Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • ONE MILLION COPIES SOLD! The ultimate guide to making changes and following through, from the authors of Made to Stick and Decisive—hailed as “witty and instructive” (The Wall Street Journal), “packed with examples and hands-on tools that will get you moving right away” (BusinessWeek)
Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?
The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.
In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results:
• the lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients
• the home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping
• the manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service
In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you.
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Community Reviews
Pro:
It's very easy to get into and understand. Hell, the same gloves on the table example is presented maybe 10 times over. The point comes across very clearly and it's a point all people already know about. Feelings decide what people do in many if not most situations. We know this, but it's always needed to remind ourselves of this.
Con:
It's very much a self-help book presented in a not silly way. It's not bullshit advice from a guru, but some good examples that may not all be fully factual, but all tell a clear story. Some of the stuff they present did seem to work in company settings. Now, a counter-point is that they didn't try the pure number presentations in those cases. In the gloves on the table example a person just presented the pile of gloves. But I bet you a numbers sheet would have worked just as well or maybe even much better. People do have the mind to understand what numbers imply. If not you can show photos for example. That's what they do in any company in the white-collar jobs. They look at numbers and make decisions all day long. I do think the examples from this book can be applied to low skill labour. But unfortunately the examples from big companies in this book were just anecdotes. They didn't prove that the physical presentation stuff worked wonders here as they didn't even try other solutions. Of course a huge problem can be solved in more than one way.
Conclusion:
It's a very light read that is well written. But mostly it skips all the psychology science that would explain all of this. I wouldn't recommend reading this book before you read up on evolutionary psychology in some book as all the ideas presented here are basically evolutionary psychology, but without the studies showing the actual effects.
So it's not a self-help crappy book. It's not a scientific book. It's not a popular science book either. It's an anecdote book. And who doesn't love a good anecdote? I adore them.
It's very easy to get into and understand. Hell, the same gloves on the table example is presented maybe 10 times over. The point comes across very clearly and it's a point all people already know about. Feelings decide what people do in many if not most situations. We know this, but it's always needed to remind ourselves of this.
Con:
It's very much a self-help book presented in a not silly way. It's not bullshit advice from a guru, but some good examples that may not all be fully factual, but all tell a clear story. Some of the stuff they present did seem to work in company settings. Now, a counter-point is that they didn't try the pure number presentations in those cases. In the gloves on the table example a person just presented the pile of gloves. But I bet you a numbers sheet would have worked just as well or maybe even much better. People do have the mind to understand what numbers imply. If not you can show photos for example. That's what they do in any company in the white-collar jobs. They look at numbers and make decisions all day long. I do think the examples from this book can be applied to low skill labour. But unfortunately the examples from big companies in this book were just anecdotes. They didn't prove that the physical presentation stuff worked wonders here as they didn't even try other solutions. Of course a huge problem can be solved in more than one way.
Conclusion:
It's a very light read that is well written. But mostly it skips all the psychology science that would explain all of this. I wouldn't recommend reading this book before you read up on evolutionary psychology in some book as all the ideas presented here are basically evolutionary psychology, but without the studies showing the actual effects.
So it's not a self-help crappy book. It's not a scientific book. It's not a popular science book either. It's an anecdote book. And who doesn't love a good anecdote? I adore them.
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