Publication Date:February 16, 2010 Availability:Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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ISBN13: 9780385528757
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Amazon.com Review Chip Heath and Dan Heath on Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
"Change is hard." "People hate change." Those were two of the most common quotes we heard when we began to study change.
But it occurred to us that if people hate change, they have a funny way of showing it. Every iPhone sold serves as counter-evidence. So does every text message sent, every corporate merger finalized, every aluminum can recycled. And we haven’t even mentioned the biggest changes: Getting married. Having kids. (If people hate change, then having a kid is an awfully dumb decision.)
It puzzled us--why do some huge changes, like marriage, come joyously, while some trivial changes, like submitting an expense report on time, meet fierce resistance?
We found the answer in the research of some brilliant psychologists who’d discovered that people have two separate “systems” in their brains—a rational system and an emotional system. The rational system is a thoughtful, logical planner. The emotional system is, well, emotional—and impulsive and instinctual.
When these two systems are in alignment, change can come quickly and easily (as when a dreamy-eyed couple gets married). When they’re not, change can be grueling (as anyone who has struggled with a diet can attest).
In those situations where change is hard, is it possible to align the two systems? Is it possible to overcome our internal "schizophrenia" about change? We believe it is.
In our research, we studied people trying to make difficult changes: People fighting to lose weight and keep it off. Managers trying to overhaul an entrenched bureaucracy. Activists combatting seemingly intractable problems such as child malnutrition. They succeeded--and, to our surprise, we found striking similarities in the strategies they used. They seemed to share a similar game plan. We wanted, in Switch, to make that game plan available to everyone, in hopes that we could show people how to make the hard changes in life a little bit easier. --Chip and Dan Heath
Product Description 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, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. 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, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is HardJuly 29, 2010 Bud Michael(Los Altos, CA) A "must read" for anyone involved with change, trying to make change happen, or dealing with change. In other words, all of us. The brothers Heath provide very concrete steps for navigating change that can be applied to personal and professional shifts in life.
Switch Your MindJuly 25, 2010 GTO(Phoenix, AZ) Creative, well referenced help, for anyone looking to make personal or corporate changes. Using an analogy of a rider steering an elephant down a path, the Heath brothers present a collections of alternative change beliefs, many of which are just the opposite of what we have been taught in self-help books and management courses. Full of great stories and entertaining asides, this book is a perfect way to get yourself off the dime and moving in the direction of change.
Incredibly Powerful Concepts to "Encourage" ChangeJuly 18, 2010 Phyllis Zimbler Miller(Los Angeles, CA USA) The new book SWITCH by Chip Heath & Dan Heath (who also wrote MADE TO STICK) is full of fascinating case studies of how people used the concepts in this book to "encourage" change. These concepts are very clearly expressed and the case studies show how powerfully the concepts can work.
What's most important, the brothers demonstrate how "little" solutions can be used to help "large" problems. I loved all the book's information and have already begun to implement these concepts in my personal and professional life.
-- Phyllis Zimbler Miller, Miller Mosaic Power Marketing
Switch reviewJuly 18, 2010 Bob Curry Excellent book -- simple way to break down complex issues and concerns as organizations go about changing -- ANYTHING
Switching the terms on change managementJuly 17, 2010 Douglas Brown(Alexandria VA) SWITCH differs radically from the vast majority of change management texts. It starts from the same initial premise: change is difficult to implement. Although it does not cite the old maxim, its sub-title could well be "people don't resist change, they resist being changed." It then takes off on a completely divergent path from that point forward. The book does provide a framework that it uses consistently, but it is not laden with steps and prescriptions, and in a way that is the whole point. Most texts focus on the need to get top-down commitment to the thing driving the change, and developing a very conscious rationale such as a powerful business case or perhaps a clear exposition of WIIFM (what's in it for me). The Heaths point out that the rational perspective is only half of the equation, and that the psyche has to be involved also if the intiative is ever going to develop its own momentum. And of course if process changes can eliminate the sense of "being changed" at all, thereby avoiding the whole problem, or prevent any possibility of backsliding, so much the better.
Some reviewers have observed that a number of the examples are relevant only in the context of highly-placed executives who can deploy major resources. My own observation was that the other examples were in fact the meat of the book. The conventional approach to organizational change pretty much says that you cannot be successful at introducing change unless you are, or have the unmitigated support of, such an executive. The strategy of appealing to "the elephant" - the Feeler side - is exactly what is needed if you are trying to effect change at your own level with nothing but influence to rely on.
Since I have only just read the book I can't warrant that the framework does work, but it does seem to explain a lot of the times when change initiatives have not worked; I can already see some ways to re-formulate approaches to things that our organization has tried without success to implement over a very long time. Trying something different can't hurt.
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