by Chip Heath + Dan Heath - good book, but not great...easy to read and good writing + formatting style though
(unfinished notes...need to start with p10 of scanned image)
- What good is a 5 minute session of cleaning? Not much. It gets you moving, though, and thats the hardest part. Starting an unpleasant task is always worse than continuing it. So once you start cleaning house, chances are you won't stop at 5 minutes. You'll be surprised to take pride in your accomplishment
- One way to shrink change, then is to limit the investment you're asking for - only 5 minutes of housecleaning, only one small debt. Another way to shrink change is to think of small wins - milestones that are within reach. The overall goal - cleaning the whole house - is too distant to be motivating, but if you can engineer a small win in the first 5 minutes, it might buy enough enthusiasm to pursue the next milestone.
- The value of the miracle scale is that it focuses attention on small milestones that are attainable and visible rather than on the eventual destination, which may seem very remote.
It's like climbing a tall ladder and focusing on the next step rather than gawking up at the top. There may be many more steps to go, but you can take comfort that you're making real progress
in the right direction.
Notice, once again, how often Elephant appeals and Rider appeals can overlap. In this case, your son's Rider is getting very clear direction-Ask the clerk about the toothpaste-at the same time as his Elephant is getting little boosts of hope-Maybe I don't have to be so shyforever.
By using the miracle scale, you always have a clear idea of
where you're going next, and you have a clear sense of what the
next small victory will be. You're moving forward, and, even better,
you're getting more confident in your ability to keep moving
forward.
-When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve
them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed.
They break the habit oflosing and begin to get into
the habit of winning.
-Former UCLA coach John Wooden, one of the greatest college
basketball coaches of all time, once said, "When you improve
a little each day, eventually big things occur.... Don't look for
the quick, big improvement. Seek the small improvement one
day at a time. That's the only way it happens-and when it happens,
it lasts."
-No one can guarantee a small win. Lots of things are out of
our control. But the goal is to be wise about the things that are
under our control. And one thing we can control is how we
define the ultimate victory and the small victories that lead up
to 1t.
You want to select small wins that have two traits: (1) They're
meaningful. (2) They're "within immediate reach," as Bill Parcells
said. And if you can't achieve both traits, choose the latter! (The
5-Minute Room Rescue wasn't very meaningful by itself, but it
made great change possible.)
-Paul Butler didn't
shrink the change. Instead, he grew the people. He made the St.
Lucians swell with pride over their parrot-a species that exists
nowhere else. He inspired them to feel more determined, more
ready, more motivated. And when you build people up in this
way, they develop the strength to act.
-March says that when people
make choices, they tend to rely on one of two basic models of
decision making: the consequences model or the identity model.
The consequences model is familiar to students of economics.
It assumes that when we have a decision to make, we weigh the
costs and benefits of our options and make the choice that
maximizes our satisfaction. It's a rational, analytical approach.
In the identity model of decision making, we essentially ask
ourselves three questions when we have a decision to make: Who
am I? What kind of situation is this? What would someone like me
do in this situation? Notice what's missing: any calculation of costs
and benefits. The identity model explains the way most people
vote, which contradicts our notion of the "self-interested voter."
It helps to shed light on why an auto mechanic in Oklahoma
would vote against a Democrat who'd give him health insurance,
and why a Silicon Valley millionaire would vote against a Republican
who'd cut her taxes.
-Because identities are central to the way people make
decisions, any change effort that violates someone's identity
is likely doomed to failure. So the question is this: How can you
make your change a matter of identity rather than a matter of . '
consequences?
-When you think about the people whose behavior
needs to change, ask yourself whether they would agree with this
statement: "I aspire to be the kind of person who would make
this change." If their answer is yes, that's an enormous factor in
your favor. If their answer is no, then you'll have to work hard to
show them that they should aspire to a different self-image. And
that's exactly what Paul Butler did in St. Lucia. He convinced the
island's citizens to think, "This is our bird-if we want to be good
St. Lucians, we'd better protect it."
-One of IDEO's designers even
sketched out a "project mood chart" that predicts how people
will feel at different phases of a project. ~t'sa U-shaped curve with
a peak of positive emotion, labeled "hope," at the beginning, and
a second peak of positive emotion, labeled "confidence," at the
end. In between the two peaks is a negative emotional valley labeled
"insight."
Brown says that design is "rarely a graceful leap from height
to height." When a team embarks on a new project, team members
are filled with hope and optimism. As they start to collect
data and observe real people struggling with existing products,
they find that new ideas spring forth effortlessly.Then comes the
difficult task of integrating all those fresh ideas into a coherent
new design. At this "insight" stage, it's easy to get depressed, because
insight doesn't always strike immediately.
The project often feels like a failure in the middle. But if the
team persists through this valley of angst and doubt, it eventually
emerges with a growing sense of momentum. Team members
begin to test out their new designs, and they realize the improvements
they've made, and they keep tweaking the design to
make it better. And they come to realize, we've cracked this problem.
That's when the team reaches the peak of confidence.
-Notice what team leaders at IDEO are doing with the peaksand-
valley visual: They are creating the expectation of failure.
They are telling team members not to trust that initial flush of
good feeling at the beginning of the project, because what comes
next is hardship and toil and frustration. Yet, strangely enough,
when they deliver this warning, it comes across as optimistic.
-Edmondson found that the
teams who failed made the mistake of trying to "get it right on the
first try" and were motivated by the chance to "perform, to shine,
or to execute perfectly." But of course no one "shines" on the first
few tries-this mindset set the teams up for failure. By contrast,
the successful teams focused on learning. They didn't assume that
mastery would come quickly, and they'anticipated that they'd
face challenges. In the end, they were the ones who were more
likely to get it right.
Failing is often the best way to learn, and because of that,
early failure is a kind of necessary investment.
-Under her new system the
only grades offered at Jefferson County High School were: A, B,
C, and NY.
Not Yet.
In Howard's view, the students at Jefferson had accepted a
"culture of failure." In a fixed-mindset way, they acted as though
they were failures to the bone. Students often didn't do their
homework, or they turned in shoddy work. Getting a D or an F
was an easy way out in a way. They might get a poor grade, but
at least they would be done.
In the new system, the students couldn't stop until they'd
cleared the bar. "We define up front to the kids what's an A, B,
and C," said Howard. "If they do substandard work, the teacher
will say, 'Not Yet.' ... That gives them the mindset: My teacher
thinks I can do better. It changes their expectations."
The school was reborn. Students and teachers became more
engaged, the school's graduation rate increased dramatically, and
student test scores went up so much that remedial courses were
eliminated.
Howard transformed her students. She cultivated a new identity
in them. "You're all college-bound students. Then she flipped
Jefferson from a fixed-mindset school to a growth-mindset
school. She believed that every student was capable of doing acceptable
work, that no student was doomed to failure. There's no
"never"at Jefferson anymore, only a "Not Yet ."
-In trying to minimize the risk of bad outcomes, injury prevention
experts often turn to the Haddon Matrix, a simple
framework that provides a way to think systematically about accidents
by highlighting three key periods of time: pre-event,
event, and post-event .•
Let's say our goal is to reduce serious injuries from car wrecks.
Pre-event interventions would include anything that would tend
to prevent wrecks from happening: installing bright lighting on
highways, painting clear lane markers on the roads, popularizing
antilock brakes, launching advertising campaigns against drunk
driving.
With event interventions, we accept that crashes will happen
and ask ourselves how we can reduce the chances of injury. Seat
belts and air bags are classic event interventions, but also think
about breakaway light poles and those big orange barrels that line
exit ramps (which are intended to soften collisions).
With post-event interventions, we acknowledge both that
crashes will occur and that people will be injured. The goal of
post-event interventions is to minimize the severity of the injuries
-our habits are
essentially stitched into our environment. Research bears this out.
According to one study of people making changes in their lives,
36 percent of the successful changes were associated with a move
to a new location, and only 13 percent of unsuccessful changes
involved a move.
Many smokers, for example, find it easier to quit when they're
on vacation, because at home, every part of their environment is
loaded with smoking associations. It's like trying to quit smoking
inside a Camel advertisement-everywhere you look are reminders
of the habit. There's that drawer in the kitchen where
the lighters are stashed, the clay pot on the porch that's become
an archive of ashes, the ever-present scent of smoke in the car and
the closet. When a smoker goes on vacation, the environment recedes
toward neutrality. That doesn't mean it's easy to quit, but it's
easier.
-When you're leading an Elephant on an unfamiliar path,
chances are it's going to follow the herd. So how do you create a
herd?
-Well aware of the power of contagious behavior, a group of social
psychologists persuaded a hotel manager to test out a new
sign in the hotel bathrooms. The sign didn't mention the environment
at all; it simply said that the "the majority of guests at
the hotel" reuse their towels at least once during their stay. It
worked-guests who got this sign were 26 percent more likely to
reuse their towels. They took cues from the herd.
-In situations where your herd has embraced the
right behavior, publicize it. For instance, if 80 percent of your
team submits time sheets on time, make sure the other 20 percent
knows the group norm. Those individuals almost certainly will
correct themselves. But if only 10 percent of your team submits
time sheets on time, publicizing those results will hurt, not help.
-Reinforcement is the secret to getting past the first step of
your long journey and on to the second, third, and hundredth
steps. And that's a problem, because most of us are terrible reinforcers.
We are quicker to grouse than to praise. At work, we love
to bond with our colleagues through communal complaining.
(Sutherland calls this behavior "verbal grooming.") But this is all
wrong: We need to be looking for bright spots-however tiny!~
and rewarding them.
- Learning to spot and celebrate approximations requires us to
scan the environment constantly, looking for little rays of sunshine,
and it isn't easy. Our Riders, by nature, focus on the negative.
Problems are easy to spot; progress, much harder. But the
progress is precious. Shamu didn't learn to jump through a hoop
because her trainer was bitching at her. She learned because she
had a trainer who was patient and focused and reinforced every
step of the journey
-"If you want your child to do two
hours of homework on her own every night, you don't withhold
praise and rewards until she does two hours of homework without
being asked to." Instead, you set small goals and gradually
build her up. And when a child doesn't get something right,
Kazdin advised: ''Ask yourself, 'Was there anything about it that's
a component of what I'd like her to do?' If the answer's yes, and
it almost always is, then jump on that component: It was great
that you did X."
-The most important lesson we can learn from Kazdin and the
animal trainers is this:
Change isn't an event; it's a process. There
is no moment when a monkey learns to skateboard; there's a
process. There is no moment when a child learns to walk; there's
a process. And there won't be a moment when your community
starts to invest more in its school system, or starts recycling more,
or starts to beautifY its public spaces; there will be a process. To
lead a process requires persistence.
-When change works,
it tends to follow a pattern. ~he people who change have clear direction,
ample motivation, and a supportive environment. In
other words, when change works, it's because the Rider, the Elephant,
and the Path are all aligned in support of the switch.
