Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
Chip Heath (Author), Dan Heath (Author)
(305)

New!: $26.00 $15.99 (as of 02/19/2013 15:29 PST)
206 Used! | New! from $9.02 (as of 02/19/2013 15:29 PST)

Personal Transformation

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?

The primary obstacle is a conflict that’s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort—but if it is overcome, change can come quickly.

In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people—employees and managers, parents and nurses—have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: 
a      The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients.
a      The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping.
a      The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service
            
In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

• Rank: #601 in Books
• Published on: 2010-02-16
• Released on: 2010-02-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: 8.56" h x 1.26" w x 5.81" l, 1.00 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Description #1 by TextbooksRus.com:

Why is change so difficult and frightening? How do you create change when you have few resources and no title or authority to back you up? Chip and Dan Heath, the best-selling authors ofMade to Stick, are back with a ground-breaking book that addresses one of the greatest challenges of our personal and professional liveshow to change things when change is hard. InSwitch, bestselling authors Chip and Dan Heath tackle perhaps the single greatest issue of our lives: how hard it is to bring about genuine, lasting change, in our work lives, in our social endeavours and in ourselves. In these troubled economic times, many of us need to rethink or retool our careers.Switchshows us why our minds have such difficulty in embracing and sustaining change and what exactly we can do to overcome what they call the "elephant" part of our brain, driven by emotion and instinct, and to reinforce and strengthen the brain's "rider" control of that elephant by the intellect. ThroughoutSwitch, the Heaths show us situations in which people make sweeping change happen, from a couple who helped their teenage daughter overcome anorexia, saving her life, to an entrepreneur who turned his skeptical employees into customer-service zealots and saved his company. As they demonstrate so eloquently and ably, to change your behaviour, you have to learn how to motivate the elephant, orient the rider, and clear the trail...

Description #2 by Walmart:

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

Description #3 by LoadLib:

Amazon.com Review Chip Heath and Dan Heath on Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard"Change is hard." "People hate change." Those were two of the most common quotes we heard when we began to study change. But it occurred to us that if people hate change, they have a funny way of showing it. Every iPhone sold serves as counter-evidence. So does every text message sent, every corporate merger finalized, every aluminum can recycled. And we havenoAUt even mentioned the biggest changes: Getting married. Having kids. (If people hate change, then having a kid is an awfully dumb decision.) It puzzled us--why do some huge changes, like marriage, come joyously, while some trivial changes, like submitting an expense report on time, meet fierce resistance?We found the answer in the research of some brilliant psychologists whooAUd discovered that people have two separate oAUsystemsoAY in their brainsoAOa rational system and an emotional system. The rational system is a thoughtful, logical planner. The emotional system is, well, emotionaloAOand impulsive and instinctual. When these two systems are in alignment, change can come quickly and easily (as when a dreamy-eyed couple gets married). When theyoAUre not, change can be grueling (as anyone who has struggled with a diet can attest). In those situations where change is hard, is it possible to align the two systems? Is it possible to overcome our internal "schizophrenia" about change? We believe it is. In our research, we studied people trying to make difficult changes: People fighting to lose weight and keep it off. Managers trying to overhaul an entrenched bureaucracy. Activists combatting seemingly intractable problems such as child malnutrition. They succeeded--and, to our surprise, we found striking similarities in the strategies they used. They seemed to share a similar game plan. We wanted, in Switch, to make that game plan available to everyone, in hopes that we could show people how to make the hard changes in life a little bit easier. --Chip and Dan Heath (Photo Te Amy Surdacki)From Publishers Weekly The Heath brothers (coauthors of Made to Stick) address motivating employees, family members, and ourselves in their analysis of why we too often fear change. Change is not inherently frightening, but our ability to alter our habits can be complicated by the disjunction between our rational and irrational minds: the self that wants to be swimsuit-season ready and the self that acquiesces to another slice of cake anyway. The trick is to find the balance between our powerful drives and our reason. The authors' lessons are backed up by anecdotes that deal with such things as new methods used to reform abusive parents, the revitalization of a dying South Dakota town, and the rebranding of megastore Target. Through these lively examples, the Heaths speak energetically and encouragingly on how to modify our behaviors and businesses. This clever discussion is an entertaining and educational must-read for executives and for ordinary citizens looking to get out of a rut. (Mar.) Copyright Te Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.