Edward D. Miller is a newsroom leadership coach and management consultant to newspapers around the world. He is a former director of ASNE and a founder of the Society for News Design. Reach him at miller@newsroomleadership.com.

SOME PEOPLE HAVE DIFFICULTY MAKING a commitment. They seem willing to change, but their resolve fails. They make promises, but soon slip back into old ways.

For some, the challenge is deadlines. They know how important it is to get the copy to the desk on time or to do the online text quickly. Repeatedly, they promise to comply with requests, but fail to deliver consistently.

For others, the difficulty is a resistance to consult with colleagues before making a decision. Reform is on their lips each time you remind them of the value of collegiality (and they do intend to do better), but soon their solo habits re-emerge.

Can you help people make commitments that stick? To begin, here's what doesn't work:

• If you demand compliance, you might get it for a while, but the change probably won't last very long.
• If you threaten, usually with some sort of career consequence as leverage, that's even less effective. Threats use fear as the agent of persuasion. Fear can be useful if the goal is negative, that is, to make someone stop doing something ("Do that again, Edward, and you lose your dessert"), but fear is seldom effective when trying to establish new habits.
• If you try to negotiate an agreement, people resistant to change will view any “settlement” as a temporary refuge from the negotiations. Again, the effect doesn't last.

Meaningful change requires a commitment, not just promises. Two conditions make commitments more durable:

Commitments should be explicit. Robert Cialdini, who studies persuasion, suggests that by declaring an intent in writing, a person is likely to have a greater allegiance to the agreement. In “Harnessing the Science of Persuasion” (Harvard Business Review, January 2002), he cites a study in which college students volunteered for an AIDS project in a public school. Students in one group were asked to sign up by filling out a printed form. Other students with the same interest in volunteering were asked to enroll by leaving blank a form that said they didn't want to participate. When the students actually showed up to serve, three out of four came from the group that actively signed the form. There is something more binding about a written “contract.”

How can you use this insight to reinforce a tentative commitment? Once you have negotiated an agreement with someone, ask him to summarize his decision and send you a memo (preferably a printed sheet, not an e-mail). The presence of an active document, unofficial as it might be, will increase the odds that the agreement will endure.

Commitments should be public. Have you ever quietly (and privately) made a New Year's resolution? How long did your resolve last? Because people want to appear consistent, commitments made publicly are more likely to be honored. When someone makes an agreement and sends you that memo outlining his intentions, thank him and send copies of the document to other people who have a stake in his honoring his word. Don't do anything that would embarrass him, but let him know that you appreciate his commitment and have told others of his intentions. Now that the pledge is public, the likelihood of changed behavior is higher.

Another step you can take to reinforce a commitment comes from “loss aversion theory.” When making decisions, people are more sensitive to potential loss than to potential gain, even if the stakes are the same. When an agreement is made (publicly and in writing), you can reinforce that commitment by emphasizing the negative consequences, or “losses,” that would accompany a failure to honor the agreement. Don't make it sound like a threat. Simply remind him that there are consequences he probably would like to avoid.

These insights about human behavior can help people move beyond easy-to-make-and-break promises to authentic commitments to change.*