Switch Quotes

“Solutions-focused therapists use a common set of techniques for discovering potential solutions.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

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

“in situations where change is needed, too much analysis can doom the effort. The Rider will see too many problems and spend too much time sizing them up.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“The Rider loves to contemplate and analyze, and, making matters worse, his analysis is almost always directed at problems rather than at bright spots. (You can probably recall a conversation with a friend who agonized for hours over a particular relationship problem. But can you remember an instance when a friend spent even a few minutes analyzing why something was working so well?)”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Finding bright spots, then, solves many different problems at once.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“He knew that telling the mothers about nutrition wouldn’t change their behavior. They’d have to practice it.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Knowledge does not change behavior,”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Sternin’s strategy was to search the community for bright spots—successful efforts worth emulating.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Sternin’s strategy was to search the community for bright spots—successful efforts worth emulating. If some kids were healthy despite their”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Whether the switch you seek is in your family, in your charity, in your organization, or in society at large, you’ll get there by making three things happen. You’ll direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, and shape the Path.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“The destination was crystal clear:”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

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

“If you want people to change, you must provide crystal-clear direction.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Once you break through to feeling, though, things change.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“When people try to change things, they’re usually tinkering with behaviors that have become automatic, and changing those behaviors requires careful supervision by the Rider. The bigger the change you’re suggesting, the more it will sap people’s self-control.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Self-control is an exhaustible resource.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“To change someone’s behavior, you’ve got to change that person’s situation.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Consider the Clocky, an alarm clock invented by an MIT student, Gauri Nanda. It’s no ordinary alarm clock—it has wheels. You set it at night, and in the morning when the alarm goes off, it rolls off your nightstand and scurries around the room, forcing you to chase it down. Picture the scene: You’re crawling around the bedroom in your underwear, stalking and cursing a runaway clock. Clocky ensures that you won’t snooze-button your way to disaster. And apparently that’s a common fear, since about 35,000 units were purchased, at $50 each, in Clocky’s first two years on the market (despite minimal marketing). The success of this invention reveals a lot about human psychology. What it shows, fundamentally, is that we are schizophrenic. Part of us—our rational side—wants to get up at 5:45 a.m., allowing ourselves plenty of time for a quick jog before we leave for the office. The other part of us—the emotional side—wakes up in the darkness of the early morning, snoozing inside a warm cocoon of sheets and blankets, and wants nothing in the world so much as a few more minutes of sleep. If, like us, your emotional side tends to win these internal debates, then you might be a potential Clocky customer. The beauty of the device is that it allows your rational side to outsmart your emotional side.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“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. To think that you can plot a turn-by-turn map to the end, like a leader’s version of Mapquest, is almost certainly hubris. When you’re at the beginning, don’t obsess about the middle, because the middle is going to look different once you get there. Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“What happened here is decision paralysis. More options, even good ones, can freeze us and make us retreat to the default plan, which in this case was a painful and invasive hip-replacement surgery. This behavior clearly is not rational, but it is human.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“Seeking a compelling example of the company’s poor purchasing habits, Stegner assigned a summer student intern to investigate a single item—work gloves, which workers in most of the company’s factories wore. The student embarked on a mission to identify all the types of gloves used in all the company’s factories and then trace back what the company was paying for them. The intrepid intern soon reported that the factories were purchasing 424 different kinds of gloves! Furthermore, they were using different glove suppliers, and they were all negotiating their own prices. The same pair of gloves that cost $5 at one factory might cost $17 at another. At Stegner’s request, the student collected a specimen of every one of the 424 different types of gloves and tagged each with the price paid. Then all the gloves were gathered up, brought to the boardroom, and piled up on the conference table. Stegner invited all the division presidents to come visit the Glove Shrine. He recalled the scene: What they saw was a large expensive table, normally clean or with a few papers, now stacked high with gloves. Each of our executives stared at this display for a minute. Then each said something like, “We really buy all these different kinds of gloves?” Well, as a matter of fact, yes we do. “Really?” Yes, really. Then they walked around the table…. They could see the prices. They looked at two gloves that seemed exactly alike, yet one was marked $3.22 and the other $10.55. It’s a rare event when these people don’t have anything to say. But that day, they just stood with their mouths gaping. The gloves exhibit soon became a traveling road show, visiting dozens of plants. The reaction was visceral: This is crazy. We’re crazy. And we’ve got to make sure this stops happening.”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“First, there’s what we called the emotional side. It’s the part of you that is instinctive, that feels pain and pleasure. Second, there’s the rational side, also known as the reflective or conscious system. It’s the part of you that deliberates and analyzes and looks into the future. In the past”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“W. Edwards Deming, the chief instigator of the Total Quality Management movement that revolutionized manufacturing, told a story about a company that used a variety of flammable products in its production process. Unsurprisingly, fires frequently broke out in its plants. But the president of the company didn’t think he had a situation problem; he thought he had a person problem. He sent a letter to every one of the company’s 10,500 employees, pleading with them to set fewer fires. Ahem. (What”
― Chip Heath, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

“In situations where your herd has embraced the right behavior, publicize it. For instance, if 80 percent of your team submits time sheets on time, make sure the other 20 percent knows the group norm. Those individuals almost certainly will correct themselves. But if only 10 percent of your team submits time sheets on time, publicizing those results will hurt, not help.”
― Chip Heath, Switch

“It’s clear that we imitate the behaviors of others, whether consciously or not. We are especially keen to see what they’re doing when the situation is unfamiliar or ambiguous. And change situations are, by definition, unfamiliar! So if you want to change things, you have to pay close attention to social signals, because they can either guarantee a change effort or doom it.”
― Chip Heath, Switch

“The hard question for a leader is not how to form habits but which habits to encourage.”
― Chip Heath, Switch

“Gollwitzer has shown that action triggers are most useful in the most difficult situations—the ones that are most draining to the Rider’s self-control. One”
― Chip Heath, Switch

“Action triggers simply have to be specific enough and visible enough to interrupt people’s normal stream of consciousness. A”
― Chip Heath, Switch

“action triggers can have a profound power to motivate people to do the things they know they need to do.”
― Chip Heath, Switch

“Simple tweaks of the Path can lead to dramatic changes in behavior.”
― Chip Heath, Switch