Theorists may be familiar with Lewin’s Unfreeze-Change-Refreeze model. Those fortunate enough to hold an IVY-league MBA may be familiar with Kotter’s eight-stage model (Reviewed Here). However, more people will eventually be familiar with the Heath brothers Switch model. The creative minds behind Made to Stick recently released their sophomore effort, Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard.
The Heath brothers compile into a three-principle model for change. The present this model using an easy to understand elephant and rider analogy, arguing that it’s impossible to make an elephant move in the right direction unless it wants to, its rider wants to and the path is easy to follow.
The model is as follows (adapted from page 259 of their book):
- Direct the Rider
- Follow the Bright Spots. Investigate what’s working and clone it.
- Script the Critical Moves. Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors.
- Point to the Destination. Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it.
- Motivate the Elephant
- Find the Feeling. Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something.
- Shrink the Change. Break down the change until it no longer spooks the Elephant.
- Grow Your People. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset.
- Shape the Path
- Tweak the Environment. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation.
- Build Habits. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.
- Rally the Herd. Behavior is contagious. Help it spread.
At first thought, it may seem odd reviewing a popular business book on LeaderLab. Switch doesn’t appear to be a theory-based book. However, Switch is saturated with research findings and case studies. Chip and Dan Heath, both full-time professors make a compelling case that this model will be seen as equitable to Lewin, Kotter or anyone within academia.
I have not read this book yet but I’ve been intrigued by the idea of change for some time.
There are two things I think of when it comes to change:
1) We like to think we’re in control of change (that is direction, velocity, impact)
2) It’s likely we have less control than we think
Most of the arguments for 1 are examples of people acting with the intention to change things and then showing the manifestation of that change. The implication being their intent was a causal factor in the change.
This is also an intuitive argument because we know that we do control some things. Physical objects act in predictable ways and we theorize humans would too if we only understood enough. When physical objects do anything other than what we expect, we tend to be amazed. This is what makes magicians fascinating.
But less so with people. With people, even though we believe behavior can be predicted, we’re not surprised when they act counter to expectations because we all recognize there’s a lot more going on there than we understand. Magicians amaze us when they predict our behavior.
So where objects are concerned, 1 is more true. Where people are concerned, 2 is.
These days we’ve got such a handle on our physical universe most of our problems involve people. We attempt to solve the people problem the same way we mastered the physical universe but it doesn’t work because 2.
The argument for 2 is to look at examples of people acting with the intention to change things and then showing the change did not occur. In cases where it did we can also ask, would it have happened anyway even if they’d done nothing?
If we looked at examples of change involving people and made the assumption they would have changed anyway without being acted on by the change agents, we would expect to see a distribution of results which include some instances where someone was attempting to instigate change and other instances where there were not. This is in fact what we do see. So, in my opinion, it muddies the water as to the question of how effective our attempts to change people are.
Complex questions with no easy answers.
I think you’re right. Humans are incredible complex people that are part of an ever-changing system. I think many times people change without being acted upon, and don’t change when acted upon. However, I do believe it is possible to influence people to change. The goal of a book like Switch is the give change agents a framework for viewing the thought processes people tend to go through when instigating change and suggest what the favorable reaction is.
Changing people is similar to physics. We don’t know an absolutely, unified theory of physics for the universe just as we don’t know an absolutely perfect way to make people change. But we’re learning more and more and, what we do know, appears to be helping.