I’m guilty of being negative. When I evaluate a company’s Baldrige assessment, I dutifully note its strengths but I really zero in on its opportunities for improvement. And that’s a mistake.

In their thought-provoking book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard (Broadway Business, 2010), brothers Chip and Dan Heath explain why you need to learn how to recognize and understand your strengths, the best practices, the small victories—the bright spots:

“To pursue bright spots is to ask the question ‘What’s working, and how can we do more of it?’ Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet, in the real world, this obvious question is almost never asked. Instead, the question we ask is more problem focused, ‘What’s broken, and how do we fix it?’”

I highly recommend Switch for its eclectic mix of research from a wide variety of fields that challenges the accepted wisdom about change. Change is hard? It doesn’t have to be that hard. We need a burning platform? Not really. Use SMART goals to change? Won’t work.

Instead, how about: Shrink the change. “Make the change small enough that they can’t help but score a victory,” write the Heaths. Arrange for early successes and you build momentum for the bigger changes ahead.

Or: Just look for a strong beginning and a strong ending and get moving. As they note, “the middle is going to look different once you get there.” Know where you are. Imagine where you want to be. Ready-Fire-Aim!

Or: Clarity dissolves resistance. The Heaths tell a lot of great stories in their book including this one: Two health researchers wanted to persuade people to eat healthier. It’s a big problem that a lot of big organizations have tried to tackle (i.e, the government’s Food Pyramid, which the Heaths smack down later in the book). The researchers decided to focus on one part of most American’s diet: milk. They discovered that, if Americans switched from whole milk to 1% or skim milk, the average diet would immediately meet the USDA recommended levels of saturated fat. How do you get Americans to make that switch? You get them to buy skim or 1% milk instead of whole milk. Duh.

The researchers launched a media campaign in two West Virginia communities for two weeks. It was punchy and specific, like announcing that one glass of whole milk has the same amount of saturated fat as five strips of bacon.

It worked. Before their campaign, the market share of low-fat milk was 18%. After the campaign, it was 41%, and six months later it remained at 35%.

Shrink the change. Clarity dissolves resistance. Get moving!

To read more about change, buy Switch. In the meantime, click on these articles:

• Developing Agility on 3 Fronts
• Backdoor Access to World-Class Performance
• Making Change Happen
• Making Your Organization Adaptable
• KEYSTONE: Organizational Learning

(6 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

 Loading ...