Change that Sticks

I’m going to give you a series of short phrases. They all come from same book. See how soon you remember the name of the book:

• Direct The Rider
  • Script The Critical Moves
• Motivate The Elephant
  • Shrink The Change
• Shape The Path
  • Tweak The Environment
  • Build Helpful Habits
    • Action Triggers
  • Rally The Herd

These nine phrases all come from the book (spoiler alert if you haven’t guessed!) Switch.

Now for the more difficult part of the quiz: Can you come up with a simple statement of what each of these expressions mean?  These nine expressions represent the heart of one of the best books available on change. If you understand these nine things, you are well-equipped to lead change. (By the way, the indents in the list above are significant. For example, “Script The Critical Moves” is a sub point of “Direct The Rider”; “Action Triggers” is a sub point of “Build Helpful Habits,” and so forth.)

Here are a few helpful reminders about change based upon these nine expressions:

The Rider is the part of you (and others) that thinks and plans and focuses on problems. This is the rational mind that wants to know where, what, and how. When we Script The Critical Moves we answer these kinds of questions. In the book, the example of offering 1% milk to reduce saturated fat was used.

The Elephant is the heart. It is emotional. It hates to fail. Your rider might know what to do, but your elephant may be scared to death to do it. Some people hate the feeling of getting out of bed in the morning. The book used the sample of Clocky The Alarm clock—hilarious and effective. Shrinking the Change helps the elephant. For example, instead of focusing on reading 4,500 pages for each of my classes in my doctoral program, I devised a way to read twenty-five pages a day. The challenge of reading so much became much less intimidating and much more manageable.

When we Shape The Path we recognize that what often seems like a people problem is really a situational problem. Great leaders choose to Tweak The Environment by doing things like the examples given in the book: locking the classroom door, reducing the size of the popcorn bucket, or dropping breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel did. 

As leaders we also Build Helpful Habits through establishing Action Triggers. We “pre-load” decisions by doing things like laying out our clothes the night before for a morning run, or connecting the use of a lawn fertilizer program to the holidays of Easter, Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day (the holiday “triggers” the application of each of the four steps recommended by Scotts). 

And finally we Rally The Herd by recognizing that people are looking around to see what others are doing. For instance, we send out a memo that congratulates the sales team for 85% of them getting their expense reports in on time (That 15% will see they are not doing what others are doing and be motivated by wanting to be a part of the herd.)

Whether you are leading change on your team or personally addressing a New Year’s Resolution, these are great thoughts from a great book on how to lead change.

Jeff

Image by Conal Gallagher. Used under CC BY 2.0 license.