Michael Bremer
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Systems That Stick: Make Good Habits the Default at Work
Large headline Make success automatic with systems centered over a warm terracotta blurred workspace with a notebook, mug, and a soft-focus domino, conveying leadership systems, habit loops, and visual management.

Move the First Domino: Designing Systems That Make Success Automatic

Here is the truth that changes how you lead today: teams stall when daily behaviors do not make the right choices easy or visible. Michael Bremer’s Learn to See the Invisible shows how to fix that by changing how you think, what you practice, and the environment that keeps better behavior on track. When you make it safe to call out problems, and satisfying to see progress, you change what people do by default .

A simple story with real stakes

Martha Johnson ran a 90‑person plant. The numbers looked fine, but days felt frantic. Tasks started, stopped, then restarted. She spoke with her boss and her seven direct reports using a short Keep, Stop, Start conversation. The team wanted clearer priorities, more coaching, and fewer scattered projects. Martha then mapped her own habit loop for delegation, cue, a new problem shows up, routine, a quick ask in Friday meetings, reward, a moment of relief as she moved to the next item. That relief felt good, but it was hiding rework and confusion. Naming the loop gave her leverage to change it .

“The most important choice you make is what you choose to make important.” That line, quoted in Bremer’s chapter on visual leadership, sits at the center of this book’s promise .

Step 1: Identify the behavior that moves everything else

Start small. Pick one or two leadership behaviors, not ten. Audit the habit loop, so you can change the formula your mind follows on autopilot:

  • What is the cue that triggers this behavior?
  • What is the routine you do now?
  • What reward do you get, and how does it affect others?

Bremer summarizes the research this way, “Unless you deliberately fight a habit, unless you find something new, the old pattern will unfold automatically.” Use the loop to define the new routine and reward you want instead .

Step 2: Make good behavior obvious and easy to manage

Better habits stick when the environment helps. Bremer’s Visual Leadership test is blunt:

  • Will this information help people make better decisions quickly?
  • Can you update it in less than ten minutes daily, or under three minutes if you touch it many times a day?
  • Can you see the key issues in ten seconds or less?

If not, do not put it on the board. Share the purpose of your visual with the team, sketch what matters, decide what decisions the visual should drive, and run a short experiment for a week or a month before you evolve it. Keep it meaningful to you, invite suggestions, and keep refining based on what it changes in behavior .

Step 3: Calibrate weekly with simple leader standard work

Create a short checklist for the important, not just the urgent. Break it into daily and weekly touch points. Examples include team huddles, staffing versus plan checks, Gemba walks with a purpose, coaching, problem solving, and regular reviews against plan. Tie your list to three aims, improving people, improving process, improving performance. Get coaching now and then, so your practice keeps getting better .

Step 4: Anchor all of it to purpose and relationships

Clarity turns a new habit into a shared standard. Use Bremer’s prompts:

  • Ask “Why?” at least three times.
  • Go see how your customer uses your work.
  • Share your metrics with customers, learn how your measures affect their work.
  • Check that goals and measures match your purpose.

Set two actions you can start in the next 30 days, practice them, then evaluate the impact on your team and peers. Choose next steps based on what you learn .

This is also about how people feel at work. Paul O’Neill’s three questions are a simple test of respect. Can people answer yes to these:

  1. Am I treated with dignity and respect by everyone I work with?
  2. Do I have the knowledge, skills, and tools to do my job?
  3. Am I recognized and thanked for my contributions?

When the answers are yes, people bring their best effort. That is the “treasure” leaders can find when they care and practice the fundamentals day after day .

The quiet fuel that actually changes behavior

Bremer points to an often missed truth about change. People shift more through feeling than through commands. Dean Ornish reframed fear into joy, not fear of dying, but joy of living. As he said, “Joy is a more powerful motivator than fear.” In leadership, make progress visible and meaningful, and people want to keep going .

Your one‑page playbook for this week

  • Choose one behavior to upgrade. Name its cue, routine, and reward, then write the new routine and reward you want instead. Start small, then practice it on purpose .
  • Build one visual your team can update in under ten minutes and read in ten seconds. Decide the decisions it should drive. Trial it for one week, then adjust based on what it changes .
  • Create a short leader standard work checklist for daily and weekly rhythms, then schedule brief coaching to review how you are doing the work, not just what got done .
  • Revisit purpose with your team. Ask why three times, go see your customer, and align your measures with what matters to them. Plan two actions you can start in the next 30 days, then evaluate and pick next steps .

“Learning to see the invisible” is not a slogan, it is a practice you can start today. You do not need more willpower, you need a system that makes the right move the easy one. If you began this reading with many priorities, finish with one behavior to change, one visual to support it, and one weekly checklist to sustain it. Which first domino will you move this week, and who will you invite to help you watch it fall, then keep it falling, week after week ?