Switch - Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Why read this book?

Some wise person once said that ‘the only constant in life is change’ - everyone experiences change, all the time, and if you’re not currently experiencing change… maybe there’s something you’d like to change?

This book is an easy read, focused on a very simple formula for handling change effectively, brought to life by many examples illustrating how the concepts have worked in real life… from how much popcorn cinema goers eat and changing the habits of miserable accountants, to saving a rare species of parrot and saving many thousands of human lives in hospitals.

The authors

Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Dan Heath, a senior fellow at Duke University’s CASE centre, which supports social entrepreneurs. They write in a very relaxed, anecdotal way… you even get to know about how they got on with salsa dance lessons.

Here’s Chip talking about the book:

What has this book encouraged me to do differently?

To consider any changes, large or small, in a more structured way - specifically that three main areas need to be addressed to maximise the chances of success. Chip and Dan describe these three elements as the Rider, the Elephant and the Path.

Imagine every change initiative is like successfully riding an elephant from point A to point B.

You need to provide reason, logic and clear instruction to the Rider - they are human after all, they like to understand things.

You need to provide motivation, momentum and emotion for the Elephant - if an elephant isn’t motivated to move, the rider doesn’t have the power to make it shift.

And the Path - make that as smooth as possible, removing as many obstacles as you can - because even if you have a clear direction and a content elephant, a mountainous path with hurdles will cause issues. Elephants are not good at mountains, or hurdles.

There are handy ‘clinics’ scattered throughout the book as well - case studies that you may well encounter in real life, with tips on how to handle the desired change in the most effective way. Definitely a book I’ll keep going back to for tips.