Culture - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 94

At first this sounds absurd. One tooth? Seriously? But there's a method to Fogg's madness. He
asks people to practice their tiny habits in a particular way. A habit must require little effort,
take less than 30 seconds, and be done at least once a day. The habit must be preceded by an an-
chor, an existing habit or event that triggers the new behavior. And the tiny habit must be fol-
lowed by a reward or self-celebration. So, for instance, you may decide that “After I brush my
teeth, I'll floss one tooth, then shout Victory!”
Figure 4-11. The architecture of tiny habits.
Tiny habits are the building blocks of behavior. Fogg's method makes the architecture of behavi-
or visible, so we can see how to change what we do. After working with 10,000 people, he has
proven that if you start small and take it one step at a time, you'll see that tiny habits really add
up.
Habits can be practiced not only by individuals but by teams as well, as this anecdote by Clay
Shirky reveals.
Every now and again, I see a business doing something so sensible and so radical at the same time that I
realize I'm seeing a little piece of the future. I had that feeling last week, after visiting my friend Scott
Heiferman at Meetup. On my way out after a meeting, Scott pulled me into a room by the elevators,
where a couple of product people were watching a live webcam feed of someone using Meetup. Said user
was having a hard time figuring out a new feature, and the product people, riveted, were taking notes. It
was the simplest setup I'd ever seen for user feedback, and I asked Scott how often they did that sort of
thing. “Every day” came the reply. cxxiv
In most businesses, user research is sporadic, and only a few specialists participate in direct ob-
servation. But it's not very difficult or expensive to create a setup that lets people who build sys-
tems watch people use those systems on a routine basis. Imagine how much better our systems
and services might be if more teams made user research a regular habit.
Of course, cultural change must come from the top, but even with strong leadership , it's hard to
move the needle. Charles Duhigg tells the story of Paul O'Neil who set out to change the key-
stone habits of worker safety at Alcoa. In his first speech as CEO, he surprised his audience of
investors and analysts.
I want to talk to you about worker safety. Every year, numerous Alcoa workers are injured so badly they
miss a day of work. Our safety record is better than the general American workforce, especially consider-
ing that our employees work with metals that are 1500 degrees and machines that can rip a man's arm
off. But it's not good enough. I intend to make Alcoa the safest company in America. I intend to go for
zero injuries. cxxv