Book review: Switch — Chip and Dan Heath
“Until you can ladder your way down from a change idea to a specific behaviour, you’re not ready to lead a switch.”
Reframing ideology:
In the book, Switch, the Heath brothers describe a change to getting an elephant — with all its incredible heft and inertia — to move down an unknown path. There are 3 crucial ingredients — the “Rider”, the “Elephant” and the “Path” — which are built on exciting insights about change management.
Lesson 1: The Rider
The rider requires crystal clear direction. If there is no clarity, it may look as though the rider is resisting. To get people to change, give them crystal-clear guidance, or demonstrate what to do so others can follow.
Lesson 2: The Elephant
We think people are lazy, but exhaustion is the real reason we appear lazy. Our brains are governed by two, often-conflicting systems, — the rational mind planner) and the emotional mind (our instinct). We may logically agree it’s good to change, but our emotions say otherwise.
To help people change, we need to engage their logic centres and their emotional centres.
Lesson 3: The Path
Changing someone’s behaviour changes that person’s situation because often, a people problem is merely a situational problem in disguise.
Who should read this book?
Change is everywhere, and humans are complicated. This book gives excellent strategies under each of these subsections. This is a definite read for me.
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