Switch - Book Review

Upon initial investigation of the book, I thought this book would be all about how to make big organizational changes - and indeed it can be used for that - but I’ve found it also addressed minor changes, changes within a small team or within oneself even.

I was surprised to find that the book starts with a familiar analogy… a story about a rider and an elephant.  What?  Did they just rip off The Ant and the Elephant?  Turns out that the analogy of two sides - being an ant and an elephant originates from University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book The Happiness Hypothesis, which I still have not read.

This book, then, follows ways to DIRECT the Rider, MOTIVATE the Elephant, and SHAPE the Path.

DIRECT the Rider

As a human race, we have a tendency to focus on the negative - for some reason it pulls us in.  We see it all over the media - the base, the coarse and the rough.  If you need more evidence, just flip over to your nightly news on any given night.  We seek negativity.  The first way to direct the rider is to follow the bright spots.  Instead of looking at what’s not working and trying to figure it out, we need to focus on what’s work - perhaps in another division of the company, perhaps in another person - and mimic it.  Mimicking success encourages our own success.  In order to follow the bright spots, we need to script the critical moves.

Scripting the critical moves has become popular in educating youth about the dangers of tobacco and how to avoid it.  We teach our youth to picture themselves when they’re handed a cigarette for the first time.  What will be their response?  Imagine it and drive toward it.  This is a core value - you decide who you are and where you’re going RIGHT NOW, so that you don’t have to make decisions when the pressure is on.

Lastly, we can direct our rider by pointing to the destination.  ”Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it.”  (Switch) A lot of times, we get “directives” from upper management, supposedly pointing us where to go.  However, many times we fail to hear the REASONS why we should be heading in the direction.  For our rider to feel comfortable with the destination, it’s important for the rider to understand why that destination and not another.  When the rider grasps that idea and it becomes a part - a true part - of him, he will then be able to focus on motivating the elephant.

MOTIVATE the Elephant

First, to motivate the elephant, we need to find the feeling.  Again, this is a core part of human nature.  Isn’t it strange that even if we know something is wrong, sometimes we participate in it?  I don’t intend this to become a post on moral values, but rather to focus on the fact that humans are irrational.  We do things we know aren’t right, and we don’t do things we know are right. To close this gap, we need to connect our ant and our elephant by finding what drives our elephant.  Emotion is a powerful motivating factor.  Without it, our elephant won’t move.

Even if our elephant feels the desire to change directions and head down the correct path - whatever “correct” may mean - the elephant is afraid of change.  He’s timid and wants to stay in his box.  A way around this problem is to shrink the change for the elephant.  Make the change smaller and smaller until it no longer drives the elephant away.  One great example of this is a suggestion from the Fly Lady - a woman who helps stay-at-home-moms take on the daunting tasks of laundry, cleaning, etc. by breaking these tasks into small, meaningful units of work.  The Fly Lady suggests “The 5-Minute Room Rescue”.  Essentially, we should choose a room and spend 5 minutes cleaning it.  Just 5 minutes.  When that time is up, be done and move on to something else.  When our elephant sees the huge mess in our child’s room with laundry all over and dirt-smeared walls, he cowers in fear.  When our elephant sees a 5 minute time limit, he is not intimidated, and can, therefore, accomplish the task.

Lastly, to motive our elephant, we can grow our people into BEING the type of people that perform the task at hand.  As we treat others as we hope them to become, they often live up to those expectations.  Our elephant loves positive attention.  He loves to please people.  If we treat children like inventors, they will become inventors; if we treat team mates like amazing workers, the will become amazing workers.

SHAPE the Path

When the rider and the elephant are in lockstep, they can accomplish much.  The road may be steep and rocky, but they can make it.  Why not make it easier, though?  Why not provide more tools that shape the path into a flat, open walkway?

Tweak the Environment.  When a situation changes, behavior changes.  If a dieter throws away all of his junk food, he can no longer eat junk food - without, of course going to the store, spending money, driving home, etc.  If you have trouble reading your scriptures at a certain time of day, put them on your pillow and refuse to sleep until you’ve read.  These tweaks can make all the difference in helping our elephant and rider stay motivated.  An easy path to follow is one where the course of action is laid out ahead of us.  Another way to lay that path out ahead of us is to build habits.

Habits are powerful.  We are creatures of habit.  Our elephant loves to follow a habitual path and not have to think things through.  However, forming a habit can be difficult.  It take time, patience with oneself, and sometimes a tweaking of the environment.  If I were a manager seeking to encourage the gathering of metrics around testing - and the reporting thereof.  I would require a report once a week.  Soon, people will get in the habit of gathering the metrics and sending them at 4:30 on Friday evening before heading home.  If the elephant has habits, the path is easier.  But what if no one else is turning in their metrics reports each Friday?  In that case, we need to rally the herd.

Elephants love to travel in packs.  Behavior of one elephant rubs off on another and soon the entire group is walking in the same direction.  We don’t like to be different.  We feel most comfortable being a part of the group.  If most people are turning in their reports - focus on that.  Let everyone know that the majority of people are turning in their reports on time with all the metrics filled out correctly.  It won’t be long before those wandering elephants will turn and rejoin the group.  The group is comfortable - community is everything.  This is why we see “seeded” tip jars.  You know what I mean - the jar on the piano of a hotel lobby that has a couple tens, six ones and a lot of coins.  That money came from the piano player - not the community.  But if the communal elephants see that OTHER elephants are giving, they, too, are more willing to give.

By directing the rider, motivating the elephant and shaping the path, change is much easier to swallow.  Change becomes a small bump instead of a complete derailing.  Look for how other companies use this tactic (AA, commercials, airlines, etc).  Then, I encourage you to make use of it for yourself and in your teams.