How to Change

Chip Heath is the author of the book made-to-stick.

Heath presented at the leadership training program that was sponsored by Chick-fil-A on May 7, 2010.

I had the privilege of attending his speech.

Here is a link for Heath’s book:




Here is my summary of what Heath presented:

Heath said that people seem to resist and hate change.

However, this is not always true according to his research on Flickr. He sought out pictures that showed people who were happy about change.

There are two major life changes, which people are often happy about. These include:

Marriage
Having a baby

Heath showed several pictures of couples smiling at their wedding.

Part of us wants to change and part of us don’t.

People have love and comfort with the familiar.

There are two parts. One part is the emotional side of change. It is like an impulse for a cookie.

The emotional side is like a large elephant. The other side is the tiny human rider who is the logical side.

The emotional elephant says eat it all. This wouldn’t be good for the tiny rider to eat that much.

Elephant sometimes says:

Wouldn’t it be cool to…

The rider is not always the hero. Sometimes the rider will over anaylize things.

Change requires both the elephant and the rider to go the same way.

How do I get there?

Both the elephant and the rider will need different things.

The rider needs direction.
The elephant needs motivation.

Here is a tool: look for the bright spots.

People will often look at the negative picture when a negative and a positive picture are both shown.

People will analyze games they lost more.

People will often talk a long time about problems.

A person may talk 30-minutes about what is not working.

Here is the solution. Look for what is working and see if we can do more of it.

Heath talked about how a man went to Vietnam many years ago to help with the malnutrition problem. He only had 6-months to make a difference because of politics.

He basically had mothers in small community to get the weight and height of all children. They looked for the small bright spots of children who were identified as healthier and figured out what was done differently. Vietnam is a country that grows rice. Some of the mothers had cooked other small things in the rice: plants and small shrimp.

Heath said now we get direction from the rider and teach others.

TIP: Look for the Bright Spots and Study Them. Copy them. Apply them.

The man who had went to Vietnam to help didn’t have a lot of time or resources. He used this approach to looking for bright spots and made a major difference in helping improve the nutrition for children in the country.

Here are important questions to ask:

What is going right?
What goes well?
Can we do more of it to get better?

Ask top people in company about their success and what is going right. Study what they’re doing and motivate the elephant for long-term change.

Here is Chip's book again:




Here is a book by Chip's brother Dan that I really want to read, too:



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