Joachim Breidenthal: Organizations Don't Change Behavior, People Do

To undertake any major endeavor, a company must get employees to consistently choose the right new behaviors. Joachim Breidenthal, a partner in the Results Delivery practice, discusses the importance of a clear path and inspirational leadership to make behavior change stick.

Read the Bain Brief: Organizations Don't Change, People Do

Read the transcript below.

JOACHIM BREIDENTHAL: Any company that undertakes a major endeavor, be it a cost-cutting program, a merger integration, or a complex strategy, eventually will have to change the way that people think and behave. There're typically two or three behaviors. They occur in what we call the moments of truth, which is when you have the opportunity to make the biggest difference on your customers or, frankly, your front line.

Let me give you an example. One of the banks that we have been working with was trying to bring more of their customers from their branches onto their digital platform. Yet, when customers entered the branch, they were pointed towards the existing service offering, not the new mobile app. The bank's response was actually quite simple.

They developed a training program to explain the right behaviors. They introduced new incentives that encouraged the staff to point people towards the mobile app. And they had the supervisors continually encourage the tellers to do the right thing, which was to point people towards the mobile offering. At the end of the day, organizations don't change, people do. And our experience is, people generally want to do the right things. So, if there is a clear path going forward and inspirational leadership, we find that people do indeed change and that changes stick.

Read the Bain Brief: Organizations Don't Change, People Do