Switch - Chip Heath [30]
By springtime, the kids’ test scores had reached second-grade level. So Jones threw a graduation ceremony right before spring break. For the rest of the year, the kids took great pleasure in referring to themselves as “second graders.” And by the end of the year, over 90 percent of the kids were reading at or above a third-grade level.
These were some of the same kids who, nine months earlier, didn’t know the alphabet.
Crystal Jones’s challenge is reminiscent of what Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, in Built to Last, their great study of long-lived business organizations, memorably called a BHAG: a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal. Henry Ford’s BHAG early in the twentieth century was to “democratize the automobile;” Wal-Mart, in 1990, set the goal of quadrupling in size to be a $125 billion company by the year 2000. Collins and Porras defined a BHAG as “an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future,” and their research showed that setting these big, motivating goals was a practice that distinguished lasting companies from less successful ones.
In creating change, though, we’re interested in goals that are closer at hand—the kinds of things that can be tackled by parents or middle managers or social activists. We want a goal that can be tackled in months or years, not decades.
We want what we might call a destination postcard—a vivid picture from the near-term future that shows what could be possible. That’s the missing piece of what we’ve discussed so far. We’ve seen the importance of pursuing bright spots, and we’ve discussed ways of instructing the Rider how to behave, but we haven’t answered a very basic question: Where are we headed in the end? What’s the destination?
Crystal Jones provided a great destination postcard: You’ll be third graders soon! Notice that the goal she set for her students didn’t only direct the Rider; it also motivated the Elephant. It was inspirational. It tapped into feeling. Collins and Porras knew that goals should have an emotional component—a BHAG shouldn’t just be big and compelling; it should “hit you in the gut.” To a first grader, becoming a third grader in nine months is a gut-smacking goal.
2.
Women with breast cancer flew to San Francisco to be treated by Laura Esserman, a surgeon and an associate professor of surgery at the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). Patients loved Esserman for her warmth and empathy. She gave out her personal cell phone number to her patients, and she sometimes sang patients to sleep in the operating room as their anesthesia took effect.
Esserman’s human touch was in sharp contrast to the usual treatment afforded women diagnosed with breast cancer. As if the diagnosis itself weren’t frightening enough, women were often bounced around from place to place during the treatment cycle, adding stress. In a typical progression, described by a Stanford case study, a woman first notices a lump on her breast during a monthly self-exam. Anxious, she calls a doctor and waits a few days (or weeks) for an appointment. The doctor confirms that the lump should be examined, so the patient is referred to a radiologist at another facility to get a mammogram. Getting the results of the scan takes another agonizing few days.
The mammogram shows something suspicious, so she is referred to a surgeon, who meets her and again verifies that the lump is present. Unfortunately, the mammogram images didn’t arrive at the surgeon’s office before the visit, so there’s another delay while radiology is contacted. The surgeon conducts a biopsy, which is sent to the pathology department to determine whether the growth contains cancerous cells. The woman is sent home to wait by the phone for the answer.
If cancer is detected, she undergoes surgery, and then the surgeon refers her to a radiation therapist