I’ve never ridden an elephant, not even one of those little pygmy ones you see at fairs (probably because I don’t go to fairs, since they are depressing and a bit creepy). Even without this firsthand experience, I can imagine that if I were to ride an elephant, and that elephant and I were to have a difference of opinion, I would end up on the losing end.

Chip & Dan Heath, brothers and co-authors of one of my favourite books “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”, borrow this metaphor of an elephant and its rider to represent our emotional side, and our rational side respectively. To illustrate this simply: the rider makes the decision that they want to lose 10 pounds, the elephant eats that 20 oz. steak anyway. Change efforts often boil down to short-term payoffs trumping long-term goals, with the elephant playing the role of villain.

The focus of this book, and why it is such an important read, is how to successfully implement change when you don’t have a lot of will power, authority, and/or many resources at your disposal.

Most –if not all– of the time we want to implement change, this is the very situation we are in. On a personal level, we have our own elephants that can help or hinder us, and when dealing with others, many more elephants.

While I would characterize ‘Made to Stick’ as ‘a marketing degree with a psychology minor in a book’, ‘Switch’ would be ‘a degree in organizational behaviour with a side of economics’. It drives home the fundamental concept that behaviour can’t simply be understood by looking at rational self-interest, rather, it is a complex combination of self-interest, perceived identity, social cues, your environment, and emotions thrown in just to make things interesting. Out of this complexity, they derive a clear methodology for implementing change, and illustrate this approach using a wide range of real-world examples:

• Conservation: Saving the St. Lucia Parrot
• Health Care: Reducing the intern work week from a patient-killing 120-hour works to 80
• Public Safety: Creating ‘designated drivers’ 5-seconds at a time
• Customer Service: How Rackspace went from bottom to top by getting rid of voicemail
• Corporate Culture: Getting paper pushing bureaucrats to care about the customer
• Amoung many others…

Fundamental to all these change initiatives is that the vast majority of people would do the right thing given the right context, environment and motivation. Before I close with a brief outline their methodology, I want to recommend that if there is one change-related book you read this year make it this one!

“Switch” methodology:

1. Direct the Rider
   1. Look for existing bright spots and building from what is already working
   2. Identify the destination clearly
   3. Provide crystal clear black & white behaviours that lead to change
2. Motivate the Elephant
   1. Make your audience feel bigger
   2. Make your problem seem smaller
   3. Leverage emotion to advance your goals
3. Shape the Path
   1. Change the environment to make the change easier
   2. Encourage habits that fit with the change
   3. People instinctively want to fit in, use this to assist change

Dan Heath will be speaking October 14th, 2010 at the Shenkman Arts Centre in Ottawa. Register HERE, and join me there!