Switch

by Chip Heath

in situations where change is needed, too much analysis can doom the effort.

“What’s working and how can we do more of it?” That’s the bright-spot philosophy in a single question.

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.

To pursue bright spots is to ask the question “What’s working, and how can we do more of it?” Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

If you are a manager, ask yourself: “What is the ratio of the time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes?

More options, even good ones, can freeze us and make us retreat to the default plan,

Big-picture, hands-off leadership isn’t likely to work in a change situation, because the hardest part of change—the paralyzing part—is precisely in the details.

no one needs convincing that “eating healthy” is an admirable goal. What they needed was someone who could bring a noble goal within the realm of everyday behavior, someone who could cut through the bewildering array of potentially healthy choices and suggest a good place to start.

to make a switch, you need to script the critical moves.

(If someone is unsure about whether to marry her significant other, you’re not going to tip her by talking up tax advantages and rent savings.)

If self-evaluation hinged on information alone, the findings of these studies would have been impossible. It’d be like discovering that you could beat randomly selected mothers on a trivia question about how many kids they have.

Positive illusions pose an enormous problem with regard to change.

We glance at the project, and some part of us thinks, “I don’t quite have all the pieces between here and there.” We know something is missing, but we’re not sure what it is exactly, so we quit.

“I aspire to be the kind of person who would make this change.” If their answer is yes, that’s an enormous factor in your favor. If their answer is no, then you’ll have to work hard to show them that they should aspire to a different self-image.

You’ve got to embrace a growth mindset and instill it in your team.

Everything can look like a failure in the middle.”

The growth mindset, then, is a buffer against defeatism. It re-frames failure as a natural part of the change process.

A long journey requires lots of mango.