Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath

The bright spots give you an action plan: Go investigate the two successful managers. First, see if either situation is an anomaly. For instance, in your follow-up, you might discover that one of the successful managers had not been giving any more feedback to his team—he’d simply been approaching individuals more often to make small talk. The extra social contact made him feel good but annoyed team members (who were constantly interrupted). That manager is not a real bright spot. The other success might be legitimate. Maybe the manager, Debbie, devised a tracking sheet that reminds her to provide feedback to every employee every week. Maybe she set a goal for herself that her “quick feedback” will never last longer than two minutes and will apply only to a specific project—it won’t be a referendum on an employee’s overall performance. Maybe she set up open-door “office hours” so that employees can drop by for quick feedback on ongoing projects. Now that you’ve defined your bright spot, you can try to clone it. Have the other managers spend an hour or two shadowing Debbie, seeing firsthand how she incorporated the new style into her workday. Get Debbie to attend your next offsite training program so she can coach other managers on the mechanics of quick feedback. Talk to IT and see if there’s a way to roll out a more polished version of Debbie’s impromptu tracking sheet. Bottom line: You are spending 80 percent of your time exploring Debbie’s success and finding ways to re...