Decades ago, my Dad decided he should stop smoking his pipe. He went around the house finding all his pipes and tabacco and burned them in the wood burner and hasn’t smoked since. Around a decade later, one of my aunts also decided to stop smoking. She wore a patch, chewed the gum, and put a big jar in their kitchen. Each day the money (remember physical cash!) she saved by not smoking was put into the jar. The jar had a big label on it – VCR fund (some of you might need to look up VCR 🙂 ).

For some of us, when wee realise certain activities we do are not healthy in the long term for us, we stop doing them. For others, we dream of stopping but carry on. The stopping is not a big enough incentive or reward. To help with this, some of us create a reward. Something we want more that is worth the ‘pain’ of changing our current behaviour.

This is true of individual change as well as organisational change. Our colleagues and teams rarely stop a behaviour just because, we change to something more easily. While motivation needs to be inspirational and practical. It also needs to be ‘to and from’. Remembering this when we communicate to individuals and to teams helps us all step forward together.

The choice is up to us.

Photo by Håkon Grimstad