Book review: Switch
I never miss an article by Chip and Dan Heath in my favorite magazine, Fast Company. Their first book, Made to Stick, was a wonderful summary of what works. Their new book, Switch, explores the research on change. The subtitle of the book is: How to change things when change is hard. The Heath brothers make the claim that, contrary to popular belief, change is not that difficult and that we actually do embrace radical change. They use a very valuable metaphor: The Rider, The Elephant and The Path. The Rider represents the brain, The Elephant represents the heart and The Path is the environment or how we shape behavior.
We commonly underestimate the importance of the heart and overestimate the importance of the brain. Knowing information (smoking is bad, overeating is bad, exercise is good) is one thing, but The Elephant often stops us. Motivate The Elephant by, for example, shrinking the change. Changing ”clean the house” to ”a five minute raid on one room” changes perspective and we understand how manageable that is. Want to change the procurement culture of a big corporation? The authors give the example of a person who gathered all the different safety gloves that were bought by the company. He placed price tags on them and dumped them on a board room table. It was a jolt of reality and radically reformed buying procedures by hitting the emotions – ”This is crazy. We absolute must change our routines.”
Don’t forget the environment. Their favorite example is changing the size of popcord boxes (or plates) and radically reducing overeating. Think about all the environmental factors in a school which actually increase poor student behavior, especially for the ”at risk” kids.
The book is full of good examples. It was a pleasure to read and a great reminder that change is indeed possible – and probable – when we take care to plan a strategy that reaches the heart and improves the environment.
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