Switch How to change things when change is hard

Some good advice but feels like a book written for an MBA by those with an MBA. Nevertheless, some good ideas about making organizational change.

Good read. Gave an interesting perspective to a challenge I have been facing - influencing change when you're neither entitled to, or directly responsible for it.

Book #69 Read in 2013 Switch: How to Change Things when Change is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath I read this book for a book study I am offering to teachers next week. It details how to change things within business organizations, realizing that change is often met with resistance and fear. The book uses the are you an elephant or a driver throughout the book. It reads like a text book but the short sections within chapters help it flow better and be more reader friendly. Overall, it was a decent read. http://melissasbookpicks.blogspot.com

** spoiler alert ** Elephant and Rider plot. Straight to the point. Books tell you how to guide to positive change with reinforcement effect and how some changes, takes time to incorporate into your daily life to make it lasting change. Noted that choices models are Consequences and Identity model. First one evaluate what it implies, your brain thinks what will be gains from chance, second is identified with role-model in same position. ≥A study among doctors showed that they opted for the default plans when they were faced with more alternative options. This realization is termed “decision paralysis.” The more choices the Rider is offered, the more exhausted the Rider gets ≥Decision paralysis disrupts every aspect of your life unless you're conscious about it. ≥You need a destination postcard to impress your Elephant about a journey. Destination postcards are the pictures of a future made possible by hard work and determination. To get this right, you need to align your ≥You must be open-minded without being myopic to solve big problems and make significant changes. ≥Change has a sequence, and as discovered through a study that was conducted by John Kotter and Dan Cohen, the pattern is SEE-FEEL-CHANGE instead of the conventional ANALYZE-THINK-CHANGE. ≥You can shrink a change by giving hope and promises, breaking down success into an achievable milestones and enhancing the progress made by celebrating it from time to time. ≥Psychologist Karl Weick, in his text “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,” opined that “A small win reduces importance ('this is no big deal'), reduces demands ('that's all that needs to be done'), and raises perceived skill levels ('I can do at least that').” ≥Dividing success and achievement into small celebrated parts reinforces the belief into people that they can do well. ≥You should recognize your shortcomings and errors and work on the way to rectify them. ≥You can limit errors and rectify bad results by employing three proposed methods by Haddon Matrix: • The pre-event; • The event; • The post-event. ≥Change is constant, and different situations arrive every day that is not common with a lot of people. ≥Following people with the same goals help you exhibit your change quicker. ≥To change things, you must pay maximum attention to social experiences, signals, and interpretations. ≥Change isn't an event; it's a process. ≥Good changes can affect positive short-term behavior, but great changes last for an entire lifetime.

I enjoyed this book and its main metaphor. I've already started mapping it to my situations and efforts to change things. One quibble is that the author gets prolix at some points, giving multiple examples when one would do, etc. I found myself skipping little bits.

This took me a while to finish but it was worth it. I took a lot of notes, and pondered on insights brought by stories culled by Chip and Dan Heath. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand how we behave and how we react to change. Big changes start small, indeed.

A minha análise: http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...

If I could give this negative stars I would. This is a disgusting love letter to capitalism and patriarchy. The examples used to illustrate the authors points are rife with fatphobia, sexism, misogyny; with caviler attitudes about abuse and child rape. I'm not being hyperbolic, either. Literal child sexual slavery was framed as a quirky problem to solve in order to decrease HIV/AIDS numbers, with no acknowledgement that young girls shouldn't be prostituting themselves in order to survive, regardless of if HIV/AIDs is a risk factor or not. Every story has a hero, and often that hero is a "noble white person out to save the communities of color that just couldn't fix things themselves." The few nuggets of useful information are absolutely not worth the garbage heap of overwriting that exalts some of the most distrusting aspects of American society. (I had to read this for work, I would have rage quite after the first few chapters of enforcing toxic diet culture if I could have.)

Lots of interesting anecdotes. The charts in the back of the book could be useful as reminders. I don't think this is a world-changer, but might be a good skim when looking to make some big changes.

One of my favorite business books of all time. Pairs fantastically with 'Adapt' by Tim Harford. This book is all about how to understand motivations to bring about change, and especially, how to bring change by focusing on what's working, rather than what's not.

Pretty decent for a book I read for work (I tend to think of this kind of nonfiction with distaste). The framework laid out in this book is simple and pragmatic, and the book is full of useful real-world examples demonstrating the principles is puts forward. It's not a beach read exactly, but if you're trying to find better ways of driving change in an organization, I think it's worth a skim.

Fabulous!