Switch Quotes

“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.)”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“By using the miracle scale, you always have a clear idea of where you’re going next, and you have a clear sense of what the next small victory will be. You’re moving forward, and, even better, you’re getting more confident in your ability to keep moving forward.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“encouragement is critical, because it’s self-reinforcing.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Once people are on the path and making progress, it’s important to make their advances visible.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Picking out tiny chunks of work at a time stays the panic.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“you need quick wins to get fired up. And getting fired up is super-important.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“A business cliché commands us to “raise the bar.” But that’s exactly the wrong instinct if you want to motivate a reluctant Elephant. You need to lower the bar. Picture taking a high-jump bar and lowering it so far that it can be stepped over. If you want a reluctant Elephant to get moving, you need to shrink the change.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“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.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“instill hope and optimism and excitement”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“It’s realizing that I can do this. I’m in charge.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“making a gut-level emotional connection.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“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.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“her successes came despite a lack of authority and resources.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“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. Think of the Vietnamese children who stayed well nourished against the odds,”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“You have to back up your destination postcard with a good behavioral script. That’s a recipe for success. What you don’t need to do is anticipate every turn in the road between today and the destination. It’s not that plotting the whole journey is undesirable; it’s that it’s impossible.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“The ambiguity in the goal is allowing rationalization to creep in.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“It took practice, and it took persistence.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“shouldn’t just be big and compelling; it should “hit you in the gut.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“The Rider has to be jarred out of introspection, out of analysis. He needs a script that explains how to act, and that’s why the successes we’ve seen have involved such crisp direction.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“describe their child’s behavior, so that the child feels noticed.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“That’s not intuitive knowledge.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“What tires out the Rider—and puts change efforts at risk—is ambiguity,”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“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.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Ambiguity is the enemy. Any successful change requires a translation of ambiguous goals into concrete behaviors.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Because uncertainty makes the Elephant anxious. (Think of how, in an unfamiliar place, you gravitate toward a familiar face.) And that’s why decision paralysis can be deadly for change—because the most familiar path is always the status quo.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Even in failure there is success.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“It’s weird when you think about, isn’t it? What if the Rider had a more positive orientation? Imagine a world in which you experienced a rush of gratitude every single time you flipped a light switch and the room lit up. Imagine a world in which after a husband forgot his wife’s birthday, she gave him a big kiss and said, “For thirteen of the last fourteen years you remembered my birthday! That’s wonderful!” This is not our world. But in times of change, it needs to be. Our Rider has a problem focus when he needs a solution focus.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“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.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Let’s replay that scene, where things were working for you. What was happening? How did you behave? Were you smiling? Did you make eye contact?”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard