The Habit Discontinuity Hypothesis
A change of setting loosens old habits for a short while. A reorg, a new team or an office move opens that window, and in one field experiment it lasted about three months.
The habit discontinuity hypothesis says a change of setting loosens old habits for a while. That makes the weeks after a reorg or an office move your best window to change how a team works.
Habits run on cues: the same room, the same people, the same time of day. Change the setting and the cues go with it, so for a while the old behavior has less to hold on to. When a UK charity moved its headquarters to another town, staff commuting habits weakened right after the move.
Bas Verplanken and Deborah Roy (2016) tested it with 800 residents of Peterborough, England, half of whom had moved in the previous six months. Some got tailored tips on greener habits. Eight weeks later the advice had worked better on recent movers, and the window seemed to last about three months after the move. The authors call it a small proof of concept.
The nudge: Pick the one team routine you want, say a 10-minute Monday priorities check-in, and run it from the first Monday after the change. Keep it weekly for three months. Waiting for things to settle means waiting for the old cues to come back.
Source: Verplanken & Roy, Empowering interventions to promote sustainable lifestyles: Testing the habit discontinuity hypothesis in a field experiment, Journal of Environmental Psychology (2016); Walker, Thomas & Verplanken, Old habits die hard: Travel habit formation and decay during an office relocation, Environment and Behavior (2015)
