Switch - Organizational Change

VISUAL BOOK SUMMARY

Introduction
You only have to watch Oprah's weight go up and down like a yo-yo and Lindsey Lohan wearing down the path to and from rehab to know that change is hard. Imagine how hard it is to change things that really matter - like feeding starving, malnourished children in Africa. (and no, there's not enough room in Angelina and Brad's house, so that's not the answer).As it turns out, you'll find the answer to creating change in the world at the circus. Under the big top and shining lights are the elephants, and the people who ride those elephants. Really? Yes. Let me explain. The elephant is what the Heath brothers would call the overpowering emotional element to decision making. It almost always wins, and almost always looks for the quick payoff. But it alsoprovides the energy to get the job done. The rider is the logical decision maker, who takes care of all the analysis and thinks about the long term. It usually plays second fiddle, no matter how much we want to believe we are logical beings. In this incredible book you'll learn how to: Direct the rider by (1) finding the bright spots, (2) scripting critical moves, and (3) pointing to the destination.Motivate the elephant by (1) finding the feeling, (2) shrinking the change, and (3) growing your people. Providing clear direction by (1) tweaking the environment, (2) building habits, and (3) rallying the herd. Sure, just like our talk show hosts and former child stars gone wild, change comes in all kinds of shapes and sizes. But one thing is constant: you need to change behaviour. This book willshow you how. Let’s get started.

Directing the Rider
Finding the Bright Spots. When you are directing the rider, the first thing you want to be aware of is finding the bright spots. In 1990, Jerry Sternin arrived in Vietnam working for Save the Children. The problem? Rampant malnutrition. Like any situation like this, there was conventional wisdom. This conventional wisdom said that themalnutrition was the result of poor sanitation, poverty and a lack of clean drinking water. On top of all of that, the rural people didn’t seem to know anything about nutrition. If those are the problems, that’s what we should fix, right? Wrong. That’s because they were looking at averages. What they found when they analyzed the situation a little deeper was that some of the children actually very wellnourished. Jerry and his team figured that if there were some bright spots - children who were healthy against the odds - that every kid should be able to be health. They just had to find out why. So they went to the families who seemed to have healthy children and started poking around. What they found was amazing. The parents of the healthy children were feeding them four times a day instead of twotimes a day, even though they used the same amount of food as the unhealthy children. The problem with feeding malnourished children two times a day is that it is more food than they can process at one time. Another thing that they found was that the healthy children were getting more protein in their diet from crab and shrimp from the rice paddies, even though they weren’t deemed fit for children’sfood. Jerry had realized that these people didn’t suffer from motivation problems - every mother and father wants their children to be healthy. But what they did lack was information. So they delivered this information in the form of cooking classes that each mother could take, and it made them feel like they had control of the situation.

Directing the Rider (con’t)
All of a sudden, thechallenge isn’t overwhelming anymore, and they actually produced the results they were looking for. Amazing. So, the choices were these: fix the sanitation problem, fix the poverty problem, and get clean drinking water, OR feed your kids four times a day and throw a little shrimp and crab in there while you are at it. Which challenge do you think seems possible to overcome by mothers in the poorest...