Review The Power of Habit Chapter 5,6, and 7

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Chapter 5: STARBUCKS AND THE HABIT OF SUCCESS – When Willpower Becomes Automatic

Howard Schulz, the man who built Starbucks into a colossus, had a very poor and troubled childhood. His mother would ask him little questions like “How are you going to study tonight? What are you going to do tomorrow? How do you know you are ready for the test?” It trained him to set goals.

Schulz says that he has been lucky. He believes that if you tell people that they have what it takes to succeed, they will prove you right.

Willpower is the single most important keystone habit for individual success.

Willpower isn’t just a skill. It is a muscle and it gets tired as it works harder, so there is less power left over for other things. If you want to do something that requires willpower – like going for a run after work – you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day. If you use it up too early on tedious tasks like writing emails or filling out boring forms, all the strength will be gone by the time you get home.

How willpower becomes a habit: By choosing a certain behavior ahead of time, and then following that routine when an inflection point arrives.

When people are asked to do something that takes self-control, if they think they are doing it for personal reasons – if they feel like it´s a choice or something they enjoy because it helps someone else – it’s much less taxing. If they feel like they have no autonomy, if they´re just following orders, their willpower muscles get tired much faster.

Chapter 6: The power of crisis – creating habits through accident and design

The organizational habits— or “routines,” as Nelson and Winter called them— are enormously important, because without them, most companies would never get any work done. Routines provide the hundreds of unwritten rules that companies need to operate. They allow workers to experiment with new ideas without having to ask for permission at every step. Routines provide the hundreds of unwritten rules that companies need to operate. They allow workers to experiment with new ideas without having to ask for permission at every step. They provide a kind of organizational memory, so that managers don’t have to reinvent the sales process every six months or panic each time a VP quits. Routines reduce uncertainty.

Among the most important benefi ts of routines is that they create truces between potentially warring groups or individuals within an organization.

Companies aren’t families. They’re battlefi elds in a civil war.

Yet despite this capacity for internecine warfare, most companies roll along relatively peacefully, year after year, because they have routines— habits— that create truces that allow everyone to set aside their rivalries long enough to get a day’s work done. Organizational habits offer a basic promise: If you follow the established patterns and abide by the truce, then rivalries won’t destroy the company, the profi ts will roll in, and, eventually, everyone will get rich.

Truces are only durable when they create real justice. If a truce I unbalanced – if the peace isn’t real – the routines often fail when they are needed the most.

Creating successful organizations isn’t just a matter of balancing authority, for an organization to work, leaders must cultivate habits that both create a real and balanced peace and, paradoxically, make it absolutely clear who´s in charge.

A company with dysfunctional habits can’t turn around simply because a leader orders it. Rather, wise executives seek out moments of crisis – or create the perception of crisis – and cultivate the sense that something must change, until everyone is finally ready to overhand the patterns they live with each day.

Chapter 7: HOW TARGET KNOWS WHAT YOU WANT BEFORE YOU DO – When Companies Predict (and Manipulate) Habits

The first things you see upon entering the grocery store are the fruits and vegetables arranged in attractive, bountiful piles. If we start our shopping sprees by loading up on healthy stuff, we´re much more likely to buy Doritos or frozen pizza when we encounter them later on.

Peoples buying habits are more likely to change when they go through a major life event. When someone gets married, for example, they are more likely to start buying a new type of coffee.

Sticky songs are what you expect to hear on radio. Your brain secretly wants that song, because it’s so familiar o everything else you’ve already heard and liked. It just sounds right.

The areas in the brain that process music are designed to seek out patterns and look for familiarity. Our brains crave familiar music because familiarity is how we manage to hear without becoming distracted by all the sound. That’s why songs that sound familiar – even if you’ve never heard them before – are sticky. Our brains are designed to prefer auditory patterns that seem similar to what we´ve already heard. When Celine Dion releases a new song and it sounds the same as her previous songs, our brains unconsciously crave its recognizability and the song becomes sticky.

We react to the cues (this sounds like all the other songs I’ve ever liked) and rewards (its fun to hum along) and without thinking, we either start singing, or reach over and change station.

If you dress a new something in old habits, it’s easier for the public to accept it.