Got the know-how, now what?

 

If you hear anyone using phrases like these:
wake-up-tomorrow hypothesis
Look for the bright spots
Milestones into inch pebbles
Direct the rider
Shape the environment

Ask if they're borrowing from Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard.  It's pretty good.  Lots of case studies--in fact, it's all case studies.  A little bit repetitive but not in a bad way, just in a, remember this?  Get it now?  kind of way.

His 'the rider and the elephant' analogy was superb; the 'direct the rider' part and 'shape the environment' were familiar to me but still worth the reminder--if you're going to effect change, the actions need to be clear, not fuzzy, and they need to be as painless as possible.  Don't just tell people to drop off their old toilets; tell them to drop off their old toilets on Saturday morning at Hilly Holbrock's house on 314 Maple Lawn Avenue.

You may not be suprised by the "big bucket vs. really big bucket of stale popcorn" study, but I was.  I'd long suspected that people ate more if more were presented to them and especially if it was free.  (The guy who brings stale grocery store cookies to the team meeting is really not doing anyone a favor.)

But the 'wake up tomorrow' hypothesis blew my mind.  I won't tell the secret here, but it seems like a really good way to trick your brain into finding the little small steps that would lead to the desired result--the process becomes simply cognitive therapy, but it's made attainable by taking out the guesswork behind "how do I get there from here?"

And the 'bright spot' method is fascinating!  In brief, if you're trying to fight malnutrition in children in a poor country and you don't have millions of dollars and teams of volunteers to distribute food, what can you do?  The book tells what one guy did and its success was awesome.

Incidentally, that last example caused my only quibble--in later repetitions of the results, he kept oversimplifying the actions.  In the study the mothers added "tiny shrimp and crabs and wild sweet potato greens" to the childrens' diet.  Makes perfect sense--crustaceans = protein and fat; greens = protein and vitamins. But in repeating the results throughout the book, he only mentions the greens, not the crustaceans.  Picky of me, no?

I've not had much luck in applying the book so far, but we'll see.