Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath

SMART goals presume the emotion; they don’t generate it.

In looking for a goal that reaches the Elephant—that hits people in the gut—you can’t bank on SMART goals.

Destination postcards do double duty: They show the Rider where you’re headed, and they show the Elephant why the journey is worthwhile.

If you’re worried about the possibility of rationalization at home or at work, you need to squeeze out the ambiguity from your goal. You need a black-and-white (B&W) goal. A B&W goal is an all-or-nothing goal, and it’s useful in times when you worry about backsliding.

What is essential, though, is to marry your long-term goal with short-term critical moves.

You have to back up your destination postcard with a good behavioral script.

When you appeal to the Rider inside yourself or inside others you are trying to influence, your game plan should be simple. First, follow the bright spots

Next, give direction to the Rider—both a start and a finish. Send him a destination postcard

In The Heart of Change, John Kotter and Dan Cohen report on a study they conducted

the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people’s feelings.

In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought.

Kotter and Cohen observed that, in almost all successful change efforts, the sequence of change is not ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE, but rather SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.

But when people fail to change, it’s not usually because of an understanding problem.

But when it comes time to change the behavior of other people, our first instinct is to teach them something.

We speak to the Rider when we should be speaking to the Elephant.

Why can’t we simply think our way into new behavior? The answer is that, in some cases, we really can’t trust our own thinking.

But self-evaluation involves interpretation, and that’s where the Elephant intrudes. The Elephant tends to take the rosiest possible interpretation of the facts.

positive illusion. Our brains are positive illusion factories:

Before people can change, before they can move in a new direction, they’ve got to have their bearings. But positive illusions make it hard for us to orient ourselves—to get a clear picture of where we are and how we’re doing.

One way to motivate action, then, is to make people feel as though they’re already closer to the finish line than they might have thought.

That sense of progress is critical, because the Elephant in us is easily demoralized. It’s easily spooked, easily derailed, and for that reason, it needs reassurance, even for the very first step of the journey.

If you’re leading a change effort, you better start looking for those first two stamps to put on your team’s cards. Rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.

If you want a reluctant Elephant to get moving, you need to shrink the change

Starting an unpleasant task is always worse than continuing it.

Shrink the change. Make the change small enough that they can’t help but score a victory.

When you engineer early successes, what you’re really doing is engineering hope. Hope is precious to a change effort. It’s Elephant fuel.

“even small successes can be extremely powerful in helping people believe in themselves.

Coaches are masters of shrinking the change. By pushing their teams to attain a sequence of “small, visible goals,” they build momentum.

Psychologist Karl Weick, in a paper called “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,” said, “A small win reduces importance (‘this is no big deal’), reduces demands (‘that’s all that needs to be done’), and raises perceived skill levels (‘I can do at least that’).” All three of these factors will tend to make change easier and more self-sustaining.

it. You want to select small wins that have two traits: (1) They’re meaningful. (2) They’re “within immediate reach,

Small targets lead to small victories, and small victories can often trigger a positive spiral of behavior.

big changes come from a succession of small changes.

Paul Butler didn’t shrink the change. Instead, he grew the people. He made the St. Lucians swell with pride over their parrot—a species that exists nowhere else. He inspired them to feel more determined, more ready, more motivated. And when you build people up in this way, they develop the strength to act.

In the identity model of decision making, we essentially ask ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation?

We’re not just born with an identity; we adopt identities throughout our lives.

Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure. (That’s why it’s so clumsy when people instinctively reach for “incentives” to change other people’s behavior.) So the question is this: How can you make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of consequences?

Appreciative Inquiry, a process for changing organizations by studying what’s working rather than what’s not

identities “grow” from small beginnings.

A new identity can take root quickly, but living up to it is awfully hard.

You need to create the expectation of failure—not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.

to create and sustain change, you’ve got to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper. You’ve got to embrace a growth mindset and instill it in your team.

growth mindset, then, is a buffer against defeatism. It reframes failure as a natural part of the change process.

There’s no “never” at Jefferson anymore, only a “Not Yet.

motivation comes from feeling—knowledge isn’t enough to motivate change. But motivation also comes from confidence. The Elephant has to believe that it’s capable of conquering the change.

there are two routes to building people’s confidence so that they feel “big” relative to their challenge. You can shrink the change or grow your people (or, preferably, both).

What looks like a person problem is often a situation problem.

He called this deep-rooted tendency the “Fundamental Attribution Error.” The error lies in our inclination to attribute people’s behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in.

In our experience, people who are trying to change things often reach instinctively for carrots and sticks. But this strategy indicates a pretty crude view of human behavior—that people act only in response to bribes and punishments. And it quickly becomes absurd. Are you going to break out the “no paycheck” stick for every change you want to make in your workplace?)

“We’re taught to focus on incentives by our business background,” says Bregman. “Or even our parents: ‘Do this or you won’t get your allowance!’” But executives—and parents—often have more tools than they think they have. If you change the path, you’ll change the behavior.

What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.