Last Friday I reviewed John Ehrenfeld’s brilliant book Sustainability by Design – its central thesis is that we have to disrupt society’s addiction to consumption. At the same time I have been inundated with requests for staff engagement sessions. My response tends to be, yes you could pay me to browbeat people over their lunch break, but they’ll just go back to their desks and their same old habits.

The same principle of breaking bad habits applies to staff as it does to society at large:

1. Disruption – stop people and make them think about their actions

2. Realignment – change the system to make good habits easier than old habits

3. Reinforcement – providing consistent leadership to ensure the good behaviour becomes a habit

This isn’t easy and it’ll take more than a lunch hour to achieve.