The climate change row shows the importance of clear, straightforward, memorable messages.

Swilling out my (low-fat) custard pot the other evening, I found myself pondering the futility of it all. Having got to middle age, without thinking that much about global warming or the environment, I am now having to consider what I am doing far more deliberately. Meanwhile, representatives from over 180 nations were recently gathered together in Copenhagen trying to agree what they are going to do to combat climate change.  Their visions of the future were nightmarish, even apocalyptic.

The gulf between the looming disaster and the action that each individual can take is enormous, and this gross mismatch is one of the main reasons why people are slow to do anything. In other areas of public policy - wearing seat belts, stopping smoking in public places, driving at lower speeds - there is a direct link between action taken and its impact.  We can see, in other words, what’s in it for us. With climate change the connections are so much more difficult to make. Recycling custard pots is hardly going to save the Maldives, is it?

In the other policy areas mentioned, one of the most significant reasons they have worked is not legal enforcement but peer pressure.  If one fails to wear a seatbelt or lights up a *** in a pub, it’s the fact that others will point out your transgressions that will make you change. But with the environment, I don’t sense any great peer pressure. I wash my custard pots because I choose to; if I didn’t wash them out, no-one would be telling me to do it.

Finally, the messages about what we should and shouldn’t do are complex and confusing.  Simplifying good nutrition into ‘5 a day’ was a real masterstroke of communication.  It probably won’t be possible to do this with climate change, but more needs to be done by activists, governments and organisations to make the actions we need to take as straightforward and memorable as possible.

But there are broader lessons here for organisations trying to bring about changes in behaviour. First, you must be able to have an answer to the question: 'What's in it for me?' People must see some benefit for themselves. Second, the change needs to be accepted by a critical mass who will also be disapproving of others not making the change. Third, the change must be as simple and easily understood as possible. When these three elements line up, the probability for successful behaviour change will be significantly higher.

Resolutions can work. But you need to focus on the process of change, not just the outcome.

Earlier this week Richard Wiseman, respected psychologist and best-selling author, suggested that making New Year resolutions is a ‘pointless’ exercise. The headlines of newspapers screamed ‘don’t bother’ as Wiseman and his team had discovered that around three quarters of the 700 people they surveyed failed to stick to their resolutions. The researchers found, not surprisingly, that making last minute resolutions tends to back-fire and that following the advice of self-help gurus leads to sure-fire failure. Worse still, those who fail in their resolutions feel even more despondent than when they started.

But telling us not to set resolutions is a little like telling lemmings to stay away from the cliff-edge. We can’t suppress the naïve but very human impulse to improve ourselves and make life better. So is there any hope for those of us who do set resolutions for 2010?

The good news is that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that we can be successful in making and sticking to resolutions. Unfortunately, the bad news is that it takes effort, planning, monitoring and (perhaps most importantly) long-term commitment.

One of my favourite pieces of research from the year offers a real insight into how we will improve our chances of making resolutions stick. The study by Phillippa Lally and colleagues at UCL (published in the European Journal of Social Psychology) looked at how long it takes to form new habits.

The results are enlightening. They found that it takes an average of 66 days of routine practice before a new behaviour becomes established. Even the most apparently simple of changes, such as drinking a glass of water every day, take some time before they will become an automatic part of our routine. Not surprisingly, establishing  new health habits (such as doing sit-ups every morning) takes considerably longer. The research also highlighted that missing the odd day of practice didn’t matter too much, but that it is easy to relapse if we make changes to our routine even after the new behaviour has become a part of the fixed routine.

And the implications? We often focus on the end goal, but without considering the degree of effort required to achieve that goal.  It is important to face up to the difficulty of making change, rather than the outcome. The research also encourages us to think about maintaining change, rather than simply taking action.  This takes effort, planning, monitoring and organisation. Finally, this clearly doesn’t just apply to resolutions. When you sit down to conduct any review, bear these points in mind.

Last year, researchers suggested that January 24th was the ‘most depressing’ day of the year. This was the day that most of us caved in on our resolutions and returned to bad habits. Keep the figure of 66 days in mind. It will bring a more realistic perspective on the changes you want to make at work. And you never know, it could also encourage you to stick at what you’re doing until at least the 7th March...

Stuart Duff is Head of Development at Pearn Kandola Business Psychologists