Happy Friday,

I'm a fan of rituals and habits. There is comfort in knowing that you have something reliable that works. The tough thing is building rituals and knowing that they're effective. So I'll give a few tried and tested examples here.

Checklist

I know this is boring, but checklists are probably the best example of ritualizing behavior. Before you think checklists are beneath you, pilots and surgeons use them.

Creating good checklists takes practice. Your checklist has to respect the training and competency of the folks using it, while also capturing the steps that would otherwise get missed or forgotten.

Pilots have checklists for all kinds of standard and non-standard situations, but they're built on the premise that pilots can operate a plane and fly. The checklists cover how to handle the unique aspects of a situation. Surgeons wound up adopting checklists as a way to eliminate a series of mistakes that kept happening, not to tell the surgeon how to do the essentials of surgery.

In software, we have things like Definition of Done and exit criteria. These operate like checklists.

So, consider adding checklists to your life in areas where you need to remove stress, variability, and the mental load of remembering many discrete steps.

Memento

Not the movie. A memento is a physical reminder of something. While not all that remarkable, they are useful. I've never been a fan of decorating a desk or anything, but oddly enough, I would carry around a railroad spike from job to job.

It reminds me of a job where we found a lot of success by trying things nobody thought would work. The sight of the spike reminds me of that and helps me to get unstuck when I see a problem.

There isn't any secret about creating a memento. It is any physical object that consistently reminds you of something.

Rituals

This last one can be a bit odd, but it is effective. Creating physical rituals that you follow is a fantastic way to snap you into new behaviors. These are physical patterns you repeat in specific situations to remind you of something.

I usually coach these in leaders who need to break certain patterns of behavior. An example is that many leaders know that meetings don't go as well as they can because of their conduct, so we create a ritual to help remind them of how they should behave.

For leaders in an office, we would create a small ritual that takes place at the door frame to a meeting room. It could be tracing the door frame with your eyes, touching a part of the frame or door that you wouldn't normally, or anything like that. The point is that this physical act helped serve as a reset switch where they would step out of who they normally are, and step into who they wish they were.

What Do You Do?

I'm always curious about how other leaders use techniques like this to stretch themselves into who they want to be. What small things do you do to keep you grounded and closer to the leader you aspire to be?

Sincerely,

Ryan