{On April 5, 2013, we will celebrate the 15th Anniversary of the First Friday Book Synopsis, and begin our 16th year. During March, I will post a blog post per day remembering key insights from some of the books I have presented over the 15 years of the First Friday Book Synopsis. We have met every first Friday of every month since April, 1998 (except for a couple of weather –related cancellations). These posts will focus only on books I have presented. My colleague, Karl Krayer, also presented his synopses of business books at each of these gatherings. I am going in chronological order, from April, 1998, forward. The fastest way to check on these posts will be at Randy’s blog entries — though there will be some additional blog posts interspersed among these 30.}
Post #25 of 30
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Synopsis presented March, 2010
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. (Broadway Business. 2010)
I cannot tell you how many good, important books I have had to “skip” in this series of 30 books in 30 days. And as I come to 2010, I had a genuinely difficult decision between these two books: Switch by the brothers Heath, or Drive by Daniel Pink. (Tomorrow’s selection is The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande). I’ve gone with Switch, but I have decided to circle back and write a few more blog posts after this series is “officially over,” and I will write on Daniel Pink’s Drive sometime in the coming month.
So, take a good look at the subtitle of Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. You might think, “oh, that means that some change is easy.” I’m not so sure about that. In general, people do not like to change. Even people who say they like to change do not like to change. Even when people say they want to change, they want to embrace change, when it comes down to it, they really do not like to, you know, actually change – to make actual, real, tangible changes. As one friend put it a while back, “I’m probably not going to change…” I know that feeling!
Now, let’s do a little “defining.” To learn something new, especially “intellectually,” (e.g., the list of causes of World War II) – this is not change. To learn how to use a new “app” – this is not quite a change. But… to change e-mail programs, or calendar programs/apps – this is getting close to change. A friend of mine switched from a PC to a Mac a short while back, and I’m not sure he has recovered from that trauma yet. That was a big, traumatic change for this friend. (Is that a BHAC – a “Big, Hairy, Audacious, Change”?)
No, a change is an actual change. I was practicing “this,” and now I have abandoned that “this” for this new “this.” And the longer I was using/doing that old “this,” the harder it is to move to a new “this.” This process is the hard kind of change.
And in a company or organization, when a change in process is introduced, or a change in software, or a change in style, or any “big” change, the people grumble and complain and at times seek to undermine the change. Change is hard. Yes, it is.
Now, to the book.
“This is a book to help you change things.”
First, change relates to behavior.
For anything to change, someone has to start acting differently. Your brother has to stay out of the casino; your employees have got to start booking coach fares. Ultimately, all change efforts boil down to the same mission: Can you get people to start behaving in a new way?
And the big problem is that when the “mind” (in the book, the “Rider”) accepts the need to change, the good of the change, the “heart” (in the book, the “Elephant”) is slow to follow.
For individuals’ behavior to change, you’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds. The problem is this: Often the heart and mind disagree. Fervently.
So, early in the book, we learn about “Clocky.” (Here’s a fun little two-minute short film to show you how “Clocky” works). From the book:
The “Clocky” (an alarm clock that goes of, rolls away, and you have to chase it across the room to turn it off) shows, fundamentally, that we are schizophrenic. (we want to get up and get going – but, we want to snooze a while/much longer). The beauty of the “Clocky” allows your rational side to outsmart your emotional side.
Let’s be blunt here: Clocky is not a product for a sane species. If Spock wants to get up at 5:45 am, he’ll just get up. No drama required… Your brain isn’t of one mind. (the “id and the superego” — the “planner and the doer” – the “elephant and the rider”).
Now, though we do not like “to change,” we do like to “have changed.” We know we need to change, we know that the long-term benefits of needed change are genuinely valuable benefits. It’s the getting there that is so difficult.
The kinds of change we want typically involve short-term sacrifices for long-term payoffs.
And, one “finding” that is especially insightful is this – we can only do so much “improving” at once. A friend once told me that there were so many changes that he needed to make that he was suffering from “improvement overload.” I know that challenge.
Self-control is an exhaustible resource… Much of our daily behavior is more automatic than supervised, and that’s a good thing because the supervised behavior is the hard stuff. It’s draining.
We burn up self-control in a wide variety of situations: managing the impression we’re making on others; coping with fears; controlling our spending; trying to focus on simple instructions such as “Don’t think of a white bear”; and many, many others.
When people try to change things, they’re tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and changing those behaviors requires careful supervision by the Rider. The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people’s self-control.
and
Change is hard because people wear themselves out… What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.
When you try to lead others to change, you have to be clear.
If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-clear direction.
And, when one person sees the value of the change so clearly, that person is perplexed when others do not simply and enthusiastically embrace the change. “If you understood, you would change.” The authors name this dilemma with a great! name – “True, but useless.”
“TBU” – “true, but useless.”
“Knowledge does not change behavior.” (Jerry Sternin, working for Save the Children). (R.M., you can read much more about Jerry Sternin’s discoveries about change in his book The Power of Positive Deviance, coauthored with his wife Monique Sternin and Richard Pascale, and which I presented at the October, 2012 First Friday Book Synopsis).
Now, one key approach is to tackle “big” changes in “small,” doable, bite-size steps of change.
Big problem, small solution. Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.
Shrink the change until it’s not too much.
And, one reason we resist change so energetically is that we have just so much decision making/change-making energy within us. (Read You Only Have So Much Decision-Making Energy. Use It Very Wisely – President Obama Teaches Michael Lewis An Important Lesson about how President Obama makes as few decisions as possible on little things, so that he can “save” his decision-making energy for the big decisions).
The status quo feels comfortable because much of the choice has been squeezed out… The most familiar path is always the status quo.
And, just how energetically do we resist change? Really energetically!
We’re all loophole-exploiting lawyers when it comes to our own self-control.
For a change to “stick,” habits have to change. The change needs to become “automatic,” without thinking (this is critical – without! thinking) — practically, to borrow a phrase from sports, “muscle memory.” “Automatic pilot” = fully changed!
One of the subtle ways in which our environment acts on us is by reinforcing (or deterring) our habits… Habits are, in essence, behavioral autopilot… (emphasis added). To change you or other people, you’ve got to change habits (and, habits change when the environment is shifted).
Here is the formula for change, fully described in the book (from my handout for my synopsis):
• The Elephant and the Rider
• the Elephant gets things done; the rider “overanalyzes and overthinks things”
• the Rider provides the planning and direction, and the Elephant provides the energy
• Rider alone – understanding without motivation
• Elephant alone – passion without direction
• Three steps to change:
1) Direct the Rider: What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction.
2) Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. Engage the emotional side.
3) Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situational problem.
And, the book clearly recommends that we find the bright spots, and make those small, behavioral changes that lead to the big changes:
• Find The Bright Spots
• bright spots – successful efforts worth emulating
• the “miracle question: (from Solutions-focused therapists): “what’s the first small sign you’d see that would make you think, Well., something must have happened – the problem is gone”? The Miracle Question doesn’t ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened.
• Shrink The Change
• make the house cleaner – not clean
• try the “5-Minute Room Rescue” (and, “starting an unpleasant task is always worse than continuing it.”)
• think of small wins
• when you engineer early successes, what you’re really doing is engineering hope.
• set small goals that are within reach (c.f., David Allen’s GTD, “next actions”)
I have spoken to leadership teams over-and-over again. Innovation and change are always creeping into every presentation. This is the book to help you know how to actually implement those changes that you need to bring about.
Make the changes. Behave in new ways. Change, even though change is hard…
You can purchase many of our synopses, with our comprehensive handouts, and audio recordings of our presentations, at our companion site 15minutebusinessbooks.com. The recordings may not be studio quality, but they are understandable, usable recordings, to help you learn.
(And though the handouts are simple Word documents, in the last couple of years we have “upgraded” the look of our handouts to a graphically designed format).
We have clients who play these recordings for small groups. They distribute the handouts, listen to the recordings together, and then have a discussion that is always some form of a “what do we have to learn, what can we do with this?” conversation. Give it a try.
First Friday Book Synopsis 