Ethan's Highlight reel for "Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard," by Chip and Dan Heath

I like to learn things so I can be more valuable to others, so I figure I’ll start sharing thoughts from all the content I consume with everyone. I haven’t settled on a format yet, maybe I never will, but I figure this is a good place to get my thoughts out, provide some value, and maybe spark some conversation.

So I’m going to be talking about the book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath. They’re brothers who write books together. Probably do other things together too, like eat lunch and stuff. But I’m talking about one of their books here. They go into depth on a lot of case studies, and provide solid principles to act on. Read or listen to the book if you want all of the case studies - they are good, but not what I’m spending time on.

(Disclaimer: This is a shortened version of this article. For the full version, go to my blog here.)

Why Change Is Hard

Switch’s thesis disagrees with common notions about change, namely stating that change isn’t hard because people are lazy and/or don’t want to change, but that it is due to circumstances surrounding themselves. Whether we’re talking about a single individual’s behavior in their own life, or changes to the way things are done at a multinational business conglomerate, more often than not what appear to be people problems are actually situation problems. (That may be a direct quote from the book, but since I listened to it I can’t easily reference to make sure I got the language exactly right and therefore am not putting it in quotes. If you read the book, let me know if I can quote that.)

What does that actually mean though? Rather than leave it at a vague level, Chip and Dale, er, I mean Dan, do a great job at getting into great detail about how to do this. They break the issues with behavior change into three categories: understanding, motivation, and circumstances. Metaphorically, they paint these as a rider (understanding) on an elephant (motivation) on a path (circumstances). The rider may be able to guide the elephant some of the time, but if there is no clear path for the elephant to follow, or if something comes out to scare it, then the elephant will probably turn and run a different direction, and there is basically nothing the rider can do about it. Makes sense, right?

The Rider

Why does the rider sometimes have trouble with change? The first place the rider encounters difficulty is simply not knowing where to go next. She may have a great destination in mind, and a great elephant (lots of motivation), but without a clear idea of how to move toward that destination, she is set up for failure and will probably not get there particularly soon. Which path is the right one to take? Do I start going East or West? Do I take I-15 or I-80?

Let’s look at a hypothetical example. You just set the perennial goal to “get in shape,” and even though you’ve never gotten to your goal before, this will definitely be the year it’ll happen! It probably will be, if you’ve correctly identified the source of the previous failures. If it was a “Rider Problem” then the issue was probably that you didn’t really know where to start.

Focus on lifting weights or doing cardio? Jogging or sprinting? Play more sports? What about my core, that’s important, right?

What diet should I follow? Do I do keto? Low-fat? Intermittent fasting? 6 meals a day? Paleo? High protein? Low protein??? Slow and steady, or fast and hard?

But wait… how am I supposed to decide what things to do every day if I don’t know for sure what I my goal looks like? Ah, now we’re onto something - the first step to getting the rider on board is to have a goal that is specific enough to inform present decisions. Losing weight vs. losing fat - just don’t drink for a couple days and you’ll lose a pretty good amount of weight, but very little if any fat. Go without water for long enough and you’ll start losing weight very quickly, but you’ll also be dead - literally. Desiccation sure drops the pounds fast! It’s by far the most successful weight-loss strategy since time began, but a 100% mortality rate just doesn’t appeal to me.

The Elephant

The metaphorical elephant represents motivation. Let’s pursue the same discussion we had above. Maybe last year you had a well-defined goal and timeline, but lost motivation when things got hard.

Why did you lose motivation? Was it a lack of progress? Progress going too slow? Maybe the diet you chose is harder than expected. I’ll admit that motivation is probably the trickiest one to address, and also tends to be the one people default to.

“I’ll go out to my favorite restaurant if I lose this weight.”

“Our sales team isn’t closing deals as quickly, we need to put a new bonus structure in place.”

Essentially anything that is a “I will (or will not) do X to celebrate if Y happens” is an appeal to the elephant. And these can work, IF the elephant is the root of the problem. But usually it’s not that simple or expensive of a fix, as will hopefully be evident by the end of my book summary, and these carrots can either seem unattainable and discourage us, or simply end up costing time and resources when they don’t address the underlying non-motivation issue.

The Path

“But Ethan, you said circumstances play into this too, and you haven’t explained that metaphor!” Yeah yeah, be patient! Here’s the deal, the circumstances are the path that our rider and elephant friends are on. You want to encourage certain behavior on your team? Never mind carrot and stick incentives, make it harder to not do that behavior than to do it. You want to discourage certain behavior? Make that behavior nearly impossible. In other words, don’t swear to cut sugar from your life, then visit your local Keebler Elves Distribution Center?, take all offending items (cookies, soda, IV sugar-water drips, whatever) and remove them from the realm of easy possibility, or all possibility - if possible.

Identifying the Root

As with most things, identifying the root of the problem is tricky. In general, I would say the goal is to identify potential causes, and find scientific ways to validate those possibilities. Think scientific method: observe, hypothesize, design, test, validate/refute/refine.

TL;DR

The point is that understanding why change isn’t happening is the first step in correcting that. The main causes for a lack of change are a lack of motivation, a lack of understanding or clarity, or a lack of guardrails to make the desired behavior easier/the undesired behavior harder. While it may not be clear at the outset which of these is the cause in any given case, being aware of that framework, hypothesizing which is the culprit, and coming up with fast and simple tests to validate/invalidate/refine those hypotheses will keep you from banging your head against the wall endlessly trying to affect a behavior change.

If you are trying to change something around you, or in yourself, I highly recommend giving Switch a read/listen so that you can better understand why the changes are or are not happening that you want.