..when change is hard cont'
July 05, 2011 at 10:04 AM
The third part of the book is important because it is argued that alongside motivating the ‘elephant’ and the ‘rider’ it is as important to determine the path that they follow, by which they mean the ability to use one or the other at the right time and through changing the environment you can certainly make change easier or perhaps sometimes achieve change just by altering the environment.
One part of the book that I found particularly interesting is that when people consider change they look at what is going wrong. The authors of Switch however argue that is much more productive to seek out the ‘bright spots’ or to analyse a problem not from what's going wrong, but from what's going right. Taking what's going right and copying it is a more effective way to persuade people to change than agonising over what's going wrong and how to fix it. You've already got a solution...so scale it up!
American authors often have a much greater ability to simplify issues than many European ones, who tend to focus on a more academic approach, but the anecdotes and examples that are used in this book make for a very easy read. In essence, they argue that to achieve change (and motivate the ‘rider’ and the ‘elephant’ in us all) there are 9 steps to be followed and these are the same steps whether you are trying to change the culture of an organisation, a community or even if you are trying to encourage your child to do better at school.
The 9 steps they outline are:-
Find the bright spots – focus on success stories around your change, not the negative examples;
Script the critical moves – make the major steps very clear to prevent the opportunity for decision paralysis;
Point to the destination, or set a clear vision through describing a compelling goal to which people can relate and aspire;
Find the feeling – making an emotional connection is vital – facts are never enough;
Shrink the change – break the change down so it’s more manageable;
Grow your people – encourage people to have a ‘growth mindset’ which means persuading them that things will be in flux and that this is not necessarily ‘bad’ or threatening and helps to create a new identity;
Tweak the environment –change surroundings and processes to point people in the right direction;
Build habits – change peoples’ habits to change long-term behaviour;
Rally the herd – understand the power of group dynamics (peer pressure, to an extent) and work with them
They even offer advice on how to get a child to tidy their bedroom – and that advice alone is worth buying the book for!