Book Review: Switch by Chip & Dan Heath

I’m just finishing “Switch: How to change things when change is hard” by Chip and Dan Heath.  As I’m sure everyone who knows me knows, Chip & Dan Heath wrote one of my all time favorite “business” books, “Made to Stick” which talks about how to express ideas so they’re memorable and make an impact.  When I found out they had a new book coming out, I immediately placed a pre-order with Amazon.  Shortly before the release, when I got an email from one of their assistants asking me if I’d like a copy sent to me, I said “Of course!”  I was flattered that they knew I was a fan of their work and reached out, and I was excited to be able to read the new book.

I’ve ended up with two copies of Switch now (my pre-order and the promotional copy) and I am thrilled to have two, since it’s a book my husband is now starting as well, and this will eliminate any book battles at bed time, akin to our competition to read the last Harry Potter, when the first one to bed got to read the book and the other had to wait until the next night for a crack at it.

I love books that seem to get to the fundamental nature of problems and conflict, boiling things down into their essence and parts, so you have a new lens or template through which to view the world.  Made to Stick did this very well, condensing disparate parts and pieces of what makes stories, ideas, and messages of any sort memorable into a template of sort that helps me every day when I look at how to present ideas to others in a compelling way.

Switch takes on the huge problem of why change seems so almost physically painful, whether that change is personal or professional.  When we look at a big problem, like education or healthcare, it can seem impossible to tackle.  The problem seems too big.  There seems to be no good place to dig in and start making a change, and there seems to be too many external restraints that need to be overcome to make the problem seem remotely doable.  It may be written off as a “cultural problem” or a “system”problem or even a “few bad apples” problem, but in the end, a few small changes can often lead to cascading change, much like Malcolm Gladwell talked about in The Tipping Point.

Switch starts out with an analogy that change can be like a rider on an elephant on a path.  The rider is analytical by nature, the elephant is big and emotional, and the path is the things that need to be done to move forward to get to the destination that we all aspire to by creating change.  While I was initially not in love with this analogy, but it works in the book as a tool to frame out the different parts of creating successful change or innovation in any group or situation.

For change to be successful, all three of these components need to work together- the facts and numbers analytical portion must be happy; the moody and resistant portion of the group must be reasonably happy and convinced that they’ll give change a try, and the pathway needs to be clear enough and short enough to motivate the riders and elephants to choose it as an option or alternative to the status quo.

Let’s take a personal situation and apply this formula. (It’s easier than solving healthcare in a blog post.)

I just walk/ran my second half marathon.  For someone who just really started a concerted fitness program seven months ago, this would have seemed like a silly and crazy thing to even consider a year ago.  My elephant knew I needed to get in shape and get healthier, but there always seemed to be a reasonable excuse to avoid the gym- the pathway to health and fitness seemed foggy and the goal was noble but not specific and defined.  My “rider” knew what I needed to do, but we needed to construct a path to get there.

One of the steps was finding a personal trainer.  This way, I get to work out privately, and I’m coached so I pushed myself more than I would on my own- I have someone to impress.  I have an appointment to keep, and I’m not discouraged by the extra-fit others that are already at my destination, but just show me how much farther I have to go, causing a distraction from the smaller steps I need to take every day.

Another huge step was to find big external goals to work for, like these half-marathon events.  The distance events are like the end of a semester exam, as much as measurements of strength or pounds or inches lost are.  They are a test of strength, endurance and preparation, and show me what I can accomplish, as well as providing a comparison point for past performance.

By creating a pathway with many little goals along the way and big tests, the goal of better health becomes more achievable and more doable.  Every day behavior like skipping workouts or eating too much crap has its own built in penalties- for any endurance event, you pay the price for everything you did right or wrong along the training path.  This then makes the daily changes a bit easier to do as well, knowing the big wall is coming up fast as the race approaches.

I need the numbers- the analysis of the progress to satisfy my rider.  I need to feel good about myself and the changes that are occurring to satisfy the elephant, who might rather be eating girl scout cookies and watching Project Runway.  And all of this is easier when the path is much more specific, clear, and the change looks doable in its chunked-out parts.  It makes even thinking about doing another half-marathon possible, because I know the change is possible and the next goal is attainable, because I’ve done it before.

The brilliance of Switch is that this formula is tied into Maslow’s heirarchy of needs and one that applies to almost any situation.  For example, most of the strategies suggested to help kids with ADHD succeed in school involve not trying to fundamentally change the child, but change the environment to help the child do what’s needed.  Checklists of chores takes the amorphous “Do your chores” and breaks it down into specific, doable tasks, itemized and specific.  Showing a child how to be a bit more organized, and giving them tools that help ensure that they can keep the system up, with frequent checks, develops new, more constructive habits.  Getting rid of the daily speedbumps that turn a child off course- whether that’s always having things ready the night before to avoid morning panics, or smoothing the homework path by putting all their tools in one box and having a set place and time for work, or even putting hooks by the door so everything is available and convenient are small changes that can lead to big results.  Change can occur even in kids known to struggle in school, but they need those small successes to satisfy the elephant who needs to feel good, and they need “stuff to do” to satisfy the rider, but the pathway and environment are just as critical to success.

IDEO, the legendary design firm, works so well because their template works to make change of systems or design of new products integrate almost seamlessly into the way things are done.  they start out with understanding the problems or issues at hand- really getting to know what’s going on and how the situation isn’t working.  They then observe people using current products, or working with a customer, to understand how things are done now, and to start to get ideas about where a system or process might eb breaking down. Then they start the brainstorming and visualizing possible solutions ot the problem.  They rapidly put together prototypes, and then evaluate and refine what worked or didn’t work with the inital attempts, to tweek and further diagnose what will work in the end.  Then, they take their final product and implement it- what Seth Godin calls “shipping”- because all the greatest ideas in the world are worth nothing if they aren’t actually put into use.  Success means shipping- you’ve got to get the ideas out the door and into the real world- where the rubber meets the road.

While I’m still thinking a lot about Switch, it’s a book that helps me tie together all the separate ideas discussed above:

- how personal change and cultural change aren’t really so different;

-how many people problems can be solved by tweeking external environments and expectations;

-how good design and understanding problems are both key to making change successful,

and how in the end, it’s all measured by the implementation, and satusfying both the numbers people and the emotional folks as well- it’s a good change if people can see the difference and that how they feel about the change may be as critical to the outcome as any other part.   Never short-change the power of dedication, passion and enthusiasm- they will carry you pretty far down even a murky path, provided the obstacles aren’t too big at first.

I would definitely recommend Switch, another excellent book by Chip & Dan Heath- and don’t worry if you don’t love the metaphor of the rider and the elephant.  Like all good mysteries, it makes more sense in the end than in the beginning.

Tags: books, change, chip & dan heath, culture, economics, education, elephant, path, rider, switch

First Impressions of Linchpin by Seth Godin

I was one of the lucky early few that signed up by making a donation to the Acumen Fund, to get an advanced copy of Linchpin by  Seth Godin.

Seth has asked people to read it, think about it and give a thoughtful review.  I couldn’t wait to tell you about it until I finished the book- I’ve found myself quoting concepts in the first few chapters to friends  already, so I thought it was time to share.

Seth starts out the book by talking about how the old American dream and template we’ve all been fed is history.  There are tons of people who still believe all you have to do is follow the rules and you’ll get a job where you then follow the rules and get rewarded.  But the bottom line that many folks are finding out is that following the rules has ended up being a sucker’s deal, a bait and switch bargain.  The safety and security of jobs and pensions and retirement at a reasonable age, in reasonable health, where you enjoy a permanent vacation until you die is history, and we just have to accept that.  It sounds harsh, but I think we all know that’s true.

As someone with young kids, I know I have to prepare them for a very different world than the one I grew up in, and  that is both scary and challenging.  They’re going to need flexibility, maintain those qualities of being curious, being creative and innovative problem solvers for the rest of their lives.  With schools still programmed, in many sectors, to produce widgets for giant “work”  machines, how can I counteract this effectively?  Certainly, my kids are growing up exposed to innovative thinkers making their own game every day, but I know I still have to find more opportunities for them to flex these muscles on their own now, so they are willing to do so as they get older as well.

Seth encourages all of us to be creative, to be artists, to become remarkable and indispensable.  I wanted to find an exception to this rule, but I found I can’t.  At first, I thought- well, you know the professions- Doctors, Lawyers- we need those folks to make everything else work- how much real creativity do you have as a physician?  Well, and then I took a closer look at what my husband does every day.  Sure, he’s an OB-GYN, but he’s involved with research, working on projects including looking at fetal growth curves, how they can eventually eliminate prematurity, and other projects that at the heart of them require this creative problem solver mentality.  He has to take everything he knows, figure out the problems that are still there, that cause problems big and small every day, and design research protocols to try to make them better, so each patient coming through his clinic gets the best care possible.  It means getting the doctors and nurses and patients in the practice to consider different schedules, to try new clinics like “birth control before breakfast” and step out of their own comfort zones and potential myopia.  He has to ask people to try to do things differently and make a difference- not just by bringing new people into the world (which is pretty amazing in and of itself) but to be able to do so in a constantly changing environment, with financial pressures, with each patient having their own unique set of problems, and being able to improvise on the fly.  The best doctors do this well, and do become linchpins, not only to their patients, but to their colleagues and institutions where they practice.

I wanted to find some exception to Seth’s rule, being a believer that education and formal college educations are not worthless, but have value beyond memorizing facts. I want to believe we do teach people things in school that matter and its not all about grinding creativity out of people.   But I think becoming a linchpin is not about whether you’ve had any formal training or education in anything- it’s ultimately about taking your cumulative knowledge and experience from every thing you have ever done, and be willing to use all of it, at any time, as tools to solve the next problem.

For example, I started reading Seth Godin and a bunch of books in the “business/management” section of the bookstore, not long after my husband introduced me to Marcus Buckingham and the Strength-based approach to, well, everything.  I rapidly found that all the books in the education and parenting section of the book store, where I frequently spent time, were missing the boat.  The really interesting stuff about managing people, developing them to reach their full potential, and the like were all sitting in the business section.  I realized that running a family is exactly like running a small business, and everything I knew had infinite applications outside of the box one might put them in.  “Pediatric logisitics”- managing kids/people, schedules, activities, performance (grades), camp, and keeping an eye on the larger issues at the same time are all the same skill sets I use in my business, in running Podcamps, in every other aspect of my life as well.

The main point here is this- you have to be a person who strives to make a difference in everything you do.  You have to care.  You need to look out for yourself, but you also can’t afford not to look out for others as well.  You need to be able to use all of your experience, no matter where it’s from, and weave it into a new solution to try and make a change for the better.  There are no more silos.  There are no more boxes.    It’s all about bringing all your resources to bear to try to solve problems big and small, and not being afraid of having a “crazy” idea.  Those crazy ideas in the hands fo the right people, shared with other people who care, mean all sorts of resources can be marshaled and then moving the needle becomes easier than ever.

Thanks, Seth, for the jolt of espresso to my creativity, and for reminding me how important it is to care .  Thanks for the reminder that we have  to be willing to try the “impossible” (which turns out only to be a bit difficult) and can be accomplished if we just try to see the possibilities rather than shut down because it seems risky or scary.

I look forward to the chapters to come.

Tags: creativity, education, linchpin, seth godin, taking risk

Too Much Information

When is sharing your life online with others crossing over into  TMI  (Too Much Information) territory?

Like it or not, we make judgments about people based on the integral of all we know about them.  The baseball player who bets on sports in Vegas is assumed to have a vested interest in tailoring his own play to affect his financial bets, whether or not anyone can prove that that’s true.  We assume Tiger Woods credibility as a spokesperson for various corporations is called into question because of what he has done, or hasn’t done in his personal life.  Bill Clinton apparently had a long reputation of “being a dog that was hard to keep on the porch”, but somehow, he still manages to be a brilliant guy and a pretty great president, overall.

We learn about friends and family these days, not just by our own experience, but by the deluge of information available about them on the web.  Before I meet with a client or speak to a group, I do a Google search to find out a bit about them in advance.  It helps me feel prepared, have a sense of who I think they are, and a chance on meeting in person, to match that preconceived notion, based on web data, with what I see in person.

This is why I try to teach my kids and constantly remind myself that everything I say or do online is the most public of records.  The DM’s I get on twitter, the text messages sent to my phone, my email- all of that- has an illusion of privacy, but it is still discoverable by others, in some way, at some point in the future, legally or illegally.

If you note the recent media discussions about controlled leaks from Apple about the upcoming tablet computer, and rumors of similar controlled leaks in government, you’ll note that these conversations all occur over the phone or preferably in person, aren’t taped or recorded, and provide both parties with plausible deniability because there’s no documented paper trail.

The clear lesson here is that if you want to have a private conversation, clearly don’t leave a voicemail message and don’t put any of it in writing- don’t leave a web or digital or actual paper trail.

This brings me to the point of this post, which is a new service called Blippy, where you can share your recent purchases (and the amount spent) on various sites, including Amazon.com, Netflix, Threadless and iTunes.  You can link a credit card as well, so every time you make a purchase at the convenience store, that, too, is posted to this social network.

Here’s a list of the accounts you can link to Blippy:

iTunes	Amazon	Zappos	Audible
GroupOn	Threadless	StubHub	GoDaddy
Netflix	Blockbuster	SeamlessWeb	Wine Library
Credit card (Visa, MasterCard, AMEX), debit card, or bank account

I am all for living life out loud.  I know people can find almost an infinite set of information out about me- but this crosses the line into kind of stalker-ish territory.  It’s one thing to get pointed to cool apps , books, and music that your friends are buying.  In fact, when looking around Blippy, I found a bunch of great things my friends had purchased, especially books and iphone apps,  that makes it almost certain I will purchase the same, which I am sure is Blippy’s whole marketing attempt.  After all, if you can find out, passively, what your friends are up to and what they’re getting, what better way to keep up with the digital Joneses?  Or even better, find out what your friends are into when it comes to birthday times, or for marketers doing blogger outreach?

However, it’s another thing to be updated every time they buy milk or cigarettes at the convenience store.

And let’s talk about the judgments people make about our private spending habits.

Say I get an account and share with my friends and co-workers.  How long before my boss finds out I rent weird films from Blockbuster?  Or am ordering books on how to develop a side career on Amazon?  How long before a health insurance company figures out you never did quit smoking like you swore you did on those forms?  What if they never see me paying for a gym membership?  What happens if you are buying books on how to make a career transition or how to pad your resume?  What if you ordered books about medical issues?  Or your bill from Wine Library TV seems to indicate you have a serious drinking problem?

Yeah, I don’t much care if all my friends learn I have an old school Tretorn addiction and Zappos is my favorite supplier, but does my husband need to know every single penny I spent there?  What if he gets notifications of things meant as gifts for him?

While it’s great all this information can be aggregated in one spot and I can see it being useful even for companies to track what employees are spending on Company credit cards, this is the first social network in a long time asking us to share information that has long been isolated in your credit card bills, email accounts and the sanctity of your ipod and cell phones.  (I’ve long thought you can learn a ton about someone by seeing the contents of their ipod alone- often leading me to be a bit cautious about giving mine to friends and seeing the plethora of various kid tunes (What? an addiction to Trout Fishing in America?  Really?), my secret like of old school hip-hop, and other music that leads to raised eyebrows in some social circles).

After only a few minutes of poking around, I’m getting more information than I planned about my friends.    Not only did I find out about a great analytics app, but the same person also downloaded the  Playboy app as well.  Clearly  information I probably didn’t need, even if it’s clearly nothing to be prudish about.  Likewise, a recent troll through the people my friends are following led me to Leo Leporte’s account, and the multiple $1,500 purchases he made in a short period of time at the Renaissance in Vegas.   People commented on the site about whether he was paying for his team’s hotel rooms or having a bad night at gaming tables,  but is this information everyone should have? Should Leo have to justify what he was buying to everyone on the internet, or his sponsors?   Likewise, Ev Williams bought a Pregnancy Tracker app for his iPhone.  Does that mean I should offer my husband’s services as an OB-GYN?  Should I start knitting a baby present?  I don’t think so, and that’s why I think Blippy, while a marketer’s dream, is a privacy nightmare.

Feel free to make your own conclusions, but for now, for better or for worse, I think I’ll be keeping my purchases to myself.

Tags: Blippy, information, Leo Laporte, privacy, TMI

Searching Walled Gardens…

I’m still getting caught up on podcasts that got the better of me recently, but the one that caught my attention was one of NPR’s Planet Money podcast about Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, and an effort to make certain media content “exclusive” and free to that search engine only.

Apparently, Microsoft and Rupert Murdoch are in talks where Microsoft would pay the Wall Street Journal to make its contents exclusive and indexed only on Bing and no other search engines.

I found this whole concept kind of shocking.  While I understand that news organizations have to find new revenue streams, I would happily go back to paying for getting the New York Times delivered to my inbox and  iphone rather than this model.  The idea that search will devolve into separate walled gardens, with parts of the ‘net only searchable on certain search engines seems to me to be against the very nature of what the internet was about- to make information open and “findable” in ways it never has been before.  And frankly, if I have to go to yet another website to see if the Wall Street Journal has a piece of news I might need, I might as well go to the WSJ site directly and search their site internally than use yet another search engine.

From Microsoft’s point of view, I can understand how becoming a site that indexes primarily news, for example, might seem like a great competitive advantage.  What it fails to take into account is that money alone isn’t the only thing that matters anymore.  News comes out via non-mainstream media news sites including the Huffington Post, Politico, not to mention the excellent tech blogs like Tech Crunch , Mashable, and Gizmodo.  News is no longer proprietary in the same way it used to be.

It’s going to be virtually impossible for Microsoft to make news a walled off garden, and even if they do, how will they keep people from re-publishing the same material via, say, a tumblr blog and making it easily indexed by Google as well?  Isn’t this just begging for a “Pirate Bay” solution if established?  How long before bit torrents of news are being siphoned out and placed where they can be indexed and re-indexed by any search engine?

There may even be some anti-competitive issues at play here, but as usual, the law drags so far behind actual technology, it will be years and largely irrelevant before that’s all sorted out.

The bottom line here is that information is a precious commodity, but news is only news for a short period of time before even in its old, traditional newsprint form, it starts lining bird cages and train puppies all over the land.  Information now flows faster than we can analyze and process its meaning, which means the value in this play is at most, temporary and ephemeral.

My largest objection is to turning the internet into a series of walled gardens regarding search, and how much more cumbersome it will make finding good and relevant information.  And as the ‘net has already shown us, in the absence of great and thoughtful information, people will simply propagate what is readily available, which may include rumor, innuendo and more.

The Bing/WSJ deal will be an interesting experiment if it happens, but I wonder what it will mean for the future and how long it can last in an economy where information is distilled down to bits and transmitted faster than Marconi ever could have imagined with the radio telegraph.

Tags: bing, Microsoft, planet money, WSJ

Listening as a Business Skill

Sometimes when I am talking to a client, I ask questions they make think are irrelevant to the topic at hand.  Part of the reason for these question is that for me, I use the information about how a client feels about a project as part of the overall design of what we’re doing.  This may seem silly to some, but I think the way a project is perceived is as important as all the little details that together make the whole.

For example, in order to meet a client’s ultimate goal, knowing what they expect, what their vision for the project is,  and their motivation behind it makes it much easier to craft a solution that meets these more subtle needs.  It’s getting something as straightforward and seemingly unemotional, like a contract, to meet the humans that stand behind the relationship at hand.  Specifically, for an event like Podcamp, we try to make sure there’s enough structure to make people comfortable and have a sense of what’s going to happen, but not so much that people feel unwelcome,  or like they are at a formal meeting.  In part, this is to create an atmosphere where learning and sharing are at the heart, and people are open to new ideas, rather than in a more formal atmosphere, where people are less likely to be persuaded and step out of their own pre-conceived positions.  This makes learning people centered as much as idea centered.

When was the last time you really listened to your co-workers?  Not just to the words, but to the intonations and meaning behind those words?  How much more difficult is this if the communication is entirely in writing?  When will a few minutes on the phone give you more “side” information about emotion and true position on things than 15 emails back and forth ever will?

It’s tricky in a world that has become ever faster to make the time to talk to others and to listen to not only the words and stories they tell, but how they are told, and what the underlying story or meaning might be.  How much context and true understanding are we losing if we’re spending that phone time also drafting emails, checking calendars, and playing games?

It’s amazing what a few minutes in someone’s presence or even listening to them will tell you.  And it’s amazing how much confusion a simple conversation can clear up, if we spend the time actually listening and hearing what the other person has to say.  It requires being present, and clearing away the constant noise in the background.

It’s not easy, but I promise, it can be worth it, and end up actually saving you time that would otherwise be spent trying to figure out what someone really meant in that email.   Don’t forget the phone as one of those social media tools it’s still okay to use.