An early excerpt from my next book on systems, behavior, and designing better outcomes.

From Book Two: Chapter Two, The Natural Path

Some systems seem to require enormous amounts of effort just to accomplish ordinary things. People search, wait, repeat themselves, defend themselves, recover from conflict, attend meetings about meetings, and work around processes that were supposedly created to help them. The people may be working very hard and expending a great deal of energy; yet surprisingly little useful effort or energy reaches the outcome.

Once we understand that, another question appears. Where does the rest of the energy go? The answer is that it becomes friction. Repeatedly fighting human programming is an exhausting way to change behavior, and an effective way of creating friction. Whenever possible, make the desired behavior easier to repeat, then allow repetition to begin doing some of the work. 

If you want a system to produce a behavior reliably, do not depend entirely upon repeated commands, motivation, punishment, or heroic acts of self-control. Look at the path. What happens immediately before the behavior? What information is available? What action is easiest to take? What feels risky? What is familiar? What happens afterward? What are the other people doing?

A system designed around human behavior tries to make the useful path increasingly natural. Not compulsory; natural. The student receives the paper and knows where it goes. The worker sees the problem and knows how to report it. The team member needs information and knows where to find it. The person who makes a mistake knows what happens next. The behavior becomes supported by the structure instead of continually fighting it.

— From Book Two, currently in development