The long haul: How leaders can shift mindsets and behaviors to reopen safely

August 5, 2020

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Matt Craven, Andy Fong, Taylor Lauricella, and Tao Tan for the McKinsey Quarterly, published by McKinsey & Company. To read the complete article, check out others, learn more about the firm, and sign up for email alerts, please click here.

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The influence model is not only a template for organizational transformation but also a solid guide to crafting a sustainable response to the COVID-19 crisis.
Responses to the coronavirus pandemic have demonstrated that people can rapidly change their behaviors during the acute phase of a crisis—for example, through high initial compliance with lockdowns and large-scale shifts to working from home. However, sustaining those changes for a prolonged period is more difficult.
COVID-19 will be with us for many months, perhaps years, to come. Societies face the challenge of resuming as many normal activities as possible while preventing a resurgence in the number of cases. To do so, they need strategies to sustain changes in behavior, such as the use of face masks and physical distancing, over time. Recommended behaviors will continue to emerge as new scientific evidence surfaces. As UN Secretary-General António Guterres put it, “None of us is safe until all of us are safe.”
Much has been written about actions that countries and companies can take to fight virus spread and reopen safely. But government edicts and corporate policies depend on human behavior to be effective. Our research into organizational change shows that compliance isn’t always the greatest motivator. We believe that instead of relying on compliance and enforcement, leaders now have an opportunity to shift to addressing the underlying thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that ultimately determine whether people will change. Getting “underneath the iceberg” of what motivates individuals to act is crucial to managing the COVID-19 crisis.Enter the influence model, which has four interrelated and evidence-based practices to drive mindset and behavior change: offering clear and consistent messaging to foster better understanding of the coronavirus, using formal mechanisms to shape safe behavior, teaching practical skills to instill confidence, and leveraging role models who reinforce new norms. Decision makers can use the influence model at scale to promote public health, employee safety, and customer confidence for the long term.

Applying the model: Public health and the workplace

Large-scale organizational change has always been difficult, and that has been truer than ever during the pandemic. Companies must react quickly to external shocks, supply-chain changes, shifts in the marketplace and their core businesses, employee health and safety, and other factors. Countries must keep people safe and reopen economies.

Research has shown that one of the primary blocks to sustainable change can be traced to limiting mindsets, which fall into the categories of “I am not allowed,” “I can’t,” or “I won’t.” Mindsets underlie behaviors, which lead to outcomes (see sidebar, “Why changing behavior is like playing whack-a-mole”). The influence model can guide organizations through comprehensive transformations by addressing those underlying mindsets. It consists of four elements that work best in concert (Exhibit 1):
  • understanding and conviction
  • reinforcement with formal mechanisms
  • confidence and skill building
  • role modeling

In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, decision makers can implement the four elements of the influence model to address broader societal and public-health issues.

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Here is a direct link to the complete article.

Matt Craven is a partner in McKinsey’s Silicon Valley office, Andy Fong is a partner in the Southern California office, Taylor Lauricella is a specialist at the Waltham Client Capability Hub, and Tao Tan is an associate partner in the New York office.

The authors wish to thank Penny Dash and Bill Schaninger for their contributions to this article.

This article was edited by Barbara Tierney, a senior editor in the New York office.

 

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