For years I’ve been fascinated by something that Jim Collins labelled “catalytic mechanisms” in a 1999 Harvard Business Review article. The article, titled Turning Goals into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms, described how to powerfully influence people in organisations to change their behaviour – easily, permanently and nearly effortlessly.

Recently a Volkswagen campaign called ‘Thefuntheory.com’ rekindled my interest in the topic with their website dedicated to finding fun ways to change people’s behaviour for the better. So, I reread the HBR article and started pondering how this approach might be useful in influencing behaviour on project teams.

While I’m in the early phases of experimenting with catalytic mechanisms in my own work and life, I’m excited to share this with you so we can exchange ideas and all get busy transforming the planet for the better. (That’s my theme for this year and I have to admit it’s a bit daunting, so I can use all the help I can get!)

In chemistry, a catalyst is something that causes or accelerates activity without being consumed by that activity. Unfortunately, the last time I checked, which was about five seconds ago, there wasn’t even a Wikipedia entry for “catalytic mechanism” yet, so here’s my definition: A catalytic mechanism is a device, process, policy or structure that encourages, evokes or even forces, a desired behaviour.

A simple example is an entrance gate at a parking garage. The gate won’t let you drive into the garage until you take the parking ticket. Although you could get a buddy to manually force the gate up, or boldly crash through the gate, it’s much easier to just take the ticket and it’ll make your exit far simpler as well. This is an important point about catalytic mechanisms – they make the desired behaviour far easier than the undesirable behaviour, in this case driving into the parking garage without remembering to take your parking ticket.

Permanent solutions to recurring problems

The reason I’m so drawn to catalytic mechanisms is because they are effective, self-maintaining and permanent ways to immediately change behaviour and require little or no further effort once they are in place and operating. Let’s take our simple parking garage example a step further. Imagine a parking garage that installs timestamp machines at the entrance to spit out tickets than can be checked upon exit to verify the total time spent in the garage, but without the gates that force cars to stop until they take the ticket.

Without the gates in place, some people would surely forget to take their ticket at the entrance. Maybe a pile of tickets would accumulate at the base of the machine – no big deal. But from time to time there would a line of cars backed up at the exit when an exiting driver finds themselves ticketless. The parking garage attendant is left to sort out the mess. Repeatedly. Yuk.

Simply installing a gate at the entrance that is raised only once the ticket is removed ensures the right behaviour by the customer – each driver must take a ticket before entering the garage. As long as the gate is working properly and ignoring the possibility of criminal activity, the problem of forgotten tickets is now permanently solved.

Of course, the driver could still manage to misplace or lose the ticket, perhaps by removing it from the car, or – in the case of extremely messy cars or disorganised drivers – the ticket could actually become lost inside of the car itself. (Maybe in the future parking garages will just slap a barcode on the outside of the car when you drive in, or just take a picture and use pattern recognition to match exiting cars with entering cars, who knows.)

The entrance gate is a permanent solution to a recurring problem. Having seen recurring problems on project teams decade upon decade, and growing weary of asking, urging, coaxing, begging and pleading with people to change their ways, I dream of such remedies to errant behaviour!

After all, projects are chock full of recurring problems, a dozen of which were the substance of my first book, Scrappy Project Management: The 12 Predictable and Avoidable Pitfalls Every Project Faces. What if we could create catalytic mechanisms that automatically, permanently and effortlessly eliminated some or all of these problems? Suddenly the lives of project managers everywhere would brighten and a chorus of “hallelujah” would ascend from their collective voices around the world. Certainly, worth a shot!

Swimming in examples

It can be a little tricky to create catalytic mechanisms that achieve the desired results without unintended negative consequences, so before we tackle designing some to encourage more effective behaviour in projects, let’s review a couple of examples from Volkswagen, Jim Collins and elsewhere to get the hang of it.  And, while we’re at it, let’s consider the potential negative consequences of each.

How can we get people to use the stairs instead of the escalator?

Make the stairs into a piano keyboard that plays music as people step on the stairs. More people take the stairs, less electricity is used and less maintenance is required on the escalator. Maintenance of the stairs piano. People running up and down the stairs just for fun.  (Not all bad!)

How can we get guys from the R&D department to spend time talking with people in manufacturing? Have daily doughnuts and cookies delivered to the manufacturing coffee break area, but not the R&D area.

R&D and Manufacturing people hang out together and informally chat every day and R&D guys learn about problems their designs are causing. Foster unhealthy eating habits. Maybe get fruit and yogurt delivered instead?! How can we assure that everyone involved in serving our customers focuses on delighting them? (Jim Collins article)

Put a clause on our invoices that invites customers to delete the cost of any product or service they are not delighted with before paying their balance. Increased focus on delighting customers and eliminating the root causes of customer dissatisfaction. Unscrupulous customers abusing the clause to underpay for frivolous reasons.

How can we reduce the amount of time kids spend watching TV at home?

Hardwire the TV directly to a bicycle as the only power source. Kids limit their TV watching and get exercise as they peddle the bike to power the TV. Bunches of kids sharing the peddling and running the TV day and night. How can we level the demand for electricity throughout the day?