Switch: How To Change When Change Is Hard

I recently read the book "Switch: How To Change When Change Is Hard" by Chip and Dan Heath and was mesmerised by their simple explanations and myriad of real-life examples. It impressed me so much I felt compelled to share some of their ideas here on LinkedIn.

Knowledge does not change behaviour. We've all encountered crazy shrinks, obese doctors and divorced marriage councelors.

-Chip & Dan Heath

At its heart, the book dives into the three driving forces behind behaviour change: the rational side, the emotional side and the environment in which the change is supposed to happen.

You might have heard the analogy of your brain as a rational rider, sitting on top of an emotional, stubborn elephant, trying to direct it, which makes it easier to understand how your brain’s rational and emotional side work together.

Lesson 1: Focus all your energy on one specific, critical aspect of the change you want to make, so you don’t have to decide.

The rider of the elephant is your neocortex, the newest, most rational part of your brain. It loves to think, to ponder and to look at all angles of a situation. This is very helpful when analyzing complex problems, but changing your behaviour often isn’t one of them.

If you want to eat better, it’d probably be easiest to start by having your coffee without sugar. But if your rider hears the vague goal “eat healthier,” it instantly goes into analyzing overdrive, thinking of hundreds of possible options – and ends up paralyzed

This is just human nature. What we think is a resistance to change is actually just a lack of clarity on what to do next.

In order to avoid this, look at which small moves are the most critical and come up with a set of clear black and white instructions for those.

Lesson 2: Get your inner elephant going by evoking a powerful emotional response.

With the rider taken care of, now we have to get the elephant moving. However, unlike the rider, the elephant cares little about logical arguments and rational reasoning. It’s a stubborn, emotional creature, and those are best swayed by powerful feelings.

When you want to quit smoking, telling yourself you’ll save money and be healthier is a weak argument - it's rational and the elephant doesn't care. But taking a picture of your ugly, yellow teeth and looking at that every day, that’s an entirely different playing field.

Both positive and negative emotions can get the elephant to move. Negative emotions work better with obvious problems, as shock and outrage give us a sense of urgency. If the problem is more complex and there’s no clear solution, focus on positive emotions, which will broaden your vision and make you more creative in tackling it.

Lesson 3: Make the path of change as easy to follow as possible, because human behaviour depends more on the situation than you think.

Lastly, even the best rider-elephant team can have a tough time on an uphill, steep, winding path. The environment in which you’re trying to change matters – more than you think.

One of the biggest cognitive biases is the so-called "fundamental attribution error". It says that we overestimate how much people’s innate character traits determine their behaviour, as opposed to their environment. The truth is that human behaviour is very fluid, and it highly depends on the situation.

Therefore, the easier it is to follow through with your change in any given situation, the more likely you’ll be able to pull it off.

Wherever you can, design your environment to make it a pleasant, downhill stroll for your rider and elephant.

As complex as behaviour change is, the authors do a great job of sticking to their simple analogy.

It's already changed some of the ways I approach coaching and I highly recommend anyone interested in facilitating change read it too.

Thanks for reading!