Switch - Chip Heath [106]
When change happens, it tends to follow a pattern. We’ve got to stop ignoring that pattern and start embracing it.
4.
When Mike Romano went to Vietnam, surrounded by drugs, he started doing opium, and when he came home, surrounded by friends and family, he stopped. When the employees at Rackspace had a call-queuing system, they didn’t answer customers’ calls, and when the system was thrown out, they started answering. Change follows a pattern.
When the two of us started jury-rigging our computers to fight e-mail distractions, we were fighting the same battle as the people who purchased a Clocky, determined to keep themselves from oversleeping. Change follows a pattern.
When some hotel maids were given an identity of themselves as serious exercisers, they turned up their activity level a notch. When the “inventors” at Brasilata faced an electricity shortage, they came up with so many energy-saving ideas that the firm ended up with a surplus. Change follows a pattern.
When Jerry Sternin went to Vietnam, the government gave him six months to make a dent in malnutrition. He didn’t speak a word of Vietnamese, but he knew how to look for the bright spots, and soon mothers had learned cooking techniques that foiled malnutrition. When the conservationists at Rare saw how St. Lucians had rallied behind their parrot, they realized they had a bright spot on their hands, and since then, they’ve spread “Pride campaigns” to over fifty countries. Change follows a pattern.
What’s not part of the pattern is the type of person who’s doing the changing. We mentioned a few CEOs in this book, but we mentioned vastly more people who had less impressive titles and who didn’t have much money in their budgets: professors and nurses and middle managers and government bureaucrats and principals and parents. Their quests ranged from eccentric to epic. We saw a professor who shrank moviegoers’ popcorn containers, and two people who reined in Attila the Accountant, and a woman who reformed child abusers, and a man with a staff of 75 who saved 100,000 lives.
Their situations were different, and the scale of their changes was different, but the pattern was the same. They directed the Rider, they motivated the Elephant, and they shaped the Path. And now it’s your pattern.
What will you switch?
HOW TO MAKE A SWITCH
For things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting
differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team.
Picture that person (or people).
Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side.
You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way
for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things:
→ DIRECT the Rider
FOLLOW THE BRIGHT SPOTS. Investigate what’s working and clone it. [Jerry Sternin in Vietnam, solutions-focused therapy]
SCRIPT THE CRITICAL MOVES. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors. [1% milk, four rules at the Brazilian railroad]
POINT TO THE DESTINATION. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. [“You’ll be third graders soon,” “No dry holes” at BP]
→ MOTIVATE the Elephant
FIND THE FEELING. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. [Piling gloves on the table, the chemotherapy video game, Robyn Waters’s demos at Target]
SHRINK THE CHANGE. Break down the change until it no longer