same cue, andprovide the same reward, you can shift the routineand change the habit. Almost any behavior can betransformed if the cue and reward stay the same”(Duhigg, 2014, p. 66). A clear illustration of thiscan be seen through the popularity of nicotinepatches and nicotine gum as cigarette substitutesthat have been proven to help with smokingcessation.To form a new “good” habit, the pattern is similar tothe “cue” one. The first step is to recognize that youneed a cue to start the process. Acknowledge the settingand take note of the time, location, present company,current events, and personal feelings. Only one cue isneeded, but any of these can serve as the cue for yournew habit. Choose your reward, write down thesequence, and post it somewhere visible. The key istesting the sequence to determine the reward is ade-ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT JOURNAL2016, VOL. 13, NO. 1, 61–63© 2016 Eastern Academy of Managementquate reinforcement for the new habit. If the reward isnot adequate, substitute a new reward. Over the longrun, the more powerful the intrinsic reward associatedwith the routine, the more powerful is the new habitand the more likely that it will stick.While all of this may sound fairly straightforwardand simplistic, Duhigg uses examples from organiza-tions and communities to show how the power ofhabits can be used to reshape behaviors in order torealize goals set forth by leadership. Using examplesfrom the Tampa Bay Buccaneers football team andtheir winning training techniques, to AlcoholicsAnonymous and its meeting and sponsorship struc-tures, to Alcoa’s culture of safety and a commitmentto excellence, the book shows how patterns and habitscan be changed to realize goals. Alcoa is a particularlyinteresting case. Duhigg shows that through changingthe organization’s core habits surrounding safety, thecompany was able to band together in order to helptransform Alcoa.In all of Duhigg’s cases, the essential added ingredient isthe self-assurance that the new habit sequence will work:belief that the “good” habit will not be subsumed by the“bad” habit. “For habits to permanently change, peoplemust believe that change is feasible… Belief is easier whenit occurs within a community” (Duhigg, 2014, p. 94). Thatbelief can act as a powerful identifier for a team and canlead a group to bond and work together to achieve successat the corporate or community level.Ultimately believing in a successful outcome is oftena result of small wins. Duhigg draws upon Karl Weick’searly research on organizational change to support thebelief that winning is contagious and that small winshelp feed into the overall pattern of establishing suc-cessful “good” habits. Sticking to good habits is linkedto strengthening willpower and allowing participants tocontinue experiencing small successes. This fuels thepattern of habits and builds upon willpower, leading toadditional successful routines and habits. Citing theorigins of Case Western University’s studies on will-power, self-regulation, and children eating marshmal-lows, Duhigg shows how success can snowball. Self-control can become its own successful routine, allowingindividuals, organizations, and communities to developadditional “good” habits.For successful “good” habits to flourish there needsto be some backup contingency planning. Duhiggexplores Starbucks’ training materials for dealing withangry customers, giving and receiving criticism, andeven how to take orders in the face of distractions.Starbucks stresses training and repetition of these“good” habits in stressful situations so that employeetraining can kick in when needed without a lot ofdiscussion or thought. “Willpower becomes a habit bychoosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and thenfollowing that routine when an inflection point arrives”(Duhigg, 2014, p. 155). This process of making newroutines leads to making those routines automatic.Having the common training and reaction allows ahomogeneity of culture and allows the consistency ofthe “good” habit to become the Starbuck standard.“Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain isconstantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its owndevices, the brain will try to make almost any routine intoa habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp downmore often. This effort-saving instinct is a huge advan-tage … An efficient brain also allows us to stop thinkingconstantly about basic behaviors, such as walking andchoosing what to eat, so we can devote mental energy toinventing” (Duhigg, 2014, p. 20). Duhigg argues thathabits are chunked together in terms of routines or pat-terns that are started by a cue—think of it as a trigger thatputs us into auto pilot until we realize the outcome orreceive the reward. Patterns, cues, and rewards are thethree parts of the habit puzzle.In analyzing the appeal of McDonald’s food, Duhiggmaintains that the uniformity of the buildings,employee training, and menu serve as a cue for aroutine of satisfying the craving to eat the french friesand hamburgers. Cravings drive habits, “where a crav-ing is a neurological need based on the anticipation ofthe habit loop” (Duhigg, 2014, p. 51). This is why scentswork so well as a unique trigger to a craving; thinkfreshly brewed coffee or freshly baked cinnamon buns.Sounds are great triggers as well; remember that thenext time your smartphone chimes about a newmessage.Without a desire or craving for the reward, thereis no habit to develop and sometimes desire has to becreated. Procter & Gamble used its understanding ofhabits to turn Febreze into the successful product(approximately $1 billion a year) it is today; theresearchers positioned spraying Febreze as the rewardfor cleaning. The scent of Febreze was positioned andadvertised so that consumers associated sprayingFebreze with a clean, fresh-smelling room.For class use, Charles Duhigg’s website (charlesdu-higg.com) offers a wide range of resources, includingteaching aids, study guides, blog entries, videos, flow-charts, and an opportunity to subscribe to Duhigg’snewsletter. The material is designed to help the readerbetter understand the processes described in the book.The myriad of resources demonstrates the popularity ofthe book and Duhigg’s commitment to his audience,along with the opportunity to appeal to the visuallearners in our classes. Overall, The Power of Habit is62 J. L. TRITSCHentertaining and does a good job of relaying somecomplex and worthwhile material in a comprehensiblemanner. Duhigg’s website offers a wealth of supportingmaterial that will appeal to even the most social-media-savvy student. The ideas presented here may help ana-lyze existing individual, organizational, and communitypatterns in order to realize some new outcomes in theprocess. The bottom line is that this book has somegreat implications for the start of a new semester andfor establishing successful habits for instructors as wellas students.ReferenceVerplanken, B., and Wood, W. (2006) Interventions to breakand create consumer habits. Journal of Public Policy andMarketing, 25(1): 90–103.Joanne L. TritschUniversity of Maryland University College, UpperMarlboro, Maryland, USAjoanne.tritsch@faculty.umuc.eduhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15416518.2016.1152069ORGANIZATION MANAGEMENT JOURNAL 63

RESEARCH OF NOTE: BOOK REVIEW
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg

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RESEARCH OF NOTE: BOOK REVIEW The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business, by Charles Duhigg

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