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A review by pocketbard
Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath, Dan Heath
5.0
The Heath brothers are among my very favourite non-fiction authors of all time. Their first book, Made to Stick, is one of my favourites, and I still reference it today, years after I first read it. So I was extremely happy to see the release of their new book, Switch. Whereas Made to Stick is all about how to make your ideas memorable, or "sticky," Switch is about how to change. How do you change a behaviour or an attitude, whether in yourself, your company, or your community?
The Heath brothers use the metaphor of your brain as an elephant rider. The rider is your conscious mind, the part that reasons and considers. It's analytical, thinks things through, and knows where it wants to go. Part of making change, therefore, is to direct the rider: give it a clear goal and script the critical steps along the way. (So, for example, a scripted step for dieters might be "Buy 1% milk instead of whole milk.") One part of the "direct the rider" section I really like is to look for the "bright spots." Instead of looking at a situation and asking "what's wrong?", instead ask "What's right?" And then try and replicate that success.
Of course, the rider can tug and tug all he wants, but if the elephant wants to go somewhere else, the elephant is gong to win. The elephant is our subconscious mind, our emotions. If you really want to change, you need to motivate the elephant to go where you want to go. That might come from finding a way to get emotionally involved in the change. It might also come from making the challenge smaller so that you don't feel overwhelmed. I used this all the time when I was in school: I couldn't face the idea of writing a whole term paper, but writing one or two pages was manageable.
Finally, you've got the path the rider and the elephant are on, which is to say your environment. Sometimes what looks like an insurmountable personality problem really comes down to the environment. It's the recovering BlackBerry addict can't check his email at the table if it's locked in his desk drawer, for instance. It's harder to tempt yourself with junk food if you don't keep it in the house. The people you surround yourself with are also part of the "path"; people naturally tend to do what the people around them are doing (or even what they think the people around them are doing), which is why restaurants seed their tip jars.
In short, I loved this book. I only wish that they had come up with some clever acronym, like the "SUCCESs" acronym in Made to Stick, in order to remember the various ideas in each of the three sections. But even without an acronym, I know I'm going to be using the ideas in Switch for a long time. I highly, highly recommend this book.
The Heath brothers use the metaphor of your brain as an elephant rider. The rider is your conscious mind, the part that reasons and considers. It's analytical, thinks things through, and knows where it wants to go. Part of making change, therefore, is to direct the rider: give it a clear goal and script the critical steps along the way. (So, for example, a scripted step for dieters might be "Buy 1% milk instead of whole milk.") One part of the "direct the rider" section I really like is to look for the "bright spots." Instead of looking at a situation and asking "what's wrong?", instead ask "What's right?" And then try and replicate that success.
Of course, the rider can tug and tug all he wants, but if the elephant wants to go somewhere else, the elephant is gong to win. The elephant is our subconscious mind, our emotions. If you really want to change, you need to motivate the elephant to go where you want to go. That might come from finding a way to get emotionally involved in the change. It might also come from making the challenge smaller so that you don't feel overwhelmed. I used this all the time when I was in school: I couldn't face the idea of writing a whole term paper, but writing one or two pages was manageable.
Finally, you've got the path the rider and the elephant are on, which is to say your environment. Sometimes what looks like an insurmountable personality problem really comes down to the environment. It's the recovering BlackBerry addict can't check his email at the table if it's locked in his desk drawer, for instance. It's harder to tempt yourself with junk food if you don't keep it in the house. The people you surround yourself with are also part of the "path"; people naturally tend to do what the people around them are doing (or even what they think the people around them are doing), which is why restaurants seed their tip jars.
In short, I loved this book. I only wish that they had come up with some clever acronym, like the "SUCCESs" acronym in Made to Stick, in order to remember the various ideas in each of the three sections. But even without an acronym, I know I'm going to be using the ideas in Switch for a long time. I highly, highly recommend this book.