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.

The answer may sound strange: You need to create the expectation of failure—not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.

If you’re leading a change effort, you better start looking for those first two stamps to put on your team’s cards. Rather than focusing solely on what’s new and different about the change to come, make an effort to remind people what’s already been conquered.

Shrink the change. Make the change small enough that they can’t help but score a victory.

In the identity model of decision making, we essentially ask ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me do in this situation? Notice what’s missing: any calculation of costs and benefits.

Because identities are central to the way people make decisions, any change effort that violates someone’s identity is likely doomed to failure.

At the beginning of the school year, she announced a goal for her class that she knew would captivate every student: By the end of this school year, you’re going to be third graders. (Not literally, of course, but in the sense that they would be at third-grade skill levels.) That goal was tailor-made for the first-grade psyche. First graders know v

Notice how smart Winsten was: He used the power of the Path to change the public’s behavior, but he used the power of the Rider and the Elephant to change the network executives’ behavior. With his five-second requests, he was directing the Rider by describing a simple action that could help on a complex problem, and he was motivating the Elephant

You can see how easy it would be to turn an easy change problem (shrinking people’s buckets) into a hard change problem (convincing people to think differently). And that’s the first surprise about change: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.

For individuals’ behavior to change, you’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds.