Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard

Sometimes when we want to make personal changes, we set personal resolutions like "no sweets after 6pm" yet we find ourselves breaking such a rule with a justification like "but I haven't had sweets past 6pm in the last 4 weeks so it should be ok to break this rule this once (then "once" eventually becomes "once in a while" 😂).

After reading, "Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, it made me understand better how our brain works - that it has 2 independent systems at work at all times. 

1.  The emotional side. It’s the part that is instinctive, that feels pain and pleasure.  Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis, refers to this emotional side as an Elephant. 

2. The rational side.  This is our reflective or conscious system. It analyzes and looks into the future.  Haidt refers to this rational side as the Rider.

The Rider (the rational side) is perched atop the Elephant (the emotional side). The rider holds the reins but the problem is, the Rider is too small versus the Elephant.  Worse, oftentimes, the Rider and the Elephant want different things.

The Elephant looks for instant gratification and doesn't like short-term sacrifices vs the Rider who wants long-term pay-offs.  For example, the Elephant prefers to to eat ice cream today while the Rider wants to avoid ice cream and have a better body next year;  the Elephant prefers to do shopping today while the Rider wants to cut back on expenses to have more savings next year. 

To cause a change, Heath and Heath say you’ve got to appeal to both Rider and Elephant. 

Here's the framework from the book which encapsulates what you need to do to effect change:

1.  DIRECT the Rider 

Follow the brights spots. Identify what’s working and clone it. 

For example, in Vietnam, to solve a malnourishment problem with a 6 months' time frame and little budget was an overwhelming task.  But what the project proponent did was to identify the families who were in the same poor condition but whose kids were not malnourished. What did they do differently?  If they were able to do it, so could the rest of the other poor families.

“What’s working and how can we do more of it?” is the bright-spot critical question.  Though it's an obvious question, Heath and Heath say it is almost never asked.  Instead, the question we often ask focuses on the problem - “What’s broken, and how do we fix it?”.   It's time to shift to asking - “What’s working and how can we do more of it?” if we want to effect change. 

Script the critical moves.  Instead of thinking big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors.  For example, a campaign wanted Americans to shift from whole milk to skim or low fat milk because a glass of whole milk has the same amount of saturated fat as five strips of bacon.  So instead of the campaign saying "be more healthy",  it was very specific - Buy skim or 1% milk. 

Direction was crystal clear.  No room for misinterpretation.  If the direction was general like "be more healthy",  the Rider may interpret it in many ways such as "Do I eat more grains and less meat?  Do I start taking vitamins?..." 

Point to the Destination.  Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it.

2.  MOTIVATE the Elephant 

Find the Feeling.   A logical reason is sometimes not enough for the Rider to cause change. You have to make people feel something. An example cited in the book is that of kids undergoing chemotherapy who were supposed to carefully take their medications as instructed, otherwise, instead of getting better, their condition would worsen.  To make the kids realize this, the kids were made to play a video game wherein the central character was in a similar situation  -  the character weakens when medications aren't taken on time or not taken at all.  

The feeling they wanted to impart to the kids was -

It’s realizing that I can do this. I’m in charge. Chemo isn’t a reminder of the sickness; it’s how you get your life back—how you steal back the real you from cancer. Take the pills, and you can stop being a cancer kid forever. 

Shrink the change. Break down the change until it no longer frightens the Elephant. 

Big changes come from a succession of small changes. It’s OK if the first changes seem almost trivial. The challenge is to get the Elephant moving, even if the movement is slow at first. So don’t ask the indebted couple to pay down their high-interest credit card bill; ask them to wipe out their utility bill. Don’t ask a couple to stop fighting; ask the husband to give his wife a simple good-morning kiss. 

The Elephant has no trouble conquering these micro-milestones, and as it does, something else happens. With each step, the Elephant feels less scared and less reluctant, because things are working. With each step, the Elephant starts feeling the change. A journey that started with dread is evolving, slowly, toward a feeling of confidence and pride. And at the same time the change is shrinking, the Elephant is growing. 

Grow your People. Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset - that they can learn anything and change if they just put their mind and heart into it.

3.  SHAPE the Path 

Tweak the Environment. When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation e.g. if it requires changing the process, a procedure, a form, etc.

Build habits. When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the Rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. 

An example cited was about nurses administering medication. Nurses commit approximately 1 error per 1,000 medications administered. Given the huge volume of medications, that error rate led to about 250 errors annually, and a single error can be fatal and cause a patient's death.

There was no problem with the Rider and Elephant within a nurse's head.  The cause of the problem was doctors call out the nurses while nurses are delivering medications and they feel obliged to respond back, causing them to get distracted and possibly commit an error.  The solution?  The project proponent came up with the idea of using a visual symbol (ultra bright vest which they called medication vest), something that could be worn by nurses, that would signal to other people that when a nurse is wearing a medication vest, he/she can't be distracted since they are delivering medication.  

Initially, the nurses felt wearing the vest was demeaning but during the six-month trial period, errors dropped 47%. Wow.  

Rally the herd.  Behavior is contagious especially when they know other people are doing it.  

Ever remember seeing cards in hotel bathrooms that say something like "We encourage you to use towels more than once to conserve water."?   Most people aren't responsive to this kind of message coz the general sentiment is when you're in a hotel and you're paying premium, you deserve some pampering.

How does Rally the Herd or Power of Contagious Behavior come into play in this specific situation? A group of social psychologists persuaded a hotel manager to test out a new sign that didn’t mention the environment cause at all.  It simply said “the majority of guests at the hotel” reuse their towels at least once during their stay.  Guess what?   It worked.  Guests who got this sign were 26 percent more likely to reuse their towels. They took cues from the herd. 

****

Lastly, here are 2 very important lessons which Heath and Heath want us to always keep in mind:

• Big problems are rarely solved with commensurately big solutions. Instead, they are most often solved by a sequence of small solutions, sometimes over weeks, sometimes over decades.

• The world doesn’t always want what you want. You want to change how others are acting, but they get a vote. You can cajole, influence, inspire, and motivate—but sometimes an employee would rather lose his/her job than move out of his/her comfortable routines... sometimes the alcoholic will want another drink no matter what the consequences...