Switch: How To Change Things When Change Is Hard

By: Chip Heath & Dan Heath

2010

Chapter 1 – Three Surprises About ChangeQuotables:

“What looks like a people problem is

often a situation problem.”

Quotables:

“For individuals’ behavior to

change, you’ve got to influence not

only their environment

but their hearts and

minds.”

The Right Side of the Brain:

EmotionArtMusicCreativityIntuition“heart”

The Elephant

The Left Side of the Brain: logic, language, science and math, “mind”

The Rider

WHO’S THE BOSS?

It’s exhausting trying to keep an elephant in line.

Where are we going?

It’s not up to me, I am just doing my job.

Hoo boy I sure hope the big guy knows where we

are goingI guess we

should have stayed on the path

Quotables:

“What looks like

resistance is often lack of

clarity.”

Key Points Chapter 1:

1.Direct the rider

2.Motivate the elephant

3.Shape the path

Chapter 2 – Find the Bright SpotsQuotables:

“Find out what’s

working and how you can do more of

it.”

What is the ratio of time I spend solving problems to the time I spend scaling successes?

Chapter 3 – Script the Critical MovesQuotables:

“Find out what’s

working and how you can do more of

it.”

Chapter 4 – Point to the DestinationQuotables:

“Give direction to the Rider – both a start and a finish. Send him a destination post card.”

Chapter 5 – Find the FeelingQuotables:

“Trying to fight inertia

and indifference

with analytical

arguments is like tossing a

fire extinguisher to someone

who’s drowning.”

Analyze

Think

Change

Chapter 6 – Shrink the ChangeQuotables:

“…when people make choices, they tend to rely

on one of two basic models of decision making: the consequence model or the

identity model.”

Chapter 7 – Grow Your PeopleQuotables:

“When you engineer

early successes,

what you are really doing is engineering hope. Hope

is precious to a change

effort. It’s elephant

fuel.”

1. You are a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to really change that.

2. No matter what kind of person you are, you can always change substantially.

3. You can do things differently, but the important parts of who you are can’t really be changed.

4. You can always change basic things about the kind of person you are.

Chapter 8 – Tweak the EnvironmentQuotables:

“Tweaking the

environment is about

making the right

behaviors a little bit

easier and the wrong

behaviors a little bit harder.”

Chapter 9 – Build HabitsQuotables:

“The habit should serve the mission.”

Chapter 10 – Rally the HerdQuotables:

“When you are leading

the elephant on an

unfamiliar path, chances are its going to follow the

herd.”

Chapter 11 – Keep the Switch GoingQuotables:

“Change isn’t an event, it is a process…..

A long journey

requires lots of mango.”