Habitus? Are we just making up words now? The answer is no. This is a concept I learned from reading Anthro Vision by Gillian Tett. In sociology, habitus is the way that people perceive and respond to the social world they inhabit by way of their personal habits, skills, dispositions, norms, values, and attitudes.
We all have habitus in our professional lives. In 2013, I was working on a project that allowed me to assess different branch locations of my company. I learned quickly that even though these P&L’s all represented the same company, they all had their unique habits, skills, norms, values, and even attitudes. They were a product of their environment or their habitus.
I was at a recent conference where I learned that up to 50% of companies are likely to miss their growth goal this year. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to determine that this post pandemic era is a challenge for a lot of businesses. The question is: what habits, skills, norms, values, and attitudes does your company exhibit? What is your habitus and does your habitus lead to growth?
Many times it takes an outside perspective to illuminate your habitus and recommend changes. Living in the habitus makes it difficult to step back and assess. A few months back I engaged in an evaluation of a mid-size manufacturing company. I identified that their sales team was spending nearly 40% of their time entering orders. A redesign of their process could give back enough time to potentially generate an additional $40M of sales.
A few takeaways that are important:
Know your habitus. Every organization has one. Awareness is a great start.
Evaluate. Take a step back and assess. An outside perspective helps, but isn’t required.
Have the courage to change. An assessment will uncover opportunity. Embrace it and make the change.
Design with intention. Changing your habits, skills, dispositions, norms, values, and attitudes will evolve your habitus. Design your habitus.
Our habitus is all around us. Our professional lives expose us to a company habitus and we all spend a lot of our time in it. Know it, evaluate it, and change it with intention. Need help? Reach out, I would love to discuss how I can help evaluate.
