Chip Heath and Dan Heath, USA, 2005
Often people say that is hard to embed knowledge management principles, or that staff resist the use of collaboration platforms, or even that teams work in silos and don’t hear any different.
All this comes down to one thing: change. And we know change is hard, both at an individual and at an organisational level. Chip and Dan Heath, though, believe that using a simple framework may get us a long way.
Looking at the framework above, one may wonder about the Elephant, the Rider and the Path. Well, those are the three main elements of the framework and come from a metaphor psychologist Jonathan Haidt uses in his book The Happiness Hypothesis (Amazon UK | USA).
The Elephant is our emotional side; the Rider is the rational side; the Path is the situation, the surrounding environment. According to Heath and Heath, changing is as easy as:
- directing the Rider, because what looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity,
- motivating the Elephant, because what looks like laziness is often exhaustion, and
- shaping the Path, because what looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.
Switch framework by Chip and Dan Heath
“Switch” is a book for those wanting to change or to spark change. It is a clear framework although I suspect it may not be as easy to use as the Heath brothers make it sound.
The book is incredibly easy to read. It is entertaining largely due to the dose of humor the authors infuse into it and to the many, many examples which bring everything to life. From tackling bad behavior at school, to reducing malnutrition in African countries, from railroads in Brazil to changing eating habits, from fighting cancer to saving endangered parrots, etc.. (The style of writing, certainly made me think of the Malcolm Gladwell’s books I’ve read – Blink e The Tipping Point.)
I thoroughly enjoyed the book and I strongly encourage people to read it. For those who don’t, here are a few personal highlights. For those who do, take them as provocations, reflect on them when you’re reading and share your thoughts with us here.
One of the techniques suggested for directing the Rider is “finding the bright spots”, i.e. things that are going well, situations where change is already happening, contexts in which change is not required. This made me think of the River Diagram,a technique created by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell.
It equally made me think about good practices and best practices. Although I do not believe in best practices, as something that you can just pick up and transfer from one place to another, the authors made me see a few cases where the prescriptive approach may not just work but be the only way of making it work.
Organisations are extremelly keen on SMART objetives (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Timely), often failing to walk the talk. However, these seem to be inadequate in change situations.
It is important to create a strong beginning, with clear rules and conditions, to describe a good ending set by clear vision and goals, and to account for an uncertain middle. There are too many things you and your people cannot control.
Failure is an important part of life. It is important for organisations to accept failure and even “to create an expectation of failure – not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route” (p 162).
We need to fight our tendency of attributing people’s attitudes to the way they are. Often attitudes are due to the situation people are in.
Free spaces, “small-scale meetings where reformers can gather and ready themselves for collective action without being observed by members of the dominant group” (p 246), are a critical element in rallying the herd when shaping the Path. Free spaces will help create a common language which in turn will create an identity, strenghtening the “reformers”. With this in mind, it would be interesting to go back and think about communities of practice and other types of social networks (project teams, trade unions, political parties, etc.).
Change follows a pattern – direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant, shape the Path. Those who change “have clear direction, ample motivation, and a supportive environment” (p 255). Yet, there are no pattern for those leading the change. Anyone can lead change: gender, seniority, budget, location, do not matter.
There is a book companion with the first book chapter and also supporting material.
