Most of us have had the experience of walking into a room and noticing something that everyone else seems oblivious to; a persistent noise, a smell, a tension in the air. Mention it, and the response will often be along the lines of: “Oh yeah, I'd stopped noticing that till you just reminded me”.
Which is the point.
They no longer notice, and not because they are careless or indifferent, but because they have become accustomed to it. This is known as habituation - the process by which repeated exposure to the same stimulus reduces our response to it. Basically, we stop noticing what stays constant.
At one level, this makes a lot of sense. Without habituation, we would be overwhelmed by sensory input and unable to function. We would notice every background noise, every flicker of light, every minor irritation. Habituation protects attention and preserves energy. It allows us to filter out the noise, and so be able to focus on things that are changing and that may be a threat. It keeps us sane.
But it also does something else - it subtly shifts the boundary of what feels normal.
Habituation sits inside something fundamental about how we're wired. Our brains are designed to notice change, not constancy. Once something becomes predictable, the brain reduces the effort spent processing it. That is efficient, but it comes at a cost.
Over time, we do not just tune out neutral stimuli. We can also habituate things that should concern us:
This shift for the most part does not happen dramatically - but tends to build slowly, almost just beneath awareness. And even when we are aware of it, it often feels like the latest shift is not sufficient to drive us to do something about it.
This is not the same as desensitisation, though the two often happen together. Habituation makes us stop noticing; desensitisation makes us stop feeling. One is attentional, the other emotional. Together, they can create a powerful form of drift.
There is also another dynamic at play, particularly after collective shocks. Think about COVID-19; I know, you'd rather not - and that's the point. For many, the experience was deeply disruptive and unsettling. Yet remarkably quickly, public conversation moved on. This is not habituation so much as avoidance: fatigue, emotional protection, and perhaps a collective reluctance to revisit something uncomfortable. Still, the effect is similar - we stop paying attention to things we may still need to understand.
Organisations habituate faster than individuals. Cultures (groups of people) discuss and internalise the shift - the group absorbs it (even if not happy), routines settle in, and language normalises behaviour. Over time, what once raised concern simply becomes: "it's how things are around here”. What once felt exceptional begins to feel routine - not because it was argued convincingly, but because it became familiar.
Often, it's not something negative - it could simply be progress: a different brand of coffee, or consider that most people cannot live without a smart-phone these days. But habituation can have an eroding effect too:
Boards and leadership teams are not immune, and in fact, they may be especially vulnerable. Business pressure can result in risk tolerance creeping upward, compliance becomes procedural rather than thoughtful. Where everything is urgent and / or important, something will give. There are many high-profile corporate failure examples, and the story is not one dramatic lapse but a long series of small adjustments that no one quite registered at the time:
And of course, habituation can be used (or abused) more strategically: there are contexts where sustained message saturation, and incremental boundary stretching seem to move the line of acceptability in ways few would have anticipated even a few years ago.
While habituation is natural and inevitable and can be seen as an important part of adapting to the world as it is - and even adopting progress, perhaps we should ensure that is actually what we want. So, the question is not how to eliminate it, but how to counterbalance it. And one of the key skills of leadership is 'deliberate noticing'.
One approach is what I call a Normality Audit used to periodically surface what has faded into the background. Here's how it can work:
1. Surface the drift. Ask simple but uncomfortable questions such as:
These questions often reveal more than dashboards ever will.
2. Recalibrate the baseline. Step back from recent experience and test your current practice against original intent, external reality, and longer-term evidence.
We tend to judge performance relative to recent experience rather than original standards. That is how drift happens.
3. Break the routine. Habituation thrives on continuity and routine, so break it occasionally:
Outsiders often see immediately what insiders no longer register (consultants are great for this)
4. Build 'noticing' into the routine
Make observation and noticing part of your leadership rhythm:
Habituation keeps us functional and without it, life would be exhausting. But stewardship requires us, from time to time, to resist it. The challenge for leaders is not constant vigilance, that is unrealistic, but periodic awakening and a willingness to pause, look again, and ask whether what now feels normal still deserves to.
Culture rarely collapses suddenly. More often, it simply fades into the background or evolves into something different, that is until someone chooses to notice again.
Ad Futurum
Graham
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