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They didn’t walk in with the answers. All they had was a deep faith in the power of bright spots.
The Rider part of our minds has many strengths. The Rider is a thinker and a planner and can plot a course for a better future. But as we’ve seen, the Rider has a terrible weakness—the tendency to spin his wheels.
These analytical qualities can be extremely helpful, obviously—many problems get solved through analysis—but in situations where change is needed, too much analysis can doom the effort.
In tough times, the Rider sees problems everywhere, and “analysis paralysis” often kicks in. The Rider will spin his wheels indefinitely unless he’s given clear direction. That’s why to make progress on a change, you need ways to direct the Rider. Show him where to go, how to act, what destination to pursue. And that’s why bright spots are so essential, because they are your best hope for directing the Rider when you’re trying to bring about change.
Solutions-focused therapists, in contrast, couldn’t care less about archaeology. They don’t dig around for clues about why you act the way you do. They don’t care about your childhood. All they care about is the solution to the problem at hand.
Maybe small adjustments can work after all, she thought.
The Miracle Question doesn’t ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened.
Solutions-focused therapists believe that there are exceptions to every problem and that those exceptions, once identified, can be carefully analyzed, like the game film of a sporting event.
The bright spots give you an action plan: Go investigate the two successful managers.
Notice something remarkable about both the Vietnam and the Bobby case studies. In each one, relatively small changes—cooking with sweet-potato greens, greeting Bobby at the door—had a big impact on a big problem. There is a clear asymmetry between the scale of the problem and the scale of the solution. Big problem, small solution.
Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks,
When the Rider analyzes a problem, he seeks a solution that befits the scale of it.
To pursue bright spots is to ask the question “What’s working, and how can we do more of it?”
Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused: “What’s broken, and how do we fix it?”
Across the board, we seem wired to focus on the negative.
Bad is stronger than good. As Leslie Fiedler once said, lots of novelists have achieved their fame by focusing on marital problems, but there’s never been a successful novel about a happy marriage.
We need to switch from archaeological problem solving to bright-spot evangelizing.
These flashes of success—these bright spots—can illuminate the road map for action and spark the hope that change is possible.
decision paralysis.
Decision paralysis deters people from saving for their own retirement!
As Barry Schwartz puts it in his book The Paradox of Choice, as we face more and more options, “we become overloaded. Choice no longer liberates, it debilitates.
In times of change, you may not know what options are available. And this uncertainty leads to decision paralysis as surely as a table with 24 jams.
Ambiguity is the enemy. Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors. In short, to make a switch, you need to script the critical moves.
This is what we mean by “scripting” the critical moves.
They scripted the critical move:
What tires out the Rider—and puts change efforts at risk—is ambiguity, and Behring eliminated it.
When you want someone to behave in a new way, explain the “new way” clearly. Don’t assume the new moves are obvious.
The Food Pyramid, which specifies the types and quantities of food that make up a healthy diet, is the perfect example of how not to change people’s behavior. It’s worth considering for a moment, because what dooms the Pyramid could doom your efforts to create change in your life, as well.
If you are leading a change effort, you need to remove the ambiguity from your vision of change.
Clarity dissolves resistance.
quote this
“Effective visions expressed values that allow employees to identify with the organization…. One manager at a glass company suggested, ‘it’s hard to get excited about 15% return on equity.’”
Destination postcards—pictures of a future that hard work can make possible—can be incredibly inspiring.
A big-picture goal like “Be healthier” is necessarily imprecise, and that ambiguity creates wiggle room for the Elephant.
We’re all loophole-exploiting lawyers when it comes to our own self-control.
Furthermore, they are scripting critical behaviors rather than painting a picture of a destination.
Rider is a visionary.
First, follow the bright spots.
Next, give direction to the Rider—both
This is how organizational change happens.
that in most change situations, managers initially focus on strategy, structure, culture, or systems, which leads them to miss the most important issue:
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.
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.
SEE-FEEL-CHANGE.
“Think about this from a
marketing perspective. We can change behavior in a short television ad.
We don’t do it with information. We do it with identity: ‘If I buy a BMW, I’m going to be this kind of person. If I take that kind of vacation,...
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At some level, we understand this tension. We know there’s a difference between knowing how to act and being motivated to act. But when it comes time to change the behavior of other people, our first instinct is to teach them something.
To be clear, it’s not so much that you’re a brilliant predictor; it’s that he’s a lousy self-evaluator. We’re all lousy self-evaluators.
But self-evaluation involves interpretation, and that’s where the Elephant intrudes.
Positive illusions pose an enormous problem with regard to change. 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. How can we dispel people’s positive illusions without raining down negativity on them?
