This book, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, is a great read, especially for anyone in a management position where they have to move people to action. Many of the examples in the book are about people who had no resources or power or leverage yet through their ingenuity and understanding of human psychology and motivation thy were able to compel people to Switch.
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Introduction
“For individuals to change, you’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds. The problem is this: Often the heart and the mind disagree. Fervently” (5)
“What looks like laziness if often exhaustion” (12)
“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity” (15)
Direct The Rider
“If you’re trying to change things, there are going to be bright spots in your field of view, and if you learn to recognize them and understand them , you will solve one of the fundamental mysteries of change: What, exactly, needs to be done differently?” (39)
“Clarity dissolves resistance” (72)
“We are all loophole-exploiting lawyers when it comes to our own self-control” (86)
“What is essential, though, is to marry your long-term goals with short-term critical moves…Don’t obsess about the middle…Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving” (93)
Motivate The Elephant
“If necessary, we need to create a crisis to convince people they’re facing a catastrophe and have no choice but to move” (119)
Negative emotions tend to have a ‘narrowing effect’ on our thoughts…positive emotions are designed to ‘broaden and build” our repertoire of thoughts and actions” (122)
“One way to motivate action…is to make people feel as though they’re already closer to the finish line than they might have thought” (127)
“Hope is precious to a change effort. It’s Elephant fuel” (141)
“When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed”(144)
Shape The Path
“Fundamental Attribution Error: The error lies in our inclination to attribute people’s behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in” (180)
“The Haddon Matrix, a simple framework that provides a way to think systematically about accidents by highlighting three key periods of time: pre-event, event, and post-event” (197)
“Environmental tweaks can even force a habit” (208)
“Action triggers can have a profound power to motivate people to do the things they know they need to do…the value of action triggers resides in the fact that we arepreloading a decision…we conserve the Rider’s self-control” (210)
“Action triggers simply have to be specific enough and visible enough to interrupt people’s normal stream of consciousness” (211)
“Checklists can help people avoid blind-spots in a complex environment…[they] provide insurance against overconfidence” (221-2)
“If you want to change the culture of your organization, you’ve got to get the reformers together. They need a free space. They need time to coordinate outside the gaze of resisters” (247)
“Change isn’t an event; it’s a process” (253)
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Introduction
“For individuals to change, you’ve got to influence not only their environment but their hearts and minds. The problem is this: Often the heart and the mind disagree. Fervently” (5)
“What looks like laziness if often exhaustion” (12)
“What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity” (15)
Direct The Rider
“If you’re trying to change things, there are going to be bright spots in your field of view, and if you learn to recognize them and understand them , you will solve one of the fundamental mysteries of change: What, exactly, needs to be done differently?” (39)
“Clarity dissolves resistance” (72)
“We are all loophole-exploiting lawyers when it comes to our own self-control” (86)
“What is essential, though, is to marry your long-term goals with short-term critical moves…Don’t obsess about the middle…Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving” (93)
Motivate The Elephant
“If necessary, we need to create a crisis to convince people they’re facing a catastrophe and have no choice but to move” (119)
Negative emotions tend to have a ‘narrowing effect’ on our thoughts…positive emotions are designed to ‘broaden and build” our repertoire of thoughts and actions” (122)
“One way to motivate action…is to make people feel as though they’re already closer to the finish line than they might have thought” (127)
“Hope is precious to a change effort. It’s Elephant fuel” (141)
“When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed”(144)
Shape The Path
“Fundamental Attribution Error: The error lies in our inclination to attribute people’s behavior to the way they are rather than to the situation they are in” (180)
“The Haddon Matrix, a simple framework that provides a way to think systematically about accidents by highlighting three key periods of time: pre-event, event, and post-event” (197)
“Environmental tweaks can even force a habit” (208)
“Action triggers can have a profound power to motivate people to do the things they know they need to do…the value of action triggers resides in the fact that we arepreloading a decision…we conserve the Rider’s self-control” (210)
“Action triggers simply have to be specific enough and visible enough to interrupt people’s normal stream of consciousness” (211)
“Checklists can help people avoid blind-spots in a complex environment…[they] provide insurance against overconfidence” (221-2)
“If you want to change the culture of your organization, you’ve got to get the reformers together. They need a free space. They need time to coordinate outside the gaze of resisters” (247)
“Change isn’t an event; it’s a process” (253)