Strong Habits Create Capacity for Adjustments

I was able to observe most of the practices while our son wrestled. It was interesting to watch how the best coaches had those kids go through new moves again and again slowly until each movement was almost natural. During the few times I’ve dropped by my friend’s mixed martial arts gym, I’ve noticed him doing the same approach in how he teaches Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai. The way Cindy and I prepare for delivering a keynote presentation isn’t wildly different, aside from the fact that our prep work isn’t full contact. We do, however, work through the material we’ll be presenting over and over and over again!

In each of these examples, developing “muscle memory” plays a tremendous role in game time performance. The more we practice something we’ve learned, the better chance we have of sustaining that over time. Keeping things simple definitely helps it stick. Make no mistake though, I’m not suggesting that practice alone will lead to perfect execution; that’s nonsense! Therein lies the importance of getting a second set of eyes on how we’re taking action, and continuously improving our technique - be that in sports, in making a presentation, or in basically any role. Whether it’s from our manager or a trusted coach, refining how we practice a new behavior has an ongoing impact on the results we achieve. And when our manager or coach is focused on helping us achieve the best results we’re capable of, they’ll also emphasize the value of simplicity over flashiness.

All this ties directly to something I learned through my time in behavior-based safety: the majority of what we do each day is based on our habits. Those habits, the routine things we do throughout our day with little or no thought, account for a significant amount of total results we achieve - good or bad. The longer we’ve performed each task a certain way, the more difficult it can be to make a change initially. Sustaining that change requires creating a new habit, and statistically, that involves sticking with a new behavioral pattern for 21 to 30 days without reverting back to what we had done previously. 

Practicing a new technique slowing in any type of combat sport is completely different from being able to execute it in a match. The work Cindy and I do in our respective offices to prepare for a keynote presentation is a world apart from delivering that message once we’re mic’d up in front of hundreds of people. A friend serving in the United States Army once told me that “even the best battle plan goes to hell with the first shot fired down range.” In battle, in combat sports, when delivering a presentation, AND even when we’re working to lay a foundation on our company’s core values, developing habits for how we perform each behavior involved provides us with additional bandwidth to make any necessary adjustment when that first shot goes down range. When we know exactly what exemplifying that behavior looks like and practiced it enough to execute it without thinking about it, we have the capacity to make slight adjustments based on the situation we’re in at the time.

I watched Matt develop the ability to perform moves (and counter-moves) intuitively while wrestling, once he had built that muscle memory. The more fluid Cindy and I can be in the material we’re sharing with a group, the more we’re able to tailor every word to the people in each audience - even when we’ve just met them moments before we begin the presentation. Becoming crystal-clear about the behaviors we’ll need to practice while modeling our core values, then repeating those behaviors over and over and over again, is exactly how we create the habits we’ll need to ensure those values are a visible part of what our teams see in our daily routine. Creating these habits will not be flashy; we’ve got to keep things simple. But that most certainly won’t be easy, and it will likely be boring so we’ll look at how we can fight through that soon…