Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath

Kotter and Cohen say that most people think change happens in this order: ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE. You analyze, then you think, and then you change. In a normal environment, that might work pretty well. If you need to reduce duplication costs in your print shop by 6 percent, or if you need to shave off 5 minutes from your daily commute, then that process will serve you well. Kotter and Cohen note that analytical tools work best when “parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy.” But big change situations don’t look like that. In most change situations, the parameters aren’t well understood, and the future is fuzzy. Because of the uncertainty that change brings, the Elephant is reluctant to move, and analytical arguments will not overcome that reluctance. (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.) 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. You’re presented with evidence that makes you feel something. It might be a disturbing look at the problem, or a hopeful glimpse of the solution, or a sobering reflection of your current habits, but regardless, it’s something that hits you at the emotional level. It’s something that speaks to the Elephant.

If you are someone with a fixed mindset, you tend to avoid challenges, because if you fail, you fear that others will see your failure as an indication of your true ability and see you as a loser (just as a bad first taste of wine leads you to reject the bottle). You feel threatened by negative feedback, because it seems as if the critics are saying they’re better than you, positioning themselves at a level of natural ability higher than yours. You try not to be seen exerting too much effort. (People who are really good don’t need to try that hard, right?) Think about tennis player John McEnroe as a young star—he had great natural talent but was not keen on rigorous practice or self-improvement. In contrast, people who have a growth mindset believe that abilities are like muscles—they can be built up with practice. That is, with concerted effort, you can make yourself better at writing or managing or listening to your spouse. With a growth mindset, you tend to accept more challenges despite the risk of failure. (After all, when you try and fail to lift more weight at the gym, you don’t worry that everybody will mock you as a “born weakling.”) You seek out “stretch” assignments at work. And you’re more inclined to accept criticism, because ultimately it makes you better. You may not be as good as others right now, but you’re thinking long-term, in a tortoise-versus-hare kind of way. Think Tiger Woods, who won eight major championships faster than anyone in history and then ...

Perhaps the most dramatic change made by Weston and Bryce was also the simplest. Rackspace, like all hosting companies, had a call-queuing system. (“Your call is important to us. Please press 1 for recorded tips that don’t address your problem. Press 5 to leave us a message we won’t return. Press 8 to repeat these options.”) The call queue is perhaps the most basic tool of customer support. Weston threw it out. “When a customer calls, that means they need our help, and we’ve got to answer the telephone,” he said. Without the queuing system, there was no safety net. The phone would keep ringing until somebody picked it up. To Weston, this was a critical symbol of the service ethic. “When a customer has a problem, we shouldn’t deal with it when it’s convenient for us. We should deal with it when it’s convenient for the customer.” When Weston threw out the queuing system, it became impossible to dodge the customer. By 2007, the company was talking to an average customer three times per week.

Funny stuff about the call queuing system.

Say that you’ve been putting off going to the gym. So you resolve to yourself: Tomorrow morning, right after I drop off Anna at school, I’ll head straight to the gym. Let’s call this mental plan an “action trigger.” You’ve made the decision to execute a certain action (working out) when you encounter a certain situational trigger (the school circle, tomorrow morning). Peter Gollwitzer, a psychologist at New York University, is the pioneer of work in this area. He and colleague Veronika Brand-statter found that action triggers are quite effective in motivating action. In one study, they tracked college students who had the option to earn extra credit in a class by writing a paper about how they spent Christmas Eve. But there was a catch: To earn the credit, they had to submit the paper by December 26. Most students had good intentions of writing the paper, but only 33 percent of them got around to writing and submitting it. Other students in the study were required to set action triggers—to note, in advance, exactly when and where they intended to write the report (for example, “I’ll write this report in my dad’s office on Christmas morning before everyone gets up”). A whopping 75 percent of those students wrote the report. That’s a pretty astonishing result for such a small mental investment. Does this mean that simply by imagining a time and place where you’ll do something, you increase the likelihood that you’ll actually do it? Yes and no. Action triggers won’t get you (...

That’s why action triggers have unexpected value. Gollwitzer says that when people predecide, they “pass the control of their behavior on to the environment.” Gollwitzer says that action triggers “protect goals from tempting distractions, bad habits, or competing goals.”