Book Review- Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard

Chip and Dan Heath gives some compelling insight to change.

The book, Switch, starts by talking about 3 surprises about change.  The most powerful insight here is that often with change what looks like a people problem is often a situational problem.

When I work with business owners and we talk about what’s going on in their business, the conversation always turns to employees.  More specifically, how bad their employees are.  What Switch shows is that many of our problems with other people have to do with the process and environment other the people themselves.  This is true whether we are talking about employees or our kids.

The entire book gives tools and information on how to get both sides of our behavior in line with any change.  Those two sides are our Rider which is the rational side and the Elephant which is the emotional side.  The Rider sits on top of the Elephant to steer and guide us but ultimately if our emotions (The Elephant) want to go somewhere, the Rider is powerless to stop it.

The Rider being the intellectual part of our decisions is always looking at problems and problem solving.  As the authors, Chip and Dan Heath, illustrate sometimes the solutions to problems are available by looking at what is already going well in a given situation.  They call these situations, bright spots.

They show that the key for managing your Rider is to look for Bright Spots, script the critical moves so that we are not overloading ourselves with choices and plot a specific destination with our change.

For the Elephant it’s more about motivation.  We know we should work out more yet we don’t because when our Elephant doesn’t want to move, it doesn’t.  In this case, we have to use feelings to truly motivate us because analytics isn’t compelling enough.

Once we find the feeling, we need to make the change small for it to work.  You ever tried to change something but putting together a comprehensive list of 20 bullet point items to change?  Me too and that’s why the change doesn’t work.  In this case, pick the one point that will make the most impact.

The last thing regarding our Elephant that the book points out it to utilize a growth mindset with regards to change.  It has to be expected that when you try something new, you are going to suck at it for a bit.  The authors give the example of learning to Salsa dance as an example of trying something, sucking at it and ultimately quitting without giving themselves the chance to learn.

The last portion of the book deals primarily with the environment that you create while initiating change.  All too often this is where we get tripped up.  When trying to initiate change you must shape  the environment to be conducive to the change you want or it will not work.

This book is a must read for business owners who want to affect change in the world, for  managers who want to affect change in their work teams and for individuals who want to affect change in themselves.  This is one of those business books that’s hard to put down because the stories and information presented are so interesting.