Dan Heath

We’ve all been there at some point in our lives: We tell ourselves, “This really, really needs to happen,” yet in the same breath, we answer ourselves, “But it’s impossible.” Say, we have a boss and a power structure around us that needs to shift. Or an intractable family disagreement with no obvious way forward. In our better moments, we all feel like we’re great leaders that shape history, but at other times, I wonder where all my courage and boldness went.

In Switch: How to show more Change Things When Change Is Hard, brothers Chip and Dan Heath address how to induce change through the lens of neuroscience. Using a parable about a rider steering an elephant to accomplish a difficult task, they divide change into three components: The rider (the reasoning analyzer), the elephant (the emotional motivation), and the path (the surrounding environment). To trigger effective change, individuals must align all three elements. This tripartite formulation correlates with human anatomy –the reasoning brain, emotional brain, and active body – and with Aristotle’s classic division of rhetoric into logos, pathos, and ethos.

When I first approached this book, I was concerned that the authors were going merely to co-opt science to sell inspirational stories. After all, each chapter is filled not with scientific citations but with narratives and examples. I soon learned that their framework was incredibly deeply constructed, based on the science. When reading, I found myself reconsidering “impossible” situations in my own life to assess where I could adjust my actions to get the ball moving. Their approach seems deceivingly simple at first, but in truth, it’s profound and penetrating.

Most people, especially academics, stumble into a pitfall with the belief that change is just a matter of winning the argument. They forget that almost all change is triggered, not by analysis (the rider), but by an emotional appeal (the elephant). Similarly, emotional appeals don’t accomplish lasting good unless wise thinking by the rider points the elephant in the right direction. Finally, clearing the path and making the environment less cluttered to accomplish the work require wise, reflective leadership. Moving an elephant forward can be accomplished more easily when a group of people move together to avoid obstacles.

I was pleasantly surprised at how deep this philosophical approach penetrates. The writing style is not dense; if anything, the prose is airy and light, but it sure provokes thought. Though an avid reader, I could only digest one or two chapters per day without becoming overwhelmed with contemplation. And the book leaves you with a simple prism to analyze situations: the rider, the elephant, and the path. Understanding those components can quickly lead to construct a plan of action in, say, a meeting or a conversation. I love books that convey profound messages in simple language, and by doing just that, this book will help me change hard, seemingly intractable situations for the better. show less

American business culture is built around heroes that “save the day.” Perhaps bigger heroes, however, are those unheralded ones who quietly prevent problems from happening in the first place. To do so does not just require seeing a problem and a solution; it requires identifying the root cause and a solution to that root cause. It demands going “upstream” to deal with the issues that cause downstream issues. Dan Heath contends that few organizations and few individuals engage in this show more behavior enough.

This book suggests that more people should devote more time towards understanding a system’s behavior. Solutions are not found by “tunneling” – that is, developing “tunnel vision” by focusing on one’s work. Rather, lasting solutions are found by zooming out and looking at the big picture in order to craft an ultimate solution. Heath provides examples of this phenomenon from dozens of industries. For example, he details how simulations predicted Hurricane Katrina and how ensuing interventions lessened its horrific impact.

Many business workers, across many industries, only focus on doing their job well. That aspect is important, but it forms only a part of the picture. Integrating with the wider team and enterprise is also a crucial step that few take. We have to lurch out of our silos and into others’ work. This book can show us the specifics of how. Preventing problems, though it wins less popular points, can improve the long-term prospects of an organization and a society. To implement change, he discusses how to overcome common obstacles that individuals encounter after identifying the systemic problem.

This book contributes to a growing literature involved in systems thinking. It is written with a general audience in mind and is most geared towards those involved in business work. Its potential audience also encompasses individuals looking to better the format of their lives. Some fields, like medicine with preventative care, have already awakened to dealing with systemic issues. Nonetheless, they require organizational reforms at the macro level to enact lasting solutions. This book can show them what that looks like. show less

Saturday February 24, 2007
The Guardian


Buy Made to Stick at the Guardian bookshop

Made to Stick: How Some Ideas Take Hold and Others Come Unstuck
by Chip and Dan Heath
304pp, Random House, £12.99
This is a book about what makes some ideas more effective than others. It explains what it is that makes you notice them, understand them, care about them, remember them, and act on them. And the simple answer is: presentation. Spin is crucial. Of course, substance is important, too. But the message show more of this smart, lively book is that if your spin is bad, you're nowhere.

As the authors say: "Good ideas often have a hard time succeeding in the world. Yet the ridiculous kidney heist tale keeps circulating, with no resources whatsoever to support it."
Kidney heist tale? That's right. The authors, Chip and Dan Heath, brothers from California, tell us the story of a guy who goes into a bar in an unfamiliar city and orders a drink, after which an attractive woman approaches him and asks him if he'd like another. And that's the last thing he remembers, until he wakes up the next morning in a bathtub full of ice. He has a wound in his back with a tube sticking out. He calls the emergency services. The operator says, "Sir, don't panic, but one of your kidneys has been harvested."

Next, the authors give us an example of something unmemorable. I won't quote it in full, but to give you an idea: "Comprehensive community building naturally lends itself to a return-on-investment rationale that can be modelled ..." We are asked to imagine what would happen if we closed the book and tried to tell someone about the kidney heist and the jargon. We'd be able to remember the heist. We'd have forgotten the jargon. The authors ask us: "Which sounds closer to the communications you encounter at work?"

This is a self-help book for ideas. Like a diet book, it tells you to slim your ideas down. Simplicity is the key. Dan, an educational publisher, studied teachers and what made them effective. Chip, a social science professor at Stanford, spent time researching the concept "How could a false idea displace a true one?" Both brothers were impressed by the concept of "stickiness", as explained by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point - some ideas stick in the mind, while others don't. "We want to pay tribute to Gladwell for the word 'stickiness'," they say. "It stuck."

There are various things, according to the Heaths, that make ideas memorable. Apart from simplicity, it helps if ideas are unexpected. You need to grab people's attention. They describe an advertising spot in which the viewer sees a happy family getting into a minivan and cruising blandly through suburban streets. Then, apparently out of nowhere - bang! An appalling crash. The idea: "Buckle up." The reason that the ad was effective: "It violates our schema of real-life neighbourhood trips."

Other things that make ideas stick: adding concrete details, dumping complicated statistics, connecting with people's emotions and telling stories. We hear about an anti-nuclear campaigner who wanted to give people the idea that the world was full of dangerous nuclear warheads - 5,000, in fact. Expressed as a number, he realised, this was not a particularly sticky idea. So he gave lectures, taking along a metal bucket and thousands of BB pellets. He dropped one pellet into the bucket and told his audience: "This is the Hiroshima bomb." Later, he poured 5,000 pellets into the bucket. This was the world's current nuclear capability. His audience was stunned into silence.

This is one of many examples that make this book such fun to read. We learn about good communicators, which is inspiring. How do you get people to unlearn an idea which is sticky but false, such as the notion that lots of people are attacked by sharks? Not by telling people the actual numbers, but by asking them whether they are more likely to be killed by a shark or a deer. Of course, the deer is more dangerous. This is something you're likely to remember. It's funny. It's something you'll want to tell people.

So why is this book scary? For one thing, it gives you an insight into the power of bad ideas - simple, concrete, emotive, story-based ideas will stick in spite of being wrong. For another, it makes you think of the world of ideas as a kind of arms race. Everybody is trying to seduce you, using concepts that, over time, are more and more fiendishly sticky. Sometimes, someone on the side of good will find a way of getting you to think about road safety or nuclear warheads. But who owns most of the sticky ideas? Surely it's the big corporations, who can afford to employ people who know how to keep their messages crisp and memorable.

When I finished this book, I wondered what it had taught me. It has taught me a simple thing about communication: keep it simple. And an unexpected thing: that, to be clever, you have to avoid being complex. And a statistical thing: forget about numbers. And an emotional thing: he who spins, wins, which is sad. And which is why it's worth reading this book. In the right hands, it will help. show less

Many business folk seek the one great idea that’ll transform the world and their bank accounts. They want to start a company or a product line to take them to the top or provide more stability. In our information age, however, ideas are everywhere; people able to push those ideas forward into beneficial, lasting change are harder to find. Leadership gurus (and brothers) Chip and Dan Heath seek to educate us about how to make our concepts “stick” around in the minds and lives of our show more listeners.

In an age where authoritarian tendencies are seemingly flourishing, the Heath brothers offer a refreshing look at persuasion. They do so by pulling examples from dozens of different fields – all with the common theme of making lasting change. Obviously, you need a good idea, but most good ideas don’t morph into results without good rhetoric. They show us how to identify those story lines and narrative hooks in our own lines. Thus, at the proper time, we can pull out the proper push to inspire, challenge, or springboard our audience to reach new heights.

I’ve appreciated both Chip Heath’s and Dan Heath’s writing in other domains, but I found this book not up to their usual standard. The examples are interesting, but the central, take-home message is weaker. The book dissected different ways people pitched ideas, but I finished the book without a lot of action items for my daily life and work. I guess you could say that the book itself didn’t have much “stickiness” for me. Don’t get me wrong: The concepts were good and sound, but it read more like a normal business book rather than reaching the high bar these two have set for themselves. show less