Switch - Chip Heath [121]
Acknowledgments
Some readers gave us feedback on an early draft of the text. You helped us separate the wheat from the chaff and also saved us from a major Clocky miscue. Thanks to Hans van Alebeek, Elissa R. Allen, Lance Andersen, Cassie Anderson, Mark Dyar, Alex Estrada, Bruce Fuller, Lisa Hoashi, Tom Jansen, Brett Jenks, Anne Kennedy, Ray Kilmer, Ken Kozek, Russ Krieger, Ron Misak, Timothy J. Moreau, Shashank Patel, Andre Piazza, Joanne Quan, John Sankovich, Sam Sears, Karla Shearer, Mike Short, Jim Spina, Happy Webberman, and Patty Williams.
A special thanks to some people who gave us in-depth advice on the manuscript: Fred and Brenda Heath, Brian Lanahan, Justin Osofsky, Mark Schlueter, Sim Sitkin, and Glenn Sommer.
A special thank-you to Jon Haidt for sharing his analogy with us. (Imagine the horror of a framework calling for people to “direct the reflective system” and “motivate the unconscious system.”) Thanks to Chip’s students in the “How to Change Things When Change Is Hard” course at Stanford for helping refine the framework (and showing us how to talk about bright spots and finding the feeling), and to the people who attended Dan’s workshop at Wake Forest University (and a shout-out to Bill Davis for making that happen). Thank you to Elaine Bartlett for her reporting on the Mike Romano story.
We work with such wonderful partners and friends—we cannot thank you enough: Bob Safian, David Lidsky, and Chris Osekoski and the team at Fast Company; Les Tuerk and Tom Neilssen and everyone at BrightSight; Kevin Small and his team at ResultSource; and Mark Fortier and Liz Hazelton at Fortier PR. Eternal gratitude to Christy Fletcher (for making us authors and for “Switch”), as well as her fabulous team at Fletcher & Co.
The team at Broadway Books has been incredible: Tara Gilbride, Meredith McGinnis, Whitney Cookman, Songhee Kim, and Robert Siek. And a special authorial love letter to Michael Palgon and our editor, Roger Scholl—you’re the best.
And finally, no thank-you would seem adequate for all that our family has done to support us, but we’ll thank them anyway: Mom, Dad, and Susan, and our wives, Susan and Amanda.
Read an excerpt from
Dan and Chip Heath’s
Made to Stick …
CHAPTER 1
SIMPLE
Every move an Army soldier makes is preceded by a staggering amount of planning, which can be traced to an original order from the president of the United States. The president orders the Joint Chiefs of Staff to accomplish an objective, and the Joint Chiefs set the parameters of the operation. Then the orders and plans begin to cascade downward — from generals to colonels to captains.
The plans are quite thorough, specifying the “scheme of maneuver” and the “concept of fires” — what each unit will do, which equipment it will use, how it will replace munitions, and so on. The orders snowball until they accumulate enough specificity to guide the actions of individual foot soldiers at particular moments in time.
The Army invests enormous energy in its planning, and its processes have been refined over many years. The system is a marvel of communication. There’s just one drawback: The plans often turn out to be useless.
“The trite expression we always use is No plan survives contact with the enemy,” says Colonel Tom Kolditz, the head of the behavioral sciences division at West Point. “You may start off trying to fight your plan, but the enemy gets a vote. Unpredictable things happen— the weather changes, a key asset is destroyed, the enemy responds in a way you don’t expect. Many armies fail because they put all their emphasis into creating a plan that becomes useless ten minutes into the battle.”
The Army’s challenge is akin to writing instructions for a friend to play chess on your behalf. You know a lot about the rules of the game, and you may know a lot about your friend and the opponent. But if you try to write move-by-move instructions you’ll fail. You can’t possibly foresee more than a few moves. The first time the opponent makes a surprise move, your friend will have to throw out your