Switch: Strategies for Making Change When It's Difficult

: Quite a few pieces of excellent advice

Italy on Jul 22, 2023

Ruben: A very accessible book on leadership.
The main premise is that any change management strategies need to take into account the principal of taking into account the rider (rational mind) and the elephant (changeable emotions).

United Kingdom on May 20, 2023

Amazon Customer: Quick Take: Excellent book on encouraging change. So many interesting examples.

Longer Take:

I just finished reading “Switch” by Chip and Dan Heath and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Have you ever said, “I can’t change things, I’m not the boss.”? Or, “We can’t change that, we don’t have the money.”? I’ve certainly said both. If you have to, this book is for you.

“Switch” teaches a specific process to implement change. It is predominantly targeted at change within an organization, but could just as easily be applied to life in general. The authors wrote this specifically for people with limited resources and little authority. No more excuses!
I especially enjoyed the elephant and rider metaphor used throughout the book.

Each one of us has an elephant and a rider in us. The rider is the rational part of our brain and the elephant is emotional. For real change to occur, you have to appeal to both. If you just appeal to the rider, you get a plan but no motivation. If you just appeal to the elephant, you have motivation but no direction. Real change requires convincing them both.

This metaphor is then applied to each change...

Canada on May 15, 2021

O. Halabieh: Below are key excerpts from the book that I found particularly insightful:

1) "What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem."

2) "Now you've had a glimpse of the basic three-part framework we will unpack in this book, one that can guide you in any situation where you need to change behavior: 1) Direct the Rider. What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity. So provide crystal-clear direction. 2) Motivate the Elephant. What looks like laziness is often exhaustion. The Rider can't get his way by force for very long. So it's critical that you engage people's emotional side—get their Elephants on the path and cooperative. 3) Shape the Path. What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. We call the situation (including the surrounding environment) the "Path." When you shape the Path, you make change more likely, no matter what's happening with the Rider and Elephant."

3) "The Miracle Question doesn't ask you to describe the miracle itself; it asks you to identify the tangible signs that the miracle happened...Once they've helped patients identify specific and vivid signs of progress, they pivot to a second question,...

United States on Dec 01, 2013

Allen Baird: This quote from Albert Einstein haunts my evaluation of Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip & Dan Heath, those Miliband brothers of the business world. Switch is a simple book. It is based on a simile - the emotional part of the mind is like an elephant, the rational part is like its rider, and getting them to work together requires roadwork. That's it, really.

So is this simple, or simplistic? Have they provided a structure for individual and corporate change that is easy to apply and powerful in it effects, with all unnecessary verbiage and overkill stripped away? Or is it a nice little story - borrowed from someone else - with a swamp of other, lesser stories engineered in to fill out some space?

This book made me think, which is always a plus. Switch's often repeated mantra that 'people problems are really situation problems' (3, 183) challenged my own view of the nature of change considerably. It also serves to explain the authors' suspicion of personality testing and analysis as a change mechanism (114 with note, 252, 258). Their main thesis seems to be that managing change is not a matter of reason or emotion but environment, not inner...

United Kingdom on Mar 25, 2011

Roland Kopp-Wichmann: Die Autoren benutzen eine schöne Metapher, um deutlich zu machen, wie wir mental organisiert sind:

* Der 'Elefant' in uns steht für unsere Emotionen.
* Der 'Reiter' in uns steht für den rationalen Verstand, der abschätzen und Konsequenzen berechnen.
* Der 'Weg' beschreibt die Umgebung und die Schritte zu unserem Ziel.

Jetzt stellen Sie sich vor, dass der kleine Reiter auf dem großen Elefant sitzt und ihn dirigieren will. Wenn der Elefant auch in die Richtung will, weil er sich davon angenehme Gefühle verspricht, klappt das.

Doch Elefant und Reiter sind eben oft nicht derselben Meinung. Ihr Verstand will etwas anderes als Ihr Gefühl. Nehmen wir an, Sie wollen abnehmen. Haben sich einen Diätplan aufgestellt. Drei Tage klappt es gut. Am Ende eines stressigen Tages steht auf Ihrem Plan Tofuschnitzel mit grünem Salat. Sie öffnen den Kühlschrank, wollen nach dem Tofu greifen ...

Sie kennen den Rest der Geschichte. In diesem Moment versucht Ihr winzige 'Reiter' den 'Elefanten' zu bändigen, der sich im Kühlschrank ' vorbei an Magerjoghurts, fettfreiem Dressing und kalorienreduziertem Schinken seinen Weg sucht. Und zielsicher die...

Germany on Feb 19, 2011

Amazon Customer: Switch is a book Josef Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, would rate with five stars. Goebbels's Principles of Propaganda, just like the Switch change framework (Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant, and Shape the Path) excises Values and Goal Setting from Change. What remains is a set of tactics Switch identifies to realize change no matter what goals and values the leaders want to achieve and realize. Although the change framework in Switch potentially provides powerful tactics for change, Switch has some major and fatal deficiencies.

The framework with its tactics for change described in SWITCH - HOW TO CHANGE THINGS WHEN CHANGE IS HARD by Chip Heath and Dan Heath published by Broadway Books, New York 2010 has some major and fatal deficiencies. (I will use the term "change framework" as a convenient way to refer to the Switch framework and tactics for change described in this book.)

The change framework
* Is amoral and value neutral,
* Is dangerous and provides a potentially powerful means for propaganda,
* Discounts reason and is inconsistent with its formulation,
* Can be used to establish and sustain totalitarianism, potentially...

United States on Dec 22, 2010