For decades, one of the dominant responses to the environmental and health consequences of meat production has been remarkably simple: persuade people to eat less meat.
The problem is that people keep eating more of it.
That creates a useful leadership question. When behavior refuses to change despite years of education, advocacy and increasingly compelling evidence, how long should you keep trying to change the behavior?
Sometimes the more promising strategy is to change what surrounds it.
The electric-vehicle industry did not build its future around persuading people to drive fewer miles. Renewable energy did not depend upon convincing people to use dramatically less electricity. Both asked a different question: How can we give people essentially what they already want, but produce it differently?
That same reframing can be applied almost anywhere.
Organizations frequently spend enormous energy trying to persuade customers, employees, donors or communities to behave differently because existing behavior creates an undesirable outcome. They build campaigns. They educate. They exhort. They explain why people should care more.
Sometimes that is necessary.
But before launching another campaign to change people, ask a different question:
What if their behavior is the fixed variable?
If people continue doing roughly what they are doing now, could we redesign the product, process, incentive or environment so that the same behavior produces a better result?
Leadership often begins by accepting human behavior as it is rather than endlessly waiting for it to become what we wish it were.