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Jan 10, 2024, 15 min read

Author:: Chip Heath and Dan Heath Tags: business organizational management people#media/book

  • themes::
  • notes::
    • Intro
      • “You can see how easy it would be to turn an easy change problem (shrinking people’s buckets) into a hard change problem (convincing people to think differently). And that’s the first surprise about change: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem” pg 3
        • easy to blame people but often it is simpler than tha
        • context matters a lot more than we think
      • “For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently… Ultimately all change boils down to the same mission: Can you get people to start behaving in a new way” pg 4
      • “often the heart and mind disagree. Fervently… what it shows, fundamentally, is that we are schizophrenic.” pg 5
        • we have two faces, logical rational mind and emotional instinct-driven mind
      • “our emotional side is an Elephant and our rational side is its Rider… Anytime the six-ton Elephant and the Rider disagree about which direction to go, the Rider is going to lose.” pg 9
      • ”Self-control is an exhaustible resource” pg 10
      • “When people try to change things, they’re usually tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and [this takes self-control]… In other words, they’re exhausting precisely the mental muscles needed to make a change. Change is hard because people wear themselves out.” pg 12
      • ”What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity” pg 15
    • Direct the Rider
      • Find the Bright Spots
        • Knowledge is useless for changing behavior, need to actually make people come to the conclusion and realize the benefits themselves through practicing
        • “all of this analysis was “TBU”—true but useless.” pg 28
          • not all insights are valuable
        • “Sternin knew he couldn’t fix the thorny “root causes""
        • “In order to recognize what the bright-spot mothers were doing differently, the group had to synthesize the “conventional wisdom” about feeding kids pg 29
        • “But knowing the solution [eating different kinds of food] wasn’t enough. For anything to change, lots of mothers needed to adopt new cooking habits. Most people in Sternin’s situation would have been itching to make an announcement… “Knowledge does not change behavior,” he said… He knew that telling the mothers about nutrition wouldn’t change their behavior. They’d have to practice it” pg 30
        • “By looking for bright spots within the very village he was trying to change. Sternin ensured that the solution would be a native one… [If not], The local mothers would have bristled: Those people aren’t like us.” pg 31
        • “[The Rider’s] analysis is almost always direct at problems rather than at bright spots.” pg 33
        • traditional therapy vs. solutions-focused therapy
          • Traditional therapy tries to dig into root of the problem like “archaeological excavation” to find some nugget of insight
          • “Solutions-focused therapists, in contrast, couldn’t care less [about that]. All they care about is the solution to the problem at hand” pg 35
          • finding root cause vs. solving for the problem at hand
        • “Maybe small adjustments can work after all.” pg 36
        • How do you change things?
          • first ask ==“The Miracle Question doesn’t ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened”== pg 37
          • second ask "The Exception Question: "when was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?" pg 38
            • aimed to show that client is able to solve their own problem because they have already solved it before
        • “What’s working and how can we do more of it” vs “What’s broken and how do we fix it”
        • ”bad is stronger than good” pg 47
        • making use of strengths instead of focusing on weaknesses (hedge your bets)
        • “What is the ratio of time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes” pg 48
          • putting out fires vs investing in future work
        • “We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing” pg 48
      • Script the Critical Moves
        • end vision + specific path to it
        • “Change brings new choices that create uncertainty.” pg 53
        • “And that’s why decision paralysis can be deadly for change–because the most familiar path is always the status quo” pg 53
        • “Change begins at the level fo individual decisions and behaviors, but that’s a hard place to start because that’s where the friction is. Inertia and decision paralysis will conspire to keep people doing things the old way.” pg 56
        • “You can’t script every move–that would be like trying to forsee the seventeenth move in a chess game. It’s the critical moves that count.” pg 56 (i.e focusing on milk for health campaign: Switch to 1% milk)
        • "Until you can ladder your way down from a change idea to a specific behavior, you're not ready to lead a switch. To create movement, you've got to be specific and be concrete. You've got to emulate 1% milk and flee from the Food Pyramid." pg63 notablehighlights
      • Point to the Destination
        • “We want what we might call a destination postcard—a vivid picture from the near-term future that shows what could be possible. That”s the missing piece of what we’ve discussed so far. We’ve seen the importance of pursuing bright spots and we’ve discussed ways of instructing the Rider how to behave, but we haven’t answered a very basic question: Where are we headed in the end? What’s the destination?” pg76
        • “You have a choice about how to use the Rider’s energy: By default, he’ll obsess about which way to move, or whether it’s necessary to move at all.” pg81
          • clarity of choice
        • “SMART goals presume the emotion; they don’t generate it.” pg 82
          • goals are only useful if you have the internal motivation to accomplish them
        • "We're all loophole-exploiting lawyers when it comes to our own self-control." pg 86 notablehighlights
          • easy to rationalize when we are inconsistent
          • need a “black-and-white goal” black and white rules
            • can’t cheat it because it is a yes or no
            • that means if you fail, you can’t blame it on anyone else and have to come to terms with how to improve for next time
    • Motivate the Elephant
      • Find the Feeling
        • “…in most change situations, managers initially focus on strategy, structure, culture, or systems, which leads them to miss the most important issue: ”… the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people's feelings"" pg 105
          • need both strategy (high level) and emotions (real shit)
        • “most people think change happens in this order: ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE. [this works well when] “parameters are known, assumptions are minimal and the future is not fuzzy.” pg 106
          • only good for optimization
          • i.e. reduce duplication costs in print shop by 6% or shave 5 minutes off the commute
          • “in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of chance is… SEE-FEEL-CHANGE”
            • something that hits you at the emotional level, in your gut.
        • “Trying to fight inertia and indifference with analytical arguments is like tossing a fire extinguisher to someone who’s drowning. The solution doesn’t match the problem.” pg 107
        • “It can sometimes be challenging, though, to distinguish why people don’t support your change. Is it because they don’t understand or because they’re not enthused? Do you need an Elephant appeal or a Rider appeal?” pg 107
          • need to decide which change is necessary or why people aren’t on board.
        • “Think about this from a marketing perspective. We can change behavior in a short television ad. We don’t do it with information. We do it with identity: ‘If I buy a BMW, I’m going to be this kind of person.’” pg 109
        • “To be clear, it’s not so much that you’re a brilliant predictor; it’s that he’s a lousy self-evaluator. We're all lousy self-evaluators.” pg 114
        • “We’ve all heard the studies showing that the vast majority of us consider ourselves above-average drivers. In the psychology literature, this belief is known as a ==positive illusion==. Our brains are positive illusion factories… Before people can change, before they can move in a new direction, they’ve got to have their bearings. But positive illusions make it hard for us to orient ourselves—to get a clear picture of where we are and how we’re doing.” pg 114
          • balancing humility with confidence
        • “Negative emotions tend to have a "narrowing effect" on our thoughts. If your body is tensing up as you walk through a dark alley, your mind isn’t likely to wander over to tomorrow’s to-do lists. Fear and anger and disgust give us sharp focus—which is the same thing as putting on blinders… In contrast with the narrowing effects of negative emotions, positive emotions are designed to "broaden and build" our repertoire of thoughts and actions. Joy, for example, makes us want to play.” pg 122
        • “To solve bigger, more ambiguous problems, we need to encourage open minds, creativity, and hope.” pg 123
      • Shrink the Change
        • “If you’re leading a change effort, you better start looking for those first two stamps to put on your team’s cards. Rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.”
          • at macro level, no significant change, all micro changes and actions that fueled overall change
          • make it easy for people to join
          • at what point does it become too extreme, you don’t do anything?
        • To get the Elephant off its duff, you need to re-assure it that the task won’t be so bad.”
          • don’t have to finish find golden checkpoints
        • “When you engineer early successes, what you’re really doing is engineering hope. Hope is precious to a change effort. It’s Elephant fuel.”
        • from author of Getting Things Done “these people are sabotaging the likelihood of action by being too murky. He says it’s critical to ask yourself, “What’s the next action?""
          • big stuff will fall into place, focus on the present
        • big changes come from a succession of small changes
      • Grow your People
        • “Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure. (That’s why it’s so clumsy when people instinctively reach for “incentives” to change other people’s behavior). So the question is this: How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences?” ^JZ0YEB6N9
          • doesn’t matter if identity is made up or artificial as long as they actually feel it
        • signing petition of being safe driver caused people to actually start to change
        • “identities grow from small beginnings”
          • just need to plant seed, people will rise to the identity
          • productive discourse how can we get people to see themselves as involved civic participants? ^OanG15X70
        • “Results are the thing… But to create and sustain change, you’ve got to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper.”
        • “IDEO goes through “foggy periods” / hope -> insight -> confidence
    • Shape the Path
      • Tweak the Environment
      • Build Habits
      • Rally the Herd
        • if only the person, make best guess, but if crowd, then you have to process what is happening and crowd’s reaction
          • additional cognitive overload
          • we want to conform
        • transparency as power of accountability and shaming
          • public excel spreadsheet with status
        • jay Winsten
        • problem of superiors and workers being on same page but social status preventing workers from doing what is needed for the change
          • “change was coming into conflict with culture, and let’s face it, a new rule is no match for culture”
          • culture vs. change, culture wins
          • format matters a lot
          • meetings perceived as intimate, important will give more air to voice concerns
          • meetings perceived as casual don’t give that air
            • self-censor if too public, [[need for free spaces]]
              • free spaces are small-scale meetings where reformers can gather and ready themselves for collective action without being observed by members of the dominant group.
                • play a critical role in facilitating social change.
                • ex: southern black churches free spaces for black civil rights leaders
        • oppositional identity: framing culture as old vs. new (one vs. other) good vs bad
      • Keep the Switch Going
        • single step can either be an amble that is abandoned or a long journey
          • need to sustain momentum
        • [[get cognitive dissonance to work in your favor]]
          • once small step is taken, people have begun to act in new way, hard to revert

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