Switch - Chip Heath [137]
Cast members don’t interview for a job, they audition for a role.
When they are walking around the park, they are onstage.
People visiting Disney are guests, not customers.
Jobs are performances; uniforms are costumes.
The theater metaphor is immensely useful for Disney employees. It is so useful that just by reading the last few paragraphs you can probably predict how cast members should behave in situations we haven’t discussed. For instance, you can probably guess that employees are not allowed to be on break while in costume and in a public area. (An actor would never have a chat and a cigarette in mid-scene.) You might guess that street sweepers are evaluated on criteria other than the cleanliness of their sidewalks. Indeed, street sweepers are some of the most highly trained cast members, since their very visible public presence—coupled with the fact that they are clearly Disney employees—makes them an obvious target for customers’ questions about rides, parades, and restroom locations. Having them think of their role as performance, rather than maintenance, is a key part of the park’s success. “Employees as cast members” is a generative metaphor that has worked for Disney for more than fifty years.
Contrast Disney with Subway. Like Disney, Subway has created a metaphor for its frontline employees. They are “sandwich artists.” This metaphor is the evil twin of Disney’s “cast members.” It is utterly useless as a guide to how the employee should act. Disney expects its cast members to behave like actors, but Subway does not expect its counter help to behave like artists. The defining trait of an “artist” is individual expression. We wonder how long an employee would last at Subway if she exhibited a lot of individual expression — in dress, in interaction, in the presentation of sandwiches. No doubt Subway’s sandwich artists are trusted to place a handful of onions on a twelve-inch sub, and it’s true that this is a certain kind of liberty. But one suspects that the counter person’s “artistry” can’t extend to adding an extra slice of turkey.
The Power of Simplicity
Generative metaphors and proverbs both derive their power from a clever substitution: They substitute something easy to think about for something difficult. The proverb “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush” gives us a tangible, easily processed statement that we can use for guidance in complex, emotionally fraught situations. Generative metaphors perform a similar role. The “cast members” at Disney might find it easier to tackle a new situation from the perspective of a hired actor than from their own unique individual perspective.
Proverbs are the Holy Grail of simplicity. Coming up with a short, compact phrase is easy. Anybody can do it. On the other hand, coming up with a profound compact phrase is incredibly difficult. What we’ve tried to show in this chapter is that the effort is worth it—that “finding the core,” and expressing it in the form of a compact idea, can be enduringly powerful.
Copyright © 2010 by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Excerpt from Made to Stick copyright © 2011 by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
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BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Heath, Chip.
Switch : how to change things when change is hard / Chip Heath and Dan Heath.—1st ed.
1. Change (Psychology) I. Heath, Dan, 1973–II. Title.
BF637.C4H43 2010
303.4—dc22
2009027814
eISBN: 978-0-307-59016-9
v3.0_r3