When the system is broken, blaming “bad behavior” for bad results doesn’t help much.
When I coach someone through changing their diet, my first question isn’t about their willpower, or about how to get them grow their discipline. It’s always about their setup.
What makes their current choices so convenient?
Where is the system stacked against them?
Most people aren’t weak. They’re just living inside systems that make the wrong choice the easy one.
Have you ever wondered why no good coach works on people's willpower?
People are the most adaptable species on this planet. If we keep getting the same results, rising obesity, chronic loneliness, disengaged teams, burnout, it’s not because humans suddenly got worse. It’s because the system around them rewards, nudges, and normalizes those outcomes.
The system is optimized for the results it's getting.
And we are the system designers.
Take food.
Our food environment isn’t designed for health, it’s designed for convenience and profit. Try walking into a supermarket hungry and see how much “willpower” helps when 90% of what’s in front of you was engineered to hijack your brain’s reward system to eat more, to spend more, to "indulge". You’re not broken. The system is working exactly as intended. And you are just adapating.
Or workplaces.
When I hear leaders complain that people resist change or don’t innovate enough, I ask: what’s the system rewarding?
If promotions go to the safest hands, if meetings eat every hour, if “mistakes” are punished and reflection time doesn’t exist - then resistance isn’t a people problem. It’s a design outcome.
The same principle applies to our personal lives.
If you want to wake up earlier, make your bed time a non-negotiable.
If you want to exercise, make your "gym" the path of least resistance.
If you want your team to be more creative, build systems where it’s safer and more rewarding to try something new than to play it safe.
When you change the system, people’s behavior follows faster than any motivational speech could ever achieve.
Most people aren’t rebels. They’re just responding to what’s around them.
So when we see behavior that no longer serves our bigger purpose, the question isn’t “How do we fix people?” (Or yourself)
It’s “How do we fix the system so doing the right thing becomes the natural thing?”
