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Andy Stanley - FROM THE VAULT Keystone Habits · Andy Stanley Sermons

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Welcome to the Andy Stanley Leadership Podcast, a conversation designed to help leaders go
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further faster. On today's podcast, we'll talk about creating habits that can change
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your organization. Andy. One of the things we talked about many times on
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the podcast is how our leadership team is often reading through a book together,
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you know, having a discussion. And actually today's podcast comes from one of
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those discussions. But it was a little different in that you didn't bring a
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whole book, and you brought a book in and had us read one chapter.
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Yeah. Usually we read entire books together. Sometimes we spend months working
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through books together, which we all enjoy. At least you all act like
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you enjoy I enjoy it. We do, Yeah, you do. In
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this particular case, I brought I ask everybody just simply to just read chapter
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four of Charles Zwick's book The Power of Habit. And I'm sure most of
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our podcast listeners have either seen the book, heard of the book, or
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perhaps read the book. And specifically, I wanted us to talk about this
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issue of a keystone habit, and he defines a keystone habit is essentially a
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habit that triggers a series of related or in some cases unrelated behaviors, sometimes
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even habits. So it's one thing that an individual does, or in this
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case, one thing an organization can do that changes the behavior or reaffirms and
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underscores other behaviors. So, as a keystone habit, you focus on one
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thing, but it has the potential to impact a series of things. Can
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you give us some examples. The easiest way to understand a keystone habit is
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not to think of it within the context of an organization. We'll get to
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that in a minute, but to think about it personally. One of the
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examples he gives in the book is the habit of eating dinner together as a
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family, and he talks about a study or a couple of studies that say
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families that consistently eat together for dinner. In other words, that's a keystone
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habit, not eat out but eat at home as a family. There's several
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things that happen in terms of study habits where the kids, confidence, budget
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management, a whole lot of things. So somehow somebody's discovered that this one
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habit trickles down and creates other behaviors within a family. An exercise regimen,
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especially daily exercise, is a keystone habit. Men and women who just refuse
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to budge on daily exercise, or again, any kind of exercise routine.
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It's a keystone habit. It affects how they feel, which affects what they
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eat, which affects what they won't eat. And you know, on and
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on goes energy. That kind of thing. Food journaling is a keystone habit.
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In fact, one of the illustrations he gives in the book later on
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is anybody who begins to write down what they eat begins to eat better.
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And as they eat better, they feel better. As they feel better,
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they exercise is the exercise their better parents, they study harder. Again,
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it's a keystone habit. So again, we could go on and on.
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So in terms of personal behavior, the idea of a keystone habit is a
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pretty simple thing. And again when you read the book, you think,
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wow, you know I need to embrace one of these keystone habits, because
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a keystone habit impacts other behaviors. Where it gets tricky is when you begin
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to talk about that within the context of organization. I think one of the
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things that I remember in the conversation made it a little challenging is most of
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us don't really think of organizations as having habits. That's true, Lane,
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But every organization has habits. We call these systems. In fact, we
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any organization has worked hard to create repetition, predictable experiences, predictable work environments,
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predictable patterns of behaviors. So actually habits are good things. We just
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call them systems an organizational life. But not all organizational systems are created.
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Many organizational systems just evolve over time, and that's generally what creates an organizational
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bad habit. So again, systems or habits reiterate things, they sort of
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explain this is how we do it here, whether it's on purpose or by
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accident. If you work anywhere long enough, you begin to act the way
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the people around you act and behave the way they behave. And again,
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if that's a good thing, if you're reinforcing the culture, that's a good
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thing. But if you're trying to change a culture, which is what he
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addresses in the book, then it may be necessary to introduce a keystone habit,
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a single habit that has the power to transition or change an environment.
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You know, we've talked about this a little bit before on a previous podcast.
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But one of the reasons that new initiatives and vision casting in an organization
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doesn't find traction are the organizational habits, because vision casting and new initiatives have
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a tendency to bounce off of the organizational habits. Organizational habits is what drives
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the behaviors within an organization, and if those aren't addressed and changed, then
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new ideas that they just bounce off. It's the same individually as well.
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If I have bad personal habits, I can go to seminars all day long
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about health and nutrition and exercise, but if I don't address my personal habits,
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all that information it doesn't get absorbed. So consequently, when it comes
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to changing an organization or reinforcing the good things in an organization, this is
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a really, really important discussion. But it's a difficult discussion as we as
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we experience, and yet we kind of plodded through and I think we came
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to some great conclusions as it relates to our organization. And as you said
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before, we weren't really trying to fix anything. You really had a different
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motive. Now you're right. In fact, the reason I brought this content
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to our leadership team is I was really curious. I just I wonder if
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there is a current habit that if we were to turn it up in the
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mix for our staff specifically, if it would again protect us going forward,
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or I wondered, is there a new habit that if we introduced that it
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would have such a driving force that would ultimately bring momentum or maybe protect the
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momentum that we already had. So it was really a curiosity thing, and
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that's why it was a bit of an open ended question and took us a
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while to land on something practical. Years ago I read a Thriving on Chaos
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by Tom Peters. It's like a giant book I'm not sure anyone ever finished.
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But in his book Thriving on Chaos, Tom Peters talked about this idea
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of a driving force and an organization, and a driving force in an organization
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is that one thing that kind of holds everything else together. And one of
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the points he made, in fact we talked about this years ago, was
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that he said that many organizations aren't aware of what their driving forces, and
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if they're not aware, they're just one dumb decision away from undermining the driving
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force of their entire organization. And he said you know, the driving force
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can be a person, it can be a product, it can be a
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system, could be many things. But identifying and knowing what the driving forces
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in an organization is extremely important. So those two ideas, you know,
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coming together for me, I thought, Wow, if there is something that's
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just been to love the surface, if there isn't intangible that we can make
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more tangible and again create a habit or describe it in terms of a habit,
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then that would be a powerful thing and a protective thing for organization.
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Yeah. That actually kind of goes back to something you're always challenging us to
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do, which is not just evaluate our failure, but to really study our
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success. Yeah, if you don't know why it's working when it's working,
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you won't know how to fix it when it breaks. We say that all
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the time. It's imperative to do an autopsy on success, not just failure.
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So again, the whole idea of looking at a successful organization, division,
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department and asking is there because there may not be, I don't know
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that there always is, but is there a habit that if we were to
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embrace it holistically as a team or division, a franchise, or an organization
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that again, would galvanize our values and galvanize the energy around what we came
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together to do. That would be a powerful thing to discover or create.
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So you had us read the chapter, and then you had us look at
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our six organizational behaviors. And we've actually talked about all six of those on
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the podcast before, and you ask a question that launched us into a very
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productive discussion. That's right. We look at our six organizational behaviors, and
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then I asked the question, is one of these a potential keystone habit?
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In other words, there are six things we want all of our staff and
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employees to do. But is one of these so powerful that if we focused
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on the one it would drive the other five? And then I send everybody
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away. I said, I just want you to think about it and come
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back next week with an answer. Okay, if I could only get everybody
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on my team to do one of these, which one would I choose because
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I think it has the power to drive the other five. So we came
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back and we all voted yeah. And for our podcast listeners, here's the
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question we had to answer. You ask us if every staff member would blank
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one of these six behaviors? It would potentially cascade into other positive habits and
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behaviors. And here are our we talked about them a few months ago.
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But there's stay fit, make it better, take it personally, replace ourselves,
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collaborate, and remain open handed. Those are the six. Yeah.
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So the next week we came back and I immediately went after make it better.
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I said, you know what, if if I could just pick one
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of these that everybody in the organization would do systematically, and if we could
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make it an organizational habit, it would be make it better. Because if
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everybody came to work every single day committed to making it better, I think
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it would drive the other five and you know, basically would create maybe new
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habits and even other behaviors that would help us make it better. And then
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somebody in the room must have made a compelling argument, because when we voted,
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we actually outvoted you and everyone went for or the majority went for take
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it personally. Yeah. So that's it was a great discussion, and it
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really it came down to those two. There were a couple other people that
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said, yep, of all these six behaviors, make it better stands alone
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is that the keys don't have it but the majority came back and said,
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no, it's as you said, it's take it personally. In other words,
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if everybody on our staff takes our mission and our vision personally, if
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we created that habit, if that was the driving force of the organization,
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these other five would just follow suit. And as I remember the conversation,
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one of the big ideas that kind of moved take it personally to the forefront
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was that when we all take it personally, it really creates an ownership culture
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amongst the staff. Yeah, and we want people, all of our staff
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to feel like owners, not employees. And anytime you get a group of
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people to act like owners, things are just better. So that's what we
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decided. We think we decided, you know, the keystone habit is to
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take it personally. We want to do whatever we can to help every staff
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member understand how to take it personally. That would drive the other five behaviors.
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But there was a problem with that, and again that's what makes this
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conversation both important and tricky. Taking it personally is not a specific habit,
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it's not a specific activity. So then we drove the conversation even further and
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said, Okay, what does that look like, is there a specific task,
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Is there a specific activity again that would symbolize in some kind of way
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what it means to take it personally. Yeah, as we talked about take
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it personally, we realized this really isn't an actionable habit, right, It's
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mostly more of a value right. And so the conversation then really went to
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the next level, and that's where we discovered our organizational keystone habit. Yep,
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again, take it personally is great, but what does that look like?
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We talked about if everybody picked up trash, that would take it personally.
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We talked about some of those things, but none of that really drove
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this forward. And again, if you're a leader, you're thinking, okay,
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do you guys just like have meetings all day long? Now this was
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several weeks, you know, about forty five minutes at a time over several
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weeks. So anyway, so I didn't want to give up. I thought,
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now I don't want to give up. I think we were making progress.
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So then I asked the question, Okay, if we step back away
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from staff and take into consideration our entire network of churches, including all the
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people who attend our church volunteered at our church serve at our church as well
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as our staff. Let's ask the question at that level. And as you
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just said, that's when we discovered our keystone habit, and this one was
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actually easier to identify. It really was, and the reason was because it
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tied back to our overall mission and vision for our tire organization, which is
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where I should have begun the discussion to begin with, because again our discussion
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began within the context of staff. So our vision for our organization is to
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create churches unchurched people love to attend. That's what we want to do.
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We want to create churches un church people love to attend. So when I
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ask the question, is there a keystone habit that would drive us forward as
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it relates to creating churches unchurched people would love to attend, suddenly our keystone
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habit became very, very apparent. We decided, to your point quickly that
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if everybody in our church made it a habit to invite an unchurched friend to
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church, there would be almost no way for our organization to drift or to
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fail, because when people invite an unchurched friend to a church created for unchurched
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people, they automatically evaluate everything, and that's the key. They automatically evaluate
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everything through the eyes and the ears of their friend. So the keystone habit
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is, we want every single person to invite an unj church person to church
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because if they do again, they experience our church through the eyes and the
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ears of an unchurched person, which means they will get in the habit of
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evaluating everything we do through that lens. So we decided that was going to
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be our keystone habit. But Andy, you really weren't done yet. Oh
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no, no, we're never done. In the book The Power of Habit,
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the author talks about a queue, a routine, and a reward and
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this is this is really the core of the book and it's what makes a
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book so helpful on many levels. A Q is the thing that cues a
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habit. The routine is actually the habit, and the reward is, oh,
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I'm glad I did that. So the Q is I'm hungry. The
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routine is I go and you know, get a brownie. The reward is,
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oh, my mouth is satisfied and my stomach assaded. So Q routine
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reward. So we decided a keystone habit was for every member you know,
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every congregate, every staff member to get in the habit of inviting an unchurched
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friend to church. So then what we did is we decided, let's create
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some cues, and let's formalize these cues, and let's reinforce these cues so
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that whenever a person bumps into one of these cues, the habit will be,
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oh, there's a queue. My routine is, I'm going to invite
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that person to church. So we came up with what we call our three
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knots, and what we've begun to teach is this, anytime any of us
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here one of the three things, these are the three knots. Things are
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not going well, what I'm not prepared for, or I'm not from here,
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that's our queue. Things are not going well, I'm not prepared for
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I'm not from here, That's going to be our queue to automatically invite someone
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to church that Sunday. So we began to teach these cues that would trigger
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a habit. And we believe, because of the nature of our organization,
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if that's the habit of members and staff members, will that will create a
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trickle down effect in terms of how we evaluate how we program, how we
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do everything. So we discovered our keystone habit again when we backed all the
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way up, looked at our mission, vision, overall strategy for organization,
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and kept asking the question. And as I said, this was a series
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of several meetings. Is there one thing? Maybe there's not, but is
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there a driving force? Is there one thing that we can formalize as a
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keystone habit that if everybody embraced, it would drive the other behaviors that we
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think are critical to our success as an organization. And he give us a
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little more context for these three cues. What do those mean? Yeah,
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so I'm in a conversation. In fact, it was so funny. The
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week or actually two days after we had this conversation. I'm at Starbucks and
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I'm talking to a guy and he said, within the context of the conversation,
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things are not going well. He talked about they had to move across
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town, he just lost his job. And I thought, there, it
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is not going well. And I heard myself saying you should come to my
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church Sunday. Now I'm the pastor. That's a little awkward, and sometimes
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it's awkward for me to invite people. Hey, you should come, hear
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me preach. But I thought, there it is. Here's my cue.
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Things are not going well, Oh really, you should come to church with
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me Sunday. He actually wrote his name and phone number on a sleeve and
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handed it to me. So that's what I mean by a que. The
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other one is not prepared for When we hear people say, you know,
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we brought the baby home, we weren't prepared for that. We moved,
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had to put our kids in new school. In other words, these are
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all positive things, but I just didn't feel like we were prepared for it.
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So anytime you hear somebody say we just weren't prepared for that, we
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don't feel prepared for that. I'm starting school, you know, whatever it
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might be, invite them to church. And then the third one is the
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easiest one. Well we're not from here. Oh really, well you should
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come with me to church. We're not from here. We just moved here.
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We just moved into the neighborhood. Oh really, you should come with
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me to church. So those were our three ques. We begin to reiterate
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those, attach them to a habit, and then the reward is a person
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feels like, hey, I've partnered with my organization, with my church to
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do what we've set out to do. So any what would you recommend our
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listeners do with all of this. That's a good question. I really think
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it's a really important discussion. It may be fruitful and it may not be.
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I mean, you may get to the end of forty five minutes or
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an hour, a couple of weeks of this and go, you know what,
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things are going? Well. I'm not sure this is getting this anywhere,
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but I think it's a potentially important discussion. It certainly is for us.
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We came out of this and there were some frustrating moments, and there
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were times even as the leader like okay, am I wasting everybody's time,
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or we just talking to be talking, But to land where we landed,
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and then to formalize some cues and now to begin to reiterate that not just
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with staff, but with our entire church. I feel like we really have
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landed on a simple leverage point that has the really the potential to continue to
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leverage our organization in the right direction. So regardless of the industry, the
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division, the department, chances are there is one thing that if everybody in
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your division, your department, or your organization did systematically. If there were
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cues that triggered that one behavior, it would protect put in love or help
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change what you know needs to be changed. So I think it's an important
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conversation again to look for that one keystone app l Andy, thanks so much
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for taking this time with us today, and thank you to our audience for
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listening. To hear more from Andy on leadership. Please visit Andy Stanley dot com