Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

by Chip Heath

For the first time, Attila got a gut-check about the harm he was causing with his nitpicking. He came back to the office a transformed man.

It’s emotion that motivates the Elephant. In fighting for change, we’ve got to find the feeling.

“In the absence of a dire threat, employees will keep doing what they’ve always done.”

Out of this human tragedy has emerged a rather ridiculous business cliché. When executives talk about the need for a “burning platform,” they mean, basically, that they need a way to scare their employees into changing.

“If you have a stone in your shoe, it hurts and you’ll fix the problem,” said Martin Seligman, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. In a sense, removing the stone from your shoe is what negative emotions are designed to do—to motivate specific actions.

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.