Switch - Chip Heath [104]
Learning to spot and celebrate approximations requires us to scan the environment constantly, looking for little rays of sunshine, and it isn’t easy. Our Riders, by nature, focus on the negative. Problems are easy to spot; progress, much harder. But the progress is precious. Shamu didn’t learn to jump through a hoop because her trainer was bitching at her. She learned because she had a trainer who was patient and focused and reinforced every step of the journey.
Psychologist Alan Kazdin prescribes an almost identical set of techniques for parents. Kazdin urges parents to “catch their children being good.” He said, “If you want your child to do two hours of homework on her own every night, you don’t withhold praise and rewards until she does two hours of homework without being asked to.” Instead, you set small goals and gradually build her up. And when a child doesn’t get something right, Kazdin advised: “Ask yourself, ‘Was there anything about it that’s a component of what I’d like her to do?’ If the answer’s yes, and it almost always is, then jump on that component: It was great that you did X.”
Kazdin points out that in certain situations, parents do this kind of reinforcement instinctively—for instance, when a child first starts trying to walk: “You praised him wildly when he pulled himself up from a crawling to a standing posture. You held his hands and helped him to take a few steps, encouraging him by exclaiming, Look at you! You’re walking! What a big boy! He was not walking, of course … but you were shaping that behavior by reinforcing the stages on the way to it.”
Let’s be clear, we’re not advising that you treat your colleagues or fellow citizens like monkeys or children—Roger, you cut back your expenses last month! What a big boy you are! Reinforcement doesn’t have to be condescending, and it doesn’t have to come with a power dynamic. Think of the way a friend urges you on at the gym (“Good work—now do one more rep!”). But reinforcement does require you to have a clear view of the destination, and it requires you to be savvy enough to reinforce the bright-spot behaviors when they happen.
The most important lesson we can learn from Kazdin and the animal trainers is this: Change isn’t an event; it’s a process. There is no moment when a monkey learns to skateboard; there’s a process. There is no moment when a child learns to walk; there’s a process. And there won’t be a moment when your community starts to invest more in its school system, or starts recycling more, or starts to beautify its public spaces; there will be a process. To lead a process requires persistence.
A long journey requires lots of mango.
2.
In the Elephant section, we told the story of Steven Kelman, the man who accepted the daunting task of reforming the federal government’s procurement processes. In his book Unleashing Change, he observed an encouraging dynamic in his change efforts: Once the change started, it seemed to feed on itself.
We’ve seen this snowballing effect many times. The citizens of Miner County, eager to revitalize their community, began their efforts by simply digging up tree stumps. Within a few years, they managed to build up the tax base of the entire county. At Rackspace, the customer-service team had the call-queuing system unplugged. It was a simple change, but it didn’t take long before the customer-service ethic took root and led the company to a spectacular period of growth.
Kelman, the procurement guru, attributed the snowballing effect to several phenomena. Psychologists call one of them the mere exposure effect, which means that the more you’re exposed to