Switch – How to change things when change is hard

admin — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 20:39:36 +0000

This is one of the latest book I have read, Switch, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

The book talks about that human has two major psychological force – the rider (the rational mind) and the elephant (powerful emotions, heart).

Most often the mind and the heart disagree – and every time the heart/emotions/elephant will over power the rational rider.

The 3 part frame work in the book are:

1. Direct the rider – what looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity

Find the Bright Spots – investigate what’s working and clone it (health kids in poor villages)
Script the Critical Moves – Don’t think big picture, think in terms of specific behaviors (1% milk)
Point to the Destination – Change is easier when you know where you are going and why it’s worth it (you will be third graders soon)

2. Motivate the Elephant – What looks like laziness is often exhaustion The rider cannot get his way by force for very long, so it is critical to engage people’s emotional side – to get their elephants on the path and cooperative.

Find the feeling – Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something.
Shrink the Change – Break down the change until it no longer scares the mind.
Grow your People – Cultivate a sense of identity and instill the growth mindset.

3. Shape the Path – What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. The situation, including the surrounding environment, is the path. When you shape the path, you make change more likely, no matter what’s happening with the Rider and Elephant.

Tweak the environment – When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. (smaller popcorn box)
Build Habits – when behavior is habitual, it’s “free” – it doesn’t tax the rider. Look for ways to encourage habits.
Rally the heard – Behavior is contagious. Help it spread.

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Top 5 articles I like about “What the Dog Saw” by Malcolm Gladwell

admin — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 21:50:36 +0000

I’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s previous work also, the Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, and so I was very excited to get a hand with the new book – What the Dog Saw.

Warning: Contains some Spoilers.

I was a little bit disapointed in this one, the collection of articles are originally written for the New Yorker. I’m not sure if it’s because it was written as short articles, the investigations are not as thorough as his previous books.

Anyhow, the top 5 articles from this book:

1. The ketchup conundrum : mustard now comes in dozens of different varieties and why has ketchup stayed the same?

The idea is, that originally there was only one type of mustard, and then Grey Poupon came along, and started changing the way food is being marketed by making mustard as a high-end confection. Since then, there are so many types of mustards. People tried to add more types of ketchup also, but failed miserably. The reasons for this is because Ketchup was considered a “comfort food” when Americans are raised. Nobody messes up the comfort food.

Congee, a popular chinese comfort food, is much the same way too. You can have a few varieties, but nobody serves them overly outraged.

2. Blowing up : how Nassim Taleb turned the inevitability of disaster into an investment strategy.

Talked about the author of Fooled by Randomness, and how he has been suffering in the investment world the last 10 years, seeing his counterparts earning so much profit by selling short calls, only to lose it all in the ONE DOWNFALL. Boy, it must be tough to stake through those lean years, now that he can finally redeem himself.

Interestingly, that book Fooled by Randomness, was on my audiobook list at the time I was reading the Gladwell book. (Yes, I like to read several books at the same time, helps me connecting the dot)

3. The pitchman : Ron Popeil and the conquest of the American kitchen

An insight to sell. There is the pitch, the turn, and repeat. Let people make small commitments first. I never realize this, in the best selling pitch, the salesman will sell his/her product to 60% of people wanting to buy. And then when the selling is done, he will talk to the 30% of people remaining, “sheepishly” telling them that there are additional uses for his/her product. These 30% will become the core group for the next sales presentation, and the cycle continues.

This is probably where in Hold’em poker, the term, “Turn” as the 4th card being handed to you, came from. You are committed in the pot, and will want to continue on.

4. Most likely to succeed : how do we hire when we can’t tell who’s right for the job.

Talks about how in most occupations, you don’t really know if the person is fit for the job. NFL quarterbacks’s success rate, according to Gladwell, is about 20%. Meaning the top 5 college quarterbacks, there is only about 1 that will make a successful career.

The moral has to do with the changing of the systems. It makes more sense if putting in our daily term, that what you learned in university, may not resemble anything you would do at real work afterwards.

5. Connecting the dots : the paradoxes of intelligence reform

Talks about how everything is easy to spot, as an after fact. This section actually changed my way of thinking quite a bit, that when I make decisions, I don’t call it a straight black and white answers – YES or NO.

It is more appropriate to call it as a probability – that it is 95% probable. The probability thinking allows room for risk mitigation, and make the system more durable because people have an expectation that things may not be correct. One application can be a doctor telling the patient that he/she has a high/medium/low (or better, percentage) of probability that they have cancer.

Malcolm Gladwell is going to speak in Vancouver’s F5-Expo on April 7. I wish I can go, but I have a 1 week course to go to, and absolutely cannot skip out. Maybe it will be on youtube later.

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Switch – How to change things when change is hard

Top 5 articles I like about “What the Dog Saw” by Malcolm Gladwell