Nigel Cassidy (NC): Why do our best-laid business plans fail like our New Year's resolutions? Here's how to make things happen by cultivating better business habits. I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD Podcast. Well, hello and Happy New Year. With this being our first episode in 2025, it got us thinking about why 9 out of 10 of our New Year's resolutions fail within a month or two. I mean, you really did mean to keep going to the gym to learn a new language or maybe to start a new hobby. Because, well, much the same thing happens at work. We somehow lose that initial rush of enthusiasm after we start a new project, having failed to persuade others to get on board. So, this seems just the time to talk about how we can better stick to our goals, what might we change about ourselves and how we handle others to make more of those business resolutions actually come true rather than withering on the vine. Well, helping us with our New Year odyssey through personal effectiveness, we have a psychologist and behavioural change specialist. She aims to help senior HR and business leaders create higher performance and inclusive cultures with clients at places like Alliance, Matillion, Imperial College and LSE. She's the co-founder and director of Aurora. Obe Alofoje, a psychologist among us. I'd better watch my own behaviour, hadn't I?
Obehi Alofoje (OA): No, don't worry. I think I'm off the clock today, technically.
NC: Excellent. And with her, a chief people officer with deep experience in sectors ranging from financial services, retail and tech to professional services from Ipsos UK, the global market research and public opinion specialist, it's Kerri O'Neill. Hi, Kerry. Have you come on with loads of data?
Kerri O’Neill (KO): I've got a few facts for you.
NC: Good. Excellent. Well, let me ask you both. I mean, given our topic, I just wonder if either of you can think of something that you made a resolution to do or change about yourself that spectacularly failed.
KO: I'm happy to go first on this one. So, those of you old enough to remember, there was a Garfield the cat mug, quite famous. And it says at the bottom, the diet starts tomorrow. And I have for years made resolutions on 1st January, that particularly around exercise. I'm going to exercise every day. I'm going to go for a run every day. I'm going to go spinning every day. And I literally, Nigel, have never achieved that aim.
NC: Well, Obe, being the business psychologist, doubtless you can give us some deep-seated reasons why that sort of thing happens.
OA: I don't know what it is about New Year's, but I think it's the idea of new year, new you. And so, people get roped in, I’m going to use the word roped in, into making big, audacious goals that are too ambitious, sometimes vague. You know, the whole, you want to eat well, go to the gym every day. Like you didn't do that before. So, what is the skill set that you're going to use that tells you that you can actually do that? And so, when you don't do it, it just feels like you've failed because then it's, because there's no actionable steps to it. So, totally agree with Kerri, last year, that was the same with me. I thought I was going to, I was playing tennis two years ago, twice a week, sometimes once a week, and I was doing well. That was the goal. The goal was once a week, and that way I leave the house, and it was around the corner. And then I moved home. Then I had to find a new tennis club. I found it, but didn't go there one day. So, I've had 2004 gone from going to play tennis twice a week, on average, to nothing this year. And there were reasons for that. One, what was the motivation for me? Like how motivated was I? And then realising also, in terms of the habit that I formed, I kind of lost the habit. By the time December moved in, I hadn't done it for four weeks. Before you know it, you haven't done it for eight weeks. And then you're realising, actually, I'm all right, actually. You know, the purpose of that was to make some new friends. And then I was kind of anxious about the fact that, well, I'm going to get a new tennis club. You have to make new friends from scratch. I wasn't that motivated for that reason.
And there were other exercises I was now doing, like going for a walk and things. On surface, it might be, yeah, Obe failed this year to play tennis. But I wasn't that motivated to do that. So, I think the reason, again, as you said, too ambitious, too big. And also, the reason for it is not as clear for everybody. Why are you doing it? What is the reason? Somebody whose GP has said, listen, you're diabetic, so you're going to need to lose some weight or else. This happens in the next year or two is more motivated than somebody's saying, oh, you just need to put on a bit of weight. You need to lose some of that. Completely different motivation levels there. I think that's what we don't do as much, to work out why. Why that goal? What is the purpose of the goal? What's the benefit of the goal? Whose goal is it? Is it yours? Or is that somebody else's goal? Is that society's goal? Is that your husband's goal? Is that your friend's goal? Is that your team leader's goal? That kind of thing. Who is it? Once it's clear, then you can see what steps you might be able to take to achieve some of that.
NC: It's funny, I made this rather superficial parallel between failed New Year's resolutions and projects failing at work. But you're already hinting at some of the reasons why projects fail, which, Kerri, are not the obvious ones, are they? They're to do with the complexities of people's habits and whether actually they're on board with whatever it is.
KO: Exactly right. I think Obehi has shared some real pearls there. So, when I look back, why? Why didn't I achieve it? Well, it's because I set it as every day. And that was impossible for me to fit in to what I was going to do. And as Obehi mentions, I then was demotivated quite quickly. And I think we see this in organisations as well. You know, who hasn't got a lofty goal around AI transforming every process in their organisation at the moment? And how many people are feeling like, have we done enough on that this year? Have we made progress? You know, we set big ambitions in businesses, which is fabulous. But often we then don't think enough, as Obehi mentions, about what are the actual systems and conditions that need to sit behind that goal in order for it to become true, and in order for it to be easy for people to continue that habit, to continue to think about these new and different things that we all need to do. And so, I absolutely can see the connection here between what happens in our personal lives and what we're trying to achieve, and also what happens in organisations.
NC: Okay, well, it's going to be quite a long list. But on a simple level, Obe, just give us a sense of some of the sort of major habits or the major things that people don't sort out that mean that these resolutions, these plans that they make for themselves and for their teams are just not going to work.
OA: Okay, so with what we've already decided, it's too big. So, it's too big and it's too broad and it doesn't really mean very much. So, we want to be more intentional, be more specific. So, we want to think, okay, they're not starting small. So just like Kerri was saying, every day. Every day? Okay, why? Why every day? So, we start small and then build up from there. So, we want people to think one day and then see how that works. And once you do that, then you can increase as you go along. So, I think that's one couple of issues there. The other thing is the intention. You don't really mean to because there are other things that are more priority for you or more important for you. And again, it's habit. We don't, we're not always consistent. and people like me, I get bored real quickly. So, if I do something the same old, same old every day, I'll get bored and I want to mix it up. So, there's a level of those people who that is important to have to mix it up a bit. So, we'll be going to the gym every day, but it might be doing different things in the gym. So, that's one of the things I would say there. And I think another thing when it comes to work-related things, if you have a team goal, then which one is yours? I think that's where I get muddled up sometimes. Like, which one is mine? Which one do I take ownership of? And where is my strength in that? So, I think I like the idea of people leaning into what is already within their strengths or within their wheelhouse to do.
NC: I can see all that stuff about motivation is very important. But often there's a gap, isn't there, Kerri, between intention and reality? You were telling me beforehand something about, I'd never heard this before, about the number of people who are on a particular drug but don't actually take it.
KO: Yeah, there's been a really important study that was done by Professor Robert Keegan at Harvard. And he's written a book about it called Immunity to Change. And what the most compelling piece in here is they studied patients who'd been given a diagnosis of heart disease, there's a well-known medical treatment for that. But it involves taking a singular pill every single day for the rest of your life, in order to help manage the heart condition. When they went back and looked at how many people followed the prescription, if you like, only one in seven patients took that pill every single day. And it sparked off a huge study about why do humans not do things which are literally going to save or prolong their lives. And if they're not doing it for that, then they're certainly not going to be doing it for much smaller goals and outcomes. And, so this workaround immunity to change really evidences that for human beings to change any sort of behaviour, to change any sort of habit that they've already built into is actually a much tougher ask of us to do that. And of course, our organisations are made up of people, multiple people, so for multiple people to change a habit as well, we have to realise that these are quite difficult things to do, even when the goal and the outcome is very, very attractive for us. And, so I think as human resources specialists, as people who are often driving organisational transformation and change understanding what it is that's behind some of these big ambitions is really an important way for us to move forward.
NC: Brilliant and just while we're on this, Kerri, have you read anything in particular in the last year or so that you think people might find helpful?
KO: I have, I mean, lots of people have read it because it's in the Sunday Times bestseller list every week when I when I have a look at it. But Atomic Habits by James Clear is, you know, is really revolutionised, I think, lots of people's thinking on this topic, and it just breaks it down to say that actually small changes and this is also a message from Bob Keegan's work that actually what's the toe in the water that would move you towards your goal and then once you've established that your toe isn't going to get cut off by, you know, some angry shark or something, what's then the foot in the water? What's the leg in the water? And this idea of building up, James Clear talks about it as habit stacking, building the systems around your change is really what helps us not fall back into different habits or bad habits. So, atomic habits is definitely on my list for people to read and get into.
NC: OK. And just moving on from that, you've both been talking about how we have to look to why things that we want to change ourselves, we can't change ourselves, we don't understand ourselves. Of course, it all gets more complicated Obe when you're trying to nudge other people who maybe work for you or leaders have teams they want to try and get to do things whether it's increased productivity or carry out some project in the organisation. From what you see working with others what are the commonest reasons why people's plans fail? And are there any sort of tips or tricks things you can suggest that will improve effectiveness.
OA: Oh, that’s a great question Nigel. Now in a work context when it's not an individual personal goal right, it's a team goal. Team leader has set the goal and then the rest of the team have to buy into that goal. So, why it might fail if people aren't bought in, they're not carried along, that's the first thing. So, I think that for leaders you need to be able to involve your people more and into why that goal how it links into the organisational goal, and then for them and also getting your team to think well, how did it link into the goal that you want to set for yourself as well? So, it allows them to see macro level all the way down to their own, then they can pick the exact task or the intentional area that they want to focus on more, they still lead to that goal. So, I think one of the key things I want when I'm training leaders is to ask the question, what is the difference of opinion here? Because if you don't ask it, people don't share it, and it's easier when everybody is agreed and agreeable, but that's not in the long term that doesn't quite work, it's not sustainable. So, it's better to get people's aggro out early in other words, oh I don't know about this. I'm not sure about that, how am I going to do that? It allows the problem solving there. So, that's one thing I would say around work related but I think Kerri might be more inclined about, especially around HR stuff how people operate.
NC: You put some of this quite amusingly before when we were talking I said to you why don't plans happen? And you said because people don't want to do them.
OA: Yeah, they don't want to do them like if I can't even be bothered to go and play my tennis or go for a walk then I'm sorry, somewhere the person goes, why? So, they don't want to do them and I think the issue is boss is walking around thinking people are doing them when they're not. That was funny, yeah. But yeah.
NC: Putting this back to Kerri, I'm just thinking about other reasons why your resolutions or plans might fail. Lack of understanding the team springs to mind, to me I wonder how much you see, will be looking back at people's track records, people's personalities, understanding other people's strengths and weaknesses. Those things I guess can get ignored you know when you've got the excitement of a new idea, you just assume everybody's on board.
KO: I think that's a real trap that many of us fall into, and it's something that I've certainly learned over the years in my experience. So, we've often been told that you know to start a change initiative, it's all about tone from the top. And of course, no change is going to go very far if you're you know, you're bored and C-suite, and not backing it. However, I think we've often fallen back on the idea that just because our chief executive or a chief risk officer or chief financial officer or chief people officer says so, it will happen. That's the fundamental mistake I think we all make. We need to put a lot more work in than that. And that's why we also then often need to narrow down what we're trying to change within our organisations at any given time. We're all, I'm sure, guilty of actually having hundreds of different projects and initiatives actually really running in our organisation at any one time. And so, you know the expectation that all of them are going to succeed exactly as we plan to time is probably unrealistic thinking. It's admirable thinking, I mean human beings, we are relentlessly optimistic quite often about what might happen. But I do think a realism about, you know, how do we really help people understand what we need to change why we need to change it, and then what your personal strengths are to make this happen? I think that's a question we could be asking more often of our teams, like, what is it that you already have that could get us there? Rather than trying to force everyone to do everything differently all the time, and realising that that's going to be a bit like sort of pushing water uphill, frankly.
OA: Honestly, thank you for saying that, I just, too many projects at one, too many priorities, and it gets overwhelming. Looking what we're saying, and then you have staff thinking, well, which one am I focused on then?
NC: That's an interesting New Year's resolution. Don't make so many fewer projects.
OA: Yes, three. That's a magic number.
KO: I mean, I joined Ipsos this year and I made a virtue of the fact that I was only going to have three major priorities for what my team and what we would be what people would see me talking about, that we would only have three priorities. And we wanted to really boost our leadership community and help strengthen the skill set there. We wanted to look at L and D in particular, our skill set and knowledge of AI, and we wanted to boost our social capital. We wanted people to come together more and spend more time together and get to know each other particularly after the pandemic. Now, it's so hard to stick to it because of course we like talking about different things all the time. We like to comment on the events and things happening but I really try to stick to it and actually we've made substantial difference in all of those areas. And I contrast that with previous years where maybe we've, we've said we've got three priorities but really we've got 10 and made less progress across a broader thing. I think we're in such a in a busy chaotic, lots going on world Nigel, you know we're in the poly crisis as we talk about in in Ipsos and I think keeping things simple it's a real art but actually, people then believe when they see things happening when you say you're going to do something, they see change. You build the trust, and you build I think the potential to do things potentially then quicker in the future, and you build trust around what we're trying to do here.
NC: Yeah, that makes sense. There's been quite a lot of emphasis during this discussion Obe on good habits, you've certainly mentioned quite a few. How can people who are working in HR, people professionals, best kind of spread the word, kind of improve the culture when it comes to good habits, both in terms of their own practice and then how they help senior managers and other leaders in the organization to do that too?
OA: So, before I transitioned to a business psychologist, I was a counselling psychologist, so I did clinical work. So, community is an important thing, so my previous work in addiction treatment, community work is crucial because there's the level of accountability where you have shared goals with other people, because that creates a sense of responsibility to follow through, right? So, that no man left behind is the motto kind of thing, right? So, you're supporting people through it, it means that the encouragement when somebody is lagging or flagging, then somebody's saying, oh come on, we can do this and that helps, I think so, in a team dynamic, it can work too in the workplace. What is our goal? What is your individual one? How do I support you with that, because then everybody has a sense of belonging within that, they feel part of a team, part of a group. And so, you know, shared goals, shared values, and then, of course, emotional well-being comes up there as well. That allows them to sustain that motivation and focus, but I think that might be something that I'd want leaders to do more of, involve your team, make them a community of some sort, because it allows people to support each other, to back each other.
NC: And if what we're talking about overall Kerri is better personal effectiveness in the year ahead, both for ourselves and for our teams, I wonder how you think that we can foster that in the kind of way you approach things in the year ahead. I know people get this 360-degree feedback or whatever if they ask colleagues what they think of them, but how can you actually gauge how you're doing?
KO: Agreeing on what you're going to look for, what are the signals and what are the measures that you are going to use to see if you're on track? I think that's an important part of fleshing out not just the goal as Obehi mentioned at the start but also fleshing out why and what it looks like and what's the benefit. And I think it's actually really important when we think about, you know, what are the signs of success sometimes that falls very neatly into an outcome measure, you know, increased training hours maybe or more commercial performance you know, etc. etc. There’s, sometimes it’s more, tricky than that so, it’s about the signals. So, it might be that you just see more people talking to each other in the kitchen.
It might be that we have less you know recall on HR to step in and do things on behalf of managers. I think to me it’s important not just to find measures but also to find signals. And those are the things to look for. And when you hit them, I really think you need to celebrate successes. So, celebrating every step of the way not just waiting for the big final ta-da moment, we've achieved it! But actually, celebrating that conversation went well, actually celebrating that that felt easier to do that or celebrating the fact that I no longer had to do X, Y and Z for that to happen. I think by talking about the process of change, talking about what is happening to us as we take on this goal is a really important part of how we make this happen, how we make change stick, how we make people excited about what we're doing and how we bring people along with us.
NC: Great. And Obe what would you like people to take from this if we're looking broadly at trying to have a year of business where more of your plans actually get executed and that you’re more personally affected at achieving what you want.
OA: As an individual doesn't matter what the goal is whether you're trying to eat better, whether you're trying to lose some weight, whether you're trying to increase your mobility movement, whether or not you just want to get a new, get better at networking. So, you can get a new job in the new year whatever it is that you're thinking. I want you to think about those instrumental tasks that you're going to have to do, for example when it comes like networking, it might be right, I need to increase the number of people in a particular department that I need to talk to and it might be specific now which is every Monday, I will reach out to someone to ask them for coffee later in the week, that could be. So, just one thing that you're doing and before the end of the month you've met a few people for coffee, you just do it and then it's set for you Monday is the day you do it Monday at 2pm. It's within your diary that that's what you do. Because that's one thing, the other thing is to anchor, what we call anchor habit. So, something that you're already doing that you do every day and it's not a problem, you're doing that regularly, it's not an issue, but you're trying to introduce something new.
So, you want to be able to anchor together. So, bond it together. So, it might be on your regular walk, morning walk, because you told yourself, I want to read more books for example this year. Then, you might think, right, I can't physically read it but I can do an audiobook. And I'd read three books a month by the end of it because I'm already, I have to do the walk anyway to work or whatever. And so, listening to an audiobook means I've anchored a new thing onto an existing habit. The second thing or third thing that I'm going to talk about is something called temptation bundling. It is my favourite because the reason why we give up on certain things by the end of January is because we're bored and it's not as enjoyable, and nobody cares, and everything else is whatever, and then life starts again and so you're like, uh, I can't do this. I can't definitely go to the gym every day. So, we want to do where we bundle. Something that we don't like doing in an environment that we don't mind. So, it's a bit like when you're on the treadmill or a stationary bike being able to do your exercise to some series on Netflix while you’re doing it. I’m watching the thing I like watching, doing the thing I don’t really care about doing, but I’m doing it because I said I’d do it. For work related thing, it might be one of those low interest task like reviewing a spreadsheet or something, if you’re like me it warns my eyes. So, to do that kind of work or anything I’m avoiding to find something that will help you hook it. So, it might be going to a nice café, getting a nice coffee and sitting there. I like a hotel lobby because, I don't know, there's something about them I like. I'll do the work. If I stay at home or in the office, I'll fast. I'll find something else to do. Because that's the other thing I want you to consider when you're going about your day and your month now, to start thinking, what don't I like? What do I like? Can I connect them together so that I keep doing the thing?
NC: Great. Yeah, I'm definitely going to try that. What are you going to be doing, Kerri?
KO: I love the hotel lobby piece. I think that buzz. I mean, in 2025, I definitely want to make sure that I keep up my reading habit that I established in 2024. So, I'm in a habit maintain mode. And I definitely want to reach out to more people to talk about some of the tricky issues coming up within HR.
So, that is going to be a habit of finding time to speak to people. So, I'm definitely going to be taking some of these messages on that it needs to not be too unachievable. We need to celebrate success as we go. And we also, to Obehi's point, need to find the way to get it into our routine by building on what we already do. So, thank you so much. That's really, really helpful.
NC: Okay. What can I say? Some clear ideas and strategies to kick off the year. Some ideas for all of us. Things to do perhaps before rushing in with too many New Year goals and resolutions. So, our thanks to the Co-founder and Director at Aurora, Obehi Alofoje, and to Kerri O'Neill, Chief People Officer of Ipsos UK and Ireland. As always, do let us have your thoughts on any of these things we've been talking about on the CIPD podcast page or on LinkedIn or anywhere you can get hold of us. Until next time, from me, Nigel Cassidy, and all of us at the CIPD podcast team, it's goodbye.
