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Business. Psychology. Nonfiction. Self Help. HTML:Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mindâ??that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: â?˘ The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients â?˘ The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping â?˘ The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing you… (more)
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“Switch” suffers from the three main problems that I’ve found in nearly all popular business books. First, it presents claims without sufficient justification. This book focuses on techniques to facilitate change in organizations and individuals, and while it occasionally cites interesting work in cognitive and social psychology that may be relevant to the techniques suggested, for the most part the justification for the techniques is anecdotal: technique X worked at company Y in particular instance Z, and so it’s obviously a valid technique that’s always applicable. There’s no attempt at any sort of rigorous scientific testing of such a claim. For example, in chapter 2, the Heath brothers claim that you cannot focus on why a proposed change is failing to take hold, but must instead “find the bright spots,” i.e., identify the pockets where it is working, figure out why it works there, and then try to emulate the small successes elsewhere. They describe several case studies where this approach has led to successful change, including a project to improve childhood nutrition in Vietnam, and an intervention with a misbehaving ninth grader. Finding the brights spots is surely a good thing to do, but the hypothesis that it is always the best approach, that it will always trump analysis and correction of failure, is simply not sufficiently backed up. How do we know that there weren’t particular features of the Vietman project or particular aspects of the ninth-grader’s personality that made one approach more effective here than others? We don’t. Anyone trained in the proper use of the scientific method will want to scream at instance after instance of this type of claim without support.
The second problem with “Switch” is that it uses the overly cutesy language that is so common to this genre of books. At a high level, the book’s central claim is that effective change requires three things: you need to engage the rational, data-driven perspective of the people who have to make the change; you also need to make sure that they also have an emotional stake in the change; and you need to make the change process as easy as possible for them by manipulating the environment. To describe this triad of requirements, the Heath brothers make use of a metaphorical rider (the rational perspective) on an elephant (the emotional component—it’s much stronger, and so gets the elephant label), moving down a path (the change context). They then use and use and re-use and re-use again this metaphor in paragraph after paragraph, until their message is almost drowned out by the infantilizing language. This use of cute language pervades the book, even beyond the rider-elephant-path triad. For example, near the end of the book, where they’re describing how to keep change momentum going, they talk about positive reinforcement, and provide the example of a monkey trainer who rewards her charge with bits of mango for each small action she performs correctly. A page or two later, they proclaim “If you want your boss or your team to change, you better get a little less stingy with the mango.” C’mon!
Finally, one has the sense that the book is about twice as long as it needed to be to convey its key points.
All that said, “Switch” contains some reasonable, if sometimes common-sense, approaches to effecting change. To summarize, and paraphrase heavily, their main points:
Engage the rational mind by (1) seeking out examples of where change is working and emulating those successes in other quarters; (2) providing specific, well-defined statements of the initial steps that need to be taken in the change process; (3) clearly identifying the intended end-state and the reasons that that end-state is valuable.
Engage the emotions by (1) instilling a positive disposition in the people who must implement the changes: focus on hope and optimism, not fear; (2) “shrinking the change”, i.e., show people that they’re already partway to the goal; (3) capitalizing on people’s sense of identity by showing them how certain behaviors align with the kind of person they naturally want to be; and (4) blocking the common belief that people are defined by inherent personality characteristics, and instead affirming that people can change and grow.
Facilitate the change by (1) tweaking the environment so that the newly desired behavior is inevitable, or at least easy; (2) similarly, creating a situation in which good habits are natural (and making use of one interesting approach to this, namely preloading decisions, i.e., setting up triggers for desired actions);and (3) using peer pressure.
These are all reasonable strategies, and having them in one’s change-management arsenal is doubtless a good thing. But surely there is a way to present them in less than 265 pages, without using silly, repetitive language, and without claiming that they are the only effective ways to create change.
Logic (the rider) / Emotion (the elephant) / and the Path (the situation).
Gives lots of practical advice, techniques, and how and when to use them. Also of stories of people using these techniques. Also some background of studies where the knowledge came from.
Very enjoyable read.
The book makes you think about human behavior itself and to some extent, answers why people are the way they are. It gave me some
I could also closely relate myself to some of the examples that are mentioned in the book - allowed me to appreciate the book even more.
This book is for any one who works with humans. There are definitely scenarios where you'd want something different from the other person/people and the chapters of the book help you achieve the same.
I would like to start by applying these concepts on myself first.
"For individual's behavior to change, you've got to influence not only their environment, but their hearts and minds. The problem is that heart and minds often disagree."
Despite all of that, I still really enjoyed the book. I
I would recommend this book to individuals looking to take action steps for making change. I believe change begins with your mindset, and therefore this book isn't right for someone who has not already decided and dedicated their mind to change.