I know a book about an elephant, its rider and the path they go down might not seem like it would offer great insight into how to initiate change, but I found a book that does and does so in a really powerful way. If you want to make changes in your personal life, in your family or in the organizations you work with you have to read this book. It is instructive, insightful and inspirational.
Sometimes you read a book that just makes sense and seems incredibly useful. That is what I found in Dan and Chip Brown’s new book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. In Switch, the Heath brothers provide great insight into understanding why people do what they do and demonstrate how to use that insight to get people to change.
I know I find solving the problem of how to initiate real change hard. Whether the change is in my personal habits or my business, it is hard. I can easily find things I would like to change, but I am often not as successful at making those changes as I would like to be. So if you want to loose weight, improve personal relationships, change the actions of the team you work with or change a market or a country, I think the ideas in Switch will help.
To help us understand how people change, the authors borrow the analogy of rider, elephant and path to give the reader an understanding of how our rational side, emotional side and environment impact what we do. The book then explains how to direct the rider, motivate the elephant and shape the path to effect change.
Here is the gist of their explanation:
It is important to educate ourselves so we understand what we need to do. This involves pointing the rider in the right direction and making sure he knows what to do. When we know clearly what to do we can do it. But even if the rider knows what to do, he can get tired of exerting control over the elephant and give in to what the elephant wants to do.
Motivating ourselves to do what we know we want to do is also part of the process. When the elephant is not motivated change is hard. When we feel motivate the elephant does not resist as much and actually wants to go where the rider directs. But even when the elephant wants to go down the path, it just won’t go if the path is too hard.
Sometime change is hard not because we don’t understand what to do or because we are not motivated to do it, but because the path is just too hard to follow. In that situation we need to make the path easier.
Makes pretty good sense to me. It makes even more sense because of the clear examples the book gives to support and illustrate how to direct the rider, motivate the elephant and shape the path. The examples are interesting, specific and fun to read, and the research that supports each example makes them very believable.
Another thing I like about the book is that it gives practical advice about how to direct the rider, motivate the elephant and shape the path. For each concept the Heaths provide three specific “how to” ideas. Again, these are illustrated in easy to understand ways. Their specific examples demonstrate how we can cause change using small things and those changes can effect one individual or a whole culture.
For me the points made in Switch bring clarity to understanding how we work and give me hope that people can change. It is easy to think that people can’t change and we can’t do much to help them. The ideas in this book help me believe that people really can change and that we can find ways to help them change. There is more info about Switch at the Heath Brothers website http://heathbrothers.com
I don’t think that I have read a better book on how to get people to change. It is rare to find simple ideas that work in so many places. I know I will be applying the ideas in this book to my personal life, my family, my church ministry and my business. Making change is hard, but that is what I seem to be working on all the time.
This may be the best book I have read in the last year. I highly recommend this book as a way to learn about people and how to find ways to implement change in the world.
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