This is an outline of the book "Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- (p27) Jerry Sternin, working for Save the Children, visits Vietnam to improve the health of children.
- Sternin finds that a few children are healthy.
- After excluding special cases (e.g., uncle in government who can send food), he finds the mothers feed them more often, add crabs and potato greens, and actively feed.
- Rather than making an announcement, Sternin develops programs for mothers to share practice with each other
- (p31) This method addresses
- Rider: specific instructions on how to cook
- Elephant: hope--”I can make my child health”
- The not-invented-here bias: the solution came from within the village
- (p33) analysis paralysis
- (p33) Bobby has problems in school
- School counselor had little power to incentive or punish Bobby, and had only little time with Bobby
- A few months later Bobby was doing better in school, sent less often to principal’s office
- (p34) John Murphy practices solutions-focused brief therapy
- Contrasted to slow, Freudian “archaeological” therapy
- SFBT is based on small adjustments, like improving golf swing
- (p36) The Miracle Question: You fall asleep and a miracle solves your problems. When you wake up what is the first, small sign it worked?
- (p37) “The Miracle Question doesn’t ask you to describe the miracle itself”
- Avoids grand responses
- Then comes the Exception Question: “When was the last time you saw a little bit of the miracle, even just for a short time?” (e.g., stayed sober for an hour)
- Shows the client already solved the problem
- Like slow motion replay of sports game
- (p39-40) HR manager wants line managers to practice new feedback technique, so he finds one manager doing it well and replicates it
- (p41) Two saleswoman at Genentech sold new drug by explaining to doctors how to use it rather than why to use it because of unfamiliar method
- (p44) asymmetry of big problem and small solutions
- (p46) research: people focus on negative things
- (p47-48) problem focus (“fix it”) vs solution focus
- Chapter 3: Script the Critical Moves
- Chapter 4: Point to the Destination
- (p73) Crystal Jones was a teacher with a first grade class with a poor reading level
- She motivated them by announcing by the end of the year they were going to be third graders (actually, read like them), which are “cooler”
- She cultivated a culture of learning by referring to students as “scholars”
- (p75)BHAG=Big Hairy Audacious Goal= "...an audacious 10-to-30-year goal to progress towards an envisioned future."
- setting BHAGs distinguished lasting companies
- (p76) “destination postcard”=”vivid picture from the near-term future that shows what could be possible”
- directs Rider and motivates Elephant
- ‘it should “hit you in the gut”’
- Laura Esserman at UCSF was frustrated by women’s poor experience starting with suspicious breast lump. There are delays as the woman is passed between doctors and sites for tests and treatment.
- She and Mendelsohn setup Breast Care Center centered around the woman
- destination postcard replaces Rider’s analysis on whether to do it with figuring out how to do it
- (p82) SMART goals (specific, measurable, relevant, timely) address the problems of ambiguity and irrelevance, but work best in steady-state rather than change situations. Don’t generate emotion.
- (p85) the problem of rationalizing exceptions, such as being on a diet and rationalizing eating junk food after eating a salad
- solution to ambiguity that allows rationalizing is setting a black-and-white (B&W) goal such as “no wine ever”
- B&W goals can be restrictive instead of inspiring
- (p87) Oil exploration has become more difficult, so BP decided to dramatically cut costs by reducing the number of “dry holes”
- (p90) B&W goal at BP “no dry holes” to avoid rationalizing low-probability drilling, thinking some will pay off
- Explorers changed from acting like salespeople to geologists, being more careful
- One kind of rationalization: if we make a mistake, we’ll learn from it (but we won’t)
- other rationalization is “strategic value”
- “no dry holes” also prevented pressure of knowingly drilling a bad spot under political pressure or pressure from business partners
- Shearson Lehman was an investment bank that hired Jack Rivkin to improve the ranking of its research department
- Rivkin required analysts to “initiate 125 client conversations per month,” a difficult but clear goal. Quantity and quality of calls was internally-public record
- Analysts worked longer hours and asked each other how they did it
- Rivkin required colleagues cite colleagues’ work to work as a team, exposing analysts to new information
- Every analyst and assistant made many calls to research uses of new drug by Amgen. They compiled research a single analyst could never do.
- Rider has many strengths, but needs simple game plan
- Chapter 5: Find the Feeling
- Target
- In 1992 Target was relatively small compared to Kmart and Wal-Mart
- Robyn Waters was laid off from a high-end department store, so she joined Target
- Target lagged trends, and Waters wanted to change Target to start riding trends
- Waters pointed to success of early converts
- Color became new trend, but Target’s prior-year sales didn’t show this, so merchants were not interested.
- Waters created interest with demonstrations of colorful candy, colorful iMacs, and photographs of boutiques
- (p105) John Kotter, Dan Cohen, and Deloitte Consulting interviewed 400 people across 130 companies across the world.
- They found managers “initially focus on strategy, structure, culture, and systems”
- However, in successful changes, must “influence emotion, not just thought”
- Instead of “ANALYZE-THINK-CHNAGE,” people actually “SEE-FEEL-CHANGE”
- Do not try to fight emotional problems with analytical arguments
- (p107) Pam Omidyar at HopeLab wanted to help kids fighting cancer
- Chemotherapy is painful, but small non-compliance greatly reduces risk of more cancer
- They created a video game
- Kids who played had a lot more chemotherapy drugs in their blood
- However, it didn’t make a difference whether the kids played a lot or a little (most kids played little)
- So the information (in the later levels of the game) didn’t help as much as the emotional power of fighting cancer
- Buying a BMW is more than a car: it’s an identity (like the identity of someone who can fight and beat cancer)
- (p110-112) Clinic: helping developers care about end users
- (p112) Smokers have the knowledge that smoking is unhealthy, but it doesn’t change their behavior.
- (p113) A third party is better at estimating...
- Strangers at estimating a person’s IQ than the subject of the guess, even though the subject has more information.
- A roommate is better at estimating how long a college romance will last
- The person has more information, but he has a positive bias
- The third party is more objective
- People significantly overrate themselves as having above average leadership skills, getting along better, doing above average work, and providing accurate self assessments
- (p115) Massachusetts Department of Youth Services (DYS) changed services model from youth prisons to non-profits
- Attila the Accountant required strict rules for paying the non-profits
- This caused problems for them to provide programs
- He visited in person, saw how they struggled, and changed his attitude
- before and after, Atilla prided himself in being a “good accountant”
- Before, being a “good accountant” meant the rigor of rules
- After, being a “good accountant” meant service
- (p119) People are motivated by a crisis
- A “burning platform” refers to a terrible oil platform accident in 1998 where workers had to choose burning alive or plunging 150 feet into water
- Today this means “scaring employees into changing” by painting a gloomy picture of today
- This includes negative ads
- “This is your brain on drugs” commercials
- LBJ’s 1964 “Daisy” campaign: if you vote for the other guy, your child will be killed by a nuclear explosion
- (p121) Negative emotions are not a long term solution for change
- (p121) Positive emotions
- Positive emotions do not produce unique facial expressions like negative emotions do
- Negative emotions focus thoughts and have a narrowing effect
- Positive emotions “broaden and build,” which is important for discovering, learning, building
- Chapter 6: Shrink the Change
- (p124) Exercise habits of Hotel maids
- Research by Alia Crum and Ellen Langer
- Maids normally exercise a lot in the course of their work, but they don’t realize it
- Researchers told some of the maids they were exercising
- Other maids were told exercise is good but were not told their work is exercise
- Later maids who were told they were exercising had lost more weight
- Crum and Langer concluded this is due to the placebo effect
- Heath and Heath concluded this energized the maids to add little bits more exercise to their day
- (p126) Car wash and loyalty cards
- All customers were given loyalty cards requiring weight washes to get a free wash
- Some of the cards were framed this way: buy eight, but the first two are free
- Customers who were given a head start bought more washes and sooner
- Look for ways to make the change seem smaller and more familiar by acknowledging the progress that has already been made
- (p129) Cleaning house
- Cleaning a whole house to perfection is daunting
- So Marla Cilley’s technique, the “5-Minute Room Rescue,” recommends to clean a single room for five minutes
- This creates momentum and gratification
- (p131) Debt
- Accountants recommend paying first the debt with the highest interest rate, regardless of the account balance size
- This can make progress seem slow
- Dave Ramsey recommends paying off debt using the “Debt Snowball,” which is paying off the smallest balance
- This gives a quick, encouraging win and creates a sense of progress
- (p137) Procurement reform
- Steven Kelman lead procurement reform at the Office of Fedaral Procurement Policy (OFPP)
- There were lots of good procurement rules that caused problems in practice
- Kelman had little power compared to the size of the problem represented by a $320 billion discretionary budget
- He discovered a specific problem: employees could not walk across the street to buying inexpensive items
- Kelman’s solution was to double the use of government credit cards over the next year
- He slowly created momentum against ignoring past performance of contractors, and he advertised the success to build momentum
- (p141) Small progress
- Celebrate small progress
- A shy kid wants to talk to a girl, so his next step is to ask someone at the grocery store where to find toothpaste
- NFL Coach Bill Parcells gives players goals “within immediate reach”
- David Allen, author of Getting Things Done: if you want to get a tune up, the next step is to get the phone number
- Alcoholics Anonymous: “one day at a time”
- [..........]
- Chapter 7: Grow Your People
- (p149) St. Lucia Parrot lives only on the island of St. Lucia
- It was nearing extinction
- Paul Butler studied the parrot and was hired by St. Lucia’s forestry department to help save the bird
- However, Butler did not have the power to enact his simple recommendations
- Instead of making an analytical case or using power he didn’t have, Butler convinced the islanders that they were the “kind of people who protected their own”
- (p152) Instead of making people feel bigger than the challenge (“shrink the change”), “grow your people” means making people swell with pride and feel more determined
- James March of Stanford says there are two ways of making choices
- consequences model: people weigh pros and cons
- identity model: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation?
- People adopt identities, such as being a scientistic, and then generally act consistent with the identity
- (p154) Lovelace Hospital Systems in NM was concerned about the high turnover of nurses
- When surveying nurses who stayed (bright spots), they found they were loyal to the profession
- So the hospital cultivated the identity of the noble nurse
- (p156) Brasilata
- A company that makes cans
- It invented the identity that all employees are inventors
- The inventors submitted lots of ideas for products, to save costs, and to save energy
- (p158) Freedman and Fraser, foot in the door study (1960)
- When asked to put up an ugly billboard, most people refused
- But when a few weeks earlier, someone else asked to put up a small sign (where most people agreed), many more people agreed to the ugly billboard
- People who agreed to the easy request (the “foot in the door”) adopted an identity of being the kind of person who agrees to requests, gets involved, etc
- (p163) Growth mindset
- Fixed mindset
- Some people believe that their skills and abilities don’t change much
- Avoid risks
- Try not to show effort
- Don’t take criticism
- Praise like “you are smart”
- Growth mindset
- Abilities are like muscles
- Take risks
- Accepts criticism
- Praise like “you worked hard”
- (p165) Teaching growth mindset
- Carol Dweck taught junior high schoolers in poor neighborhood a growth mindset
- They did much better in math than the control group, which was taught study skills
- So a growth mindset can be taught, learned, and useful
- (p168) Business and growth mindset
- Think of stages for planning and executing but not learning or practicing
- practicing has the appearance of “poor execution”
- IDEO, a product design firm, sketched a project mood chart starting with hope, dropping to a negative period called insight, and finishing with a positive confidence
- create “expectation of failure”
- growth mindset allows this expectation, and this guards against defeatism
- struggles are perceived as learning
- (p170) heart surgery
- MICS is a new, less-invasive kind of heart surgery
- it’s more difficult and requires much more team effort
- one successful hospital adopted it using a “learning frame”
- team members could ask questions, practiced frequently and together, didn’t need to get it right the first time
- (p173) Molly Howard, Jefferson County High School
- lots of kids in poverty
- few kids going to college
- little faith in proving the kids’ situations
- she adopted the college track and put all students together to create a new identity
- she permanently appointed each student a teacher as an advisor
- She change grades D and F to NY for “not yet” to emphasize learning , effort, expectations
- Chapter 8: Tweak the Environment
- (p179) Fundamental attribution error
- In other people we tend to attribute situational factors to a person’s character
- Example: a person is always a rude driver vs in a hurry one time
- Example: in chapter 1 people were gluttons vs being the situation of given too much popcorn
- Shaping the path ignores people’s individual characters
- Small improvements
- Amazon improved sales with 1-click ordering
- A management consulting firm struggled to get employees to switch from using paper time cards to an electronic system until someone realized the system had an annoying wizard. Removing the wizard made it more convenient, and compliance went up because employees followed the easiest path.
- (p187) Errors in medication administration
- A typical error rate is 1 in 1000
- This may seem low, but the costs of a failure are high---including harm and death
- The cause of the error includes an environment (path) that distracts nurses
- Becky Richards at Kaiser South San Francisco Hospital forced nurses to wear ugly vets like construction workers so everyone knew not to distract the nurses
- The nurses hated the vests, which brought attention to a potential for errors
- Physicians hated the restriction on interrupting nurses
- But the vests reduced medication administration errors
- (p191) “Sterile cockpits” in IT
- In airline industry, the pilots cannot chat under 10,000 feet
- An IT group adopted a similar rule to dramatically speed up a software project
- Quiet hours on three morning per week stopped the interruption of software developers
- (p192) Self-manipulation
- In Chapter 1, giant tubs of popcorn were the Path that encouraged overeating, so a Path solution is smaller plates, wineglasses, bowls, etc.
- Some people lay out jogging clothes before going to bed
- Some people brew coffee on a timer to help get out of bed
- A woman freezes her credit to prevent impulsive spending
- Amanda Tucker was a manager for Nike in Vietnam
- Tucker’s workers said she didn’t make time for them, though she thought she did
- The problem was when an employee was in her office, Tucker was looking at her computer
- So Tucker moved her computer out of her line of sight to avoid temptation and distraction
- Fundamental Attribution Error would conclude Tucker was an insensitive manager, but the problem was her environment
- (p194) Outsmarting ourselves
- Chip Heath was distracted by email, so he changed his email application Outlook to disable all audible and visual alerts for new email messages
- Dan Heath reconfigured a laptop to disable all network access, so he could focus better
- Some factories have trouble with worker safety, so some machines are designed to force safety: a dangerous machine may not turn on until the worker presses two buttons placed in such a way that the worker’s fingers are far from the dangerous area
- A Rider or Elephant solution would not be so effective in improving worker safety: workers understand the consequences and have enough fear of personal injury
- (p197) Haddon Matrix
- Haddon Matrix is a framework for thinking about accidents
- It focuses on three periods: pre-event, event, and post-event
- If the goal is to reduce injuries from car accidents, a pre-event intervention could be installing antilock brakes
- Haddon Matrix can also be applied to other contexts, such as saving critical business data
- (p199) Rackspace
- In 1999 Rackspace considered customer service as a cost to minimize, so the phone system made it hard to reach a live agent
- One angry customer got a hold of Rackspace founder Graham Weston
- Weston introduced the phrase: Rackspace Gives Fanatical Support
- The first change was focusing on standardization to manage costs. This gives direction to the Rider.
- The second change was to remove the phone menu and queuing systems, so agents had to answer the phone. By making it “impossible” not to answer the phone, this shaped the Path.
- Third, they launched Straightjacket Awards for crazy-good customer support. This identity appealed to the Elephant.
- (p203) Chapter 9: Build Habits
- In Vietnam, many people used drugs, but when they came home, the good environment encouraged them to stop, so the epidemic of persistent drug use never materialized
- Smokers find it easier to stop smoking while on vacation because at home there are many queues, such as the smell or an ashtray, that prompt smoking
- Peter Gollwitzer studied action triggers in motivating action.
- Students who set action triggers to write an extra credit paper were more likely to do so
- Action triggers preload a decision, which is like building an instant habit
- Action triggers best with hard goals and difficult situations
- Action triggers also helped people recover faster from knee and hip surgery by encouraging walking
- Action triggers didn’t help teens stop smoking, and they don’t help people do something they don’t want to do
- However, action triggers were shown to have a robust effect across 85 studies
- General WiIliam “Gus” Pagonis made meetings more efficient by having everyone stand up
- The habit, like standing up at a meeting, should support the mission
- The habit should be easy, like laying out clothes for going to the gym
- Penn State University improved long-term weight loss by asking dieters to add two cups of soup. This was easier to do than exercise or taking away food.
- Natalie Elder took a job as principal at the lowest-ranking school in Tennessee.
- The students had strong behavioral problems
- She stopped parents from coming in the school
- She noticed the problems started when kids entered the school, so she had teachers escort kids calmly into school
- Instead of thinking of them as “bad kids,” she thought of a way to bring out the good in the kids
- A checklist, a humble but important tool, helped reduce dangerous line infections in a hospital
- Checklists provide strong direction
- Likewise, a list of solution categories (e.g., put more cars in the same spot) can guide brainstorming to solve a problem (e.g., parking at a university)
- Chapter 10: Rally the Herd
- In ambiguous situations, people follow the behavior of other people
- In research by Bibb Latane and John M. Darley at Columbia, students who were in a room that started to fill with smoke reacted less when other students were in the room because they all the students watched each other for direction.
- Dr. Nicholas Christakis found that obesity is contagious among close friends because they found each other’s body types more acceptable
- Males in college with a roommate who drinks had a worse GPA
- Opera companies planted people in the audience to launch and applaud, which triggered the same from the real audience
- When hotels ask people to reuse their bath towels
- Instead of mentioning the environmental benefit, mentioning the high rate that other people reused their towels increased compliance
- Do not advertise low rates of compliance
- Gerard Cachon improved turn around times on peer review of journal articles by identifying the goal, appealing the identify of the “operations people” who know efficiency, and rallied the herd by publishing the status of reviewers to build peer pressure
- Jay Winsten invented the social norm of a designated driver (for drinking alcohol) and popularized it by having tiny mentions of it on 160 TV programs
- In Tanzania, sugar daddy relationships transmit HIV to young women, so people created the concept of a “Fataki” (a dangerous man) using radio ads. The ads demonstrated role models stopping the Fataki’s efforts.
- Medical residents often worked too long hours, so they were tired and made dangerous mistakes. In a case study, reducing the long hours to just 80 hours was successful at a hospital that had a “free space,” a a small meeting where reformers could freely discuss and plan the change. This change required a transitional identity crisis “us versus them.”
- (p250) Chapter 11: Keep the Switch Going
- Celebrate the first step in a long journey
- Animal trainers don’t punish animals.
- Animal trainers use “approximations,” which are rewards for getting a little closer to the desired behavior
- Amy Sutherland wrote in the New York Times about using approximations on her husband
- Look for things to celebrate
- Alan Kazdin asks parents to “catch their children being good”
- When a child is learning to walk, parents instinctively give this kind of praise
- Change can have a snowball effect
- According to Steven Kelman, the mere exposure effect means even if people don’t like the change at first, it will grow on them, and they will learn to like it
- At first Parisians didn’t like the Eiffel Tower
- According to cognitive dissonance, people will notice themselves acting in line with the change and then change their beliefs to be consistent with their actions
- Successful change follows the pattern set out in this book: motivate the Elephant, direct the Rider, and shape the path