Chapter One

Notes

Popcorn. For dozens of clever studies of eating behavior, see Brian Wansink (2006), Mindless Eating, New York: Bantam Dell. The popcorn study is on pp. 16–19.

Clocky. Sales statistics come from this MIT online magazine: http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/nanda.html (accessed June 20, 2009). Most of the sales came through Nanda’s own website. According to the article, Nanda “was somewhat taken by surprise when the device attracted a great deal of attention after its description was posted, along with dozens of other student projects, on the Media Lab website. Several trend-watching blogs and websites such as Engadget took note of the Clocky concept and soon had introduced thousands of potential customers to the device through photos and links online.” Gauri Nanda received an Ig Nobel Prize in Economics in 2005 for “theoretically adding many more hours to the workday.”

Jonathan Haidt. See Haidt (2006), The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, New York: Basic

Books, especially pp. 3–5. Haidt reviews metaphors presented by Buddha, Plato (including the quotation we include), and Freud and then presents his own metaphor. We love his Elephant/Rider metaphor—particularly the obvious imbalance in physical power between the two—and we’re grateful to him for letting us use it here. In The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt focuses not on change but rather on understanding what we can learn about being happy from the intersection of centuries of wisdom and modern psychology. If you want to be happier and smarter, read his book.

Self-control is an exhaustible resource. The papers we cite in this section are from an exciting area of research, started in the last fifteen years. The classic first paper, which includes the chocolate-chip cookie study, is Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Mark Muraven, and Dianne M. Tice (1998), “Ego Depletion: Is the Active Self a Limited Resource?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1252–1265. The sad-movie study is part of Mark Muraven, Dianne M. Tice, and Roy Baumeister (1998), “Self-Control as Limited Resource: Regulatory Depletion Patterns,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 774–789. The experiments that show the self-control problems induced by too many choices are described in Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy F. Baumeister et al. (2008), “Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 883–898. In the wedding-registry study, experimental participants spent only twelve minutes setting up a simulated registry, yet that short amount of time was sufficient to sap their self-control. Given that real brides spend months choosing invitations, place settings, reception venues, and music lists, it’s no wonder that some turn into Bridezillas.

424 kinds of gloves. Jon Stegner’s story and the quotations are from John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen (2002), The Heart of Change, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, pp. 29–30.

1% milk. For the story of the development of this campaign, see Steve Booth-Butterfield and Bill Reger (2004), “The Message Changes Belief and the Rest Is Theory: The ‘1% or Less’ Milk

Campaign and Reasoned Action,” Preventive Medicine, 39, 581–588. The actual study is described in Bill, Reger, Margo G. Wootan, Steven Booth-Butterfield, and Holli Smith (1998), “1% or Less: A Community-Based Nutrition Campaign,” Public Health Reports, 113, 410–419.

In 2004, Donald Berwick. Berwick’s 100,000 lives campaign is the subject of a case study prepared by Chip’s colleagues at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. See Hayagreeva Rao and David Hoyt (2008), “Institute for Healthcare Improvement: The Campaign to Save 100,000 Lives,” Stanford Graduate School of Business Case Study L-13. For additional insight into this case, check out an article by Rao and Robert Sutton (September 2008), “The Ergonomics of Innovation,” The McKinsey Quarterly, http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/The_ergonom-ics_of_innovation_2197 (accessed May 17, 2009).

Chapter Two

In 1990, Jerry Sternin. The Vietnam story is compiled from various sources. An article by David Dorsey (December 2000), “Positive Deviant,” Fast Company, p. 42, first introduced popular audiences to Jerry and Monique Sternin’s work on positive deviance. Other details are from Jerry Sternin’s presentation at the Boston College Center for Corporate Social Responsibility in April 2008 and from interviews of Jerry Sternin by Chip Heath in March and April 2008 and of Monique Sternin in May 2009.

“We were like orphans.” Most of the direct quotations in this section are from Dorsey, “Positive Deviant.”

Bright spots. Sternin’s term for these outliers is positive deviants, which is based on a statistical analogy. Picture a statistical bell curve on which most people have outcomes around average. Sternin was looking for people on the positive tail of the bell curve.

Although the positive deviance methodology pioneered by Sternin is very useful, we found that the “deviance” terminology tends to be confusing or off-putting to people who aren’t familiar with statistics, so we use the “bright-spots” terminology. Later

in this chapter, we carry the term bright spots over to other situations that involve exceptional positive performance.

Jerry Sternin died in November 2008. His work lives on through the work of Monique Sternin and the Positive Deviance Initiative at Tufts University. For an overview of the large number of domains in which positive deviance methods have produced substantial change, see the bibliography of work at http://www.positivedeviance.org/materials/bib_subj.html. Positive deviance was one of the “Ideas of the Year” highlighted by New York Times Magazine in 2008.

Emory University’s School of Public Health. See U. Agnes Trinh Mackintosh, David R. Marsh, and Dirk G. Schroeder (2002), “Sustained Positive Deviant Child Care Practices and Their Effects on Child Growth in Viet Nam,” Food and Nutrition Bulletin, 23, 16–25.

“School stinks,” said Bobby. Bobby’s story is from John J. Murphy (1994), “Working with What Works: A Solution-Focused Approach to School Behavior Problems,” School Counselor, 42, 59–66.

Solutions-focused brief therapy. A relatively new therapeutic approach, solutions-focused brief therapy (SFBT) was pioneered by therapists at the Palo Alto Mental Research Institute, where Steve de Shazer and Insoo Kim Berg did their training. De Shazer and Berg are known for their emphasis on solutions and on the Miracle Question, which we consider later. SFBT has been applied in many different arenas. Wallace J. Gingerich of Case Western Reserve keeps a list of SFBT studies on his website: http://www.gingerich.net/SFBT/2007_review.htm. For his 2007 review of the literature, Gingerich accumulated a list of 150 studies, most conducted since 1997, that investigated the effect of SFBT on behavior. SFBT has been applied to day-to-day situations such as couples therapy, bullying at school, and how kids perform in math. It also has been used with even more serious problems: domestic violence offenders, prisoners, substance abusers, individuals found guilty of DUI, and suicide prevention programs. See Steve de Shazer, Yvonne Dolan, Harry Korman, Terry Trepper, Eric McCollum, and Insoo Kim Berg (2007), More

than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, New York: Haworth Press, p. 157.

Marriage therapist Michele Weiner-Davis. The quotations in this section and the golf example are from Weiner-Davis, Divorce Busting (1992), New York: Simon & Schuster, pp. 15–18. This is one of the most insightful and practical books on change we found in any domain. Even if your relationship is going well, you’ll benefit from reading this book.

Miracle Question. This version of the question is from de Shazer et al., More than Miracles, the book that brought de Shazer and Berg, the founders of SFBT, together with four other experienced solutions-focused therapists to talk about current practice. SFBT therapists typically record their counseling sessions, with their clients’ permission, for use in training new therapists and refining their own technique, and these authors spent time reviewing videotapes of therapy sessions and asking one another, “Why did you ask that there?” Reading More than Miracles is the therapy equivalent of sitting around reviewing game tapes with Super Bowl–winning football coaches. It’s a great experience for a therapist or counselor.

Brian Cade. The two counseling sessions by Brian Cade are described in Kathryn Shine (March 24, 2002), “C’mon, get happy,” Sun Herald, p. 38. Also see Cade and William Hudson, A Brief Guide to Brief Therapy (1993), New York: Norton.

Man with a drinking problem. The example is from the Harvard Mental Health Letter (September 1, 2006), “Solution-focused therapy (methods of psychotherapy).”

Xolair. The Xolair example is described in Richard Pascale and Jerry Sternin (May 2005), “Your Company’s Secret Change Agents,” Harvard Business Reviews, pp. 73–81.

Learn English at home. Go to http://www.english-at-home.com/vocabulary/english-word-for-emotions/ (accessed May 17, 2009).

Bad is stronger than good. This review paper is unusually long, thorough (233 references!), and depressing. See Roy F. Baumeister, Ellen Bratslavsky, Catrin Finkenauer, and Kathleen D. Vohs (2001), “Bad Is Stronger than Good,” Review of General

Psychology, 5, 323–370. The final summary quotation is on p. 355.

Marcus Buckingham. Interested readers could start with this book: Buckingham (2007), Go Put Your Strengths to Work: 6 Powerful Steps to Achieve Outstanding Performance, New York: Free Press.

A husband forgot his wife’s birthday. For an even freakier world, imagine that the husband had forgotten all but one of his wife’s last fourteen birthdays, yet she, being a bright-spot aficionado, was energized because she knew success was possible.

Solving problems versus scaling successes. Another domain in which people have made progress following bright spots is the field called Appreciative Inquiry (AI), which focuses on analyzing successes rather than failures. For instance, an AI practitioner who is investigating customer-service problems wouldn’t ask, “What can we do to minimize client anger and complaints?” Instead, she’d ask, “When have customers been most pleased with their service, and what can we apply from those moments of success?” Tom Krattenmaker, a practitioner of AI, says, “Positive stories, unlike data or lists, stir imaginations and generate excitement about the company and what it is capable of accomplishing in the future.” See Tom Krattenmaker (2005), “Change Through Appreciative Inquiry,” in Managing Change to Reduce Resistance, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, pp. 49–58; the quotation is on p. 55.

Chapter Three

Chronic hip pain. The study that showed physicians were more likely to refer a patient to surgery when confronted with two medication options is Donald A. Redelmeier and Eldar Shafir (1995), “Medical Decision Making in Situations That Offer Multiple Alternatives,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 273, 302–305.

Decision paralysis. Some of the language in our discussion of decision paralysis first appeared in a column we wrote for Fast Company (November 2007), “Analysis of Paralysis,”

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/120/analysis-of-paralysis.html (accessed May 17, 2009).

Shopping is a lot more tiring. Researchers have shown that the focused decisions you have to make while you’re shopping actually deplete your self-control. What saps your control is not the time you spend shopping; it’s the number of choices you have to make. That must be why Decembers are so bad for overindulging in food and drink. See Kathleen D. Vohs, Roy F. Baumeister et al. (2008), “Making Choices Impairs Subsequent Self-Control: A Limited-Resource Account of Decision Making, Self-Regulation, and Active Initiative,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 883–898.

Scene 1, 2, 3. See Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper (2000), “When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995–1006. See Sheena Sethi-Iyengar, G. Huberman, and W. Jiang (2004), “How Much Choice Is Too Much? Contributions to 401(k) Retirement Plans,” in O. S. Mitchell and S. Utkus (eds.), Pension Design and Structure: New Lessons from Behavioral Finance (pp. 83–97), Oxford: Oxford University Press. The dating study is Ray Fisman, Sheena S. Iyengar, E. Kamenica, and Itamar Simonson (2006), “Gender Differences in Mate Selection: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(2), 673–697. Sheena S. Iyengar’s book How We Choose: The Subtext of Life (New York: Twelve Publishers) is coming out around May 2010, and you should look for it.

Barry Schwartz. See Schwartz (2003), The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less, New York: Ecco, p. 2.

America Latina Logistica (ALL). The case of the Brazilian railroad is described in Donald N. Sull, Andre Delben Silva, and Fernando Martins (January 14, 2004), America Latina Logistica, Harvard Business School Case 9-804-139, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Food Pyramid. The Food Pyramid graphic and data are from the site http://mypyramid.gov/pyramid/index.html.

The Critical Path. See Michael Beer, Russell A. Eisenstat, and Bert Spector (1990), The Critical Path to Corporate Renewal.

Boston: Harvard Business School Press. The contrast between outcome goals and behavioral goals is on p. 244.

110 parents who had abused their children. The results of the study are described in Mark Chaffin, Jane F. Silovsky, Beverly Funderburk et al. (2004), “Parent-Child Interaction Therapy with Physically Abusive Parents: Efficacy for Reducing Future Abuse Reports,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 72, 500–510. Most of the quotations are from an interview between Chip Heath and Beverly Funderburk in October 2008.

Miner County. The story of the revitalization of Miner County is based on two sources: (1) interviews between Chip Heath, Randy Parry, and Kathy Callies in May 2008 and May 2009 and (2) an article by Jonathan Eig (March 27, 2005), “As Farmers Dwindle, Towns Make Best of What’s Left,” Wall Street Journal. Eig’s article is especially interesting because his editors originally sent him to write a “turn out the lights” story about the last years of Miner County. But the community didn’t know that, and residents shared with him the remarkable changes of the previous few years. Eig was impressed, and the story he wrote was guardedly optimistic, not the bleak tale he’d originally envisioned. His editors were so shocked by his optimistic tone that they rejected his first few drafts because his story was so far from what they had been expecting.

Chapter Four

Crystal Jones. Jones’s story is from a training manual for young teachers who are going to teach in some of the toughest school districts in the country. Jones’s story is described on pp. 26, 50–51, and the other goal is quoted on p. 37 of Teaching as Leadership (2008), Washington, DC: Teach For America.

BHAG. See James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras (1994), Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, New York: Harper Business. The examples of BHAGs are from James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras (September–October 1996), “Building Your Company’s Vision,” Harvard Business Review, pp. 65–77.

Laura Esserman. For Esserman’s story, see Victoria Chang and Jeffrey Pfeffer (2003), “Laura Esserman (A),” Stanford Graduate

School of Business Case Study OB-42A. Quotations not in the case study are from interviews that Chip Heath conducted with Laura Esserman and Meredithe Mendelsohn in May 2009.

“15% return on equity.” See Michael Beer, Russell A. Eisenstat, and Bert Spector (1990), The Critical Path to Organizational Renewal. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, p. 85.

Judy Samuelson. This Clinic is from an interview between Dan Heath and Judy Samuelson in May 2009.

BP’s “No dry holes.” Industry history, quotations, and the description of BP’s “No dry holes” goal are from interviews by Chip Heath with Pete Callagher, Jim Farnsworth, and Ian Vann in 2005.

Jack Rivkin. The turnaround of the Shearson Lehman research department is described in Ashish Nanda, Boris Groysberg, and Lauren Prusiner (January 23, 2006), Lehman Brothers (A): Rise of the Equity Research Department, Harvard Business School Case Study 9-906-034, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

Chapter Five

Robyn Waters, Target. Waters’s story is from an interview by Chip Heath with Robyn Waters in November 2008.

In The Heart of Change. See John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen (2002), The Heart of Change, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, p. x. The quote about the advantages of analytical tools is on p. 12.

HopeLab Re-Mission. The backstory of the Re-Mission game is from an interview by Chip Heath with HopeLab research director Steve Cole in November 2008. The HopeLab clinical test of the Re-Mission game is described in Pamela M. Kato, Steve W. Cole, Andrew S. Bradlyn, and Brad H. Pollock (2008), “A Video Game Improves Behavioral Outcomes in Adolescents and Young Adults with Cancer: A Randomized Trial,” Pediatrics, 122, e305–e317. The doubling of odds for a 20 percent increase in compliance is indicated by Jean L. Richardson et al. (1990), “The Effect of Compliance with Treatment on Survival Among Patients with Hematologic Malignancies,” Journal of Clinical Oncology, 8(2), 356–364.

“Where’d you find six dumb people?” See M. A. Cusumano and R. W. Selby (1995), Microsoft Secrets, New York: Free Press. The Microsoft usability test lab is described on p. 379. The problem of programmers having more advanced machines than their customers is discussed on p. 347.

Fake Weatherman. See Peter Borkenau and Anette Liebler (1993), “Convergence of Stranger Ratings of Personality and Intelligence with Self-Ratings, Partner Ratings, and Measured Intelligence,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 65, 546–553. The correlation between self-ratings and measured IQ was .29, accounting for 8 percent of the variance. The correlation between stranger ratings and IQ was .38, accounting for 14 percent of the variance. Strangers thus did about 66 percent better than people themselves.

We’re all lousy self-evaluators. The research studies on self-evaluation and the examples of positive illusions are summarized in David Dunning, Chip Heath, and Jerry Suls (2004), “Flawed Self-Assessment: Implications for Health, Education, and the Workplace,” Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 5, 69–106. David Dunning also has some interesting research on what he calls the “unskilled and unaware” phenomenon. The worst self-evaluators are people who lack skill. For instance, people who don’t have a sense of humor are most likely to think their bad jokes are funny, and people who lack skill in grammar are most likely to confidently ignore a useful correction. When the research came out, dozens of newspaper articles appeared illustrating the “unskilled and unaware” phenomenon with a discussion of workplace bosses, a topic not covered in the original research article.

Attila the Accountant. Sim Sitkin, who is now a professor of management at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, told this story to Chip Heath in May 2009.

“In the absence of a dire threat.” See David A. Garvin and Michael A. Roberto (February 2005), “Change Through Persuasion,” Harvard Business Review, pp. 1–8, reprinted in Harvard Business School Press (2006), Harvard Business Review on Leading Through Change (pp. 85–104), Boston: Harvard Business School

Press. The “dire threat” quote is on p. 86; the “deathbed” quote is on p. 87. 119 Rock bottom. See Ruth Maxwell (1986), Breakthrough: What to Do When Alcoholism or Chemical Dependency Hits Close to Home, New York: Ballantine Books; the conference incident is on pp. 4–5.

The burning platform. See William E. Smith and Helen Gibson (July 18, 1988), “Disaster ‘Screaming like a Banshee,’” Time, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967917,00.html (accessed May 28, 2009).

Glengarry Glen Ross. See David Mamet (1984), Glengarry Glen Ross: A Play, New York: Grove Press.

What Good Are Positive Emotions? See Barbara L. Fredrickson (1998), “What Good Are Positive Emotions?” Review of General Psychology, 2, 300–319. Among the studies Frederickson cites: Doctors experiencing positive emotions solve a tricky medical dilemma more flexibly and quickly. Students in a positive mood devise more innovative solutions to a technical challenge. Negotiators in a positive state of mind are more successful and creative negotiators; they find “win-win” solutions more often. Positive emotion also makes it easier for people to make connections among dissimilar ideas, and it makes them less likely to slip into an “us versus them” mentality. All of these tendencies—flexible problem solving, innovative solutions, less political infighting—would be very useful in a change situation.

Chapter Six

A study of hotel maids. See Alia J. Crum and Ellen J. Langer (2007), “MindSet Matters: Exercise and the Placebo Effect,” Psychological Science, 18, 165–171.

Car-wash loyalty cards. See J. C. Nunes and X. Dreze (2006), “The Endowed Progress Effect: How Artificial Advancement Increases Effort,” Journal of Consumer Research, 32, 504–512.

50 percent of the money in the bag. This practice was discussed in an interview between Chip Heath and Jan Alfieri, of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, in February 2009.

Alfieri says that this money is usually raised in what fund-raising professionals call the “quiet period” before the campaign is announced publicly. Historically the amount was 50 percent, but some recent campaigns raised as much as 70 percent. Alfieri says, “All this is calculated to give donors the assurance the campaign will succeed.”

Shrink the change. Thousands of studies in psychology indicate that people do better when they have high situational self-confidence, or self-efficacy. People with high self-efficacy perform better on sports, academic, and work tasks; they persevere longer; and they rebound better when they encounter a setback.

How do you build this kind of self-efficacy? Most research on self-efficacy is correlational so it can’t distinguish (a) self-confidence as a mind set that can be grown from (b) self-confidence that arises for other reasons. Michael Jordan may report high self-efficacy in trying a new sport, but that self-efficacy may be due to his physical abilities, not to his mindset. The literature on self-efficacy suggests a couple of ways to build self-efficacy as a mindset—for example, by experiencing personal success in a difficult situation or by seeing a role model experience success. Those solutions, however, may be less available in a time of change when personal success and role models are in short supply.

Some research suggests that shrinking the change may provide a good game plan for building self-efficacy. Al Bandura and Dale Schunk tried to teach subtraction skills to elementary school kids who had been identified as having “gross deficits in arithmetic.” On an initial 25-question subtraction test, two-thirds of their kids got less than one problem correct. The researchers developed seven modules to teach key subtraction skills (such as how to borrow from the next column). Each module outlined a principle, gave two examples, and provided six pages of problems to be worked by the students. All kids were brought in for seven 30-minute, self-paced sessions with no coaching from a teacher. One group was given a big, distant goal of completing the seven modules by the end of the seventh session. Another group was given a close-by, shrink-the-change goal of completing one module during each session. On the final test, the proximal-goals group

solved 81 percent of the problems, and the distal-goals groups solved only 45 percent. Later, after the study sessions were over, kids were given a free play period and two sets of exercises to entertain themselves—some subtraction problems and some “solve the code” puzzles. The kids with distant goals did only one subtraction problem on average. But the kids who built self-efficacy through proximal goals—even though they initially hated math just as much—solved fourteen subtraction problems on average during the free play period. Stretch goals (or BHAGs) may be fine when you already have strong self-efficacy. But Bandura and Shunk’s study suggests that when you’re building self-efficacy, you might want to shrink the change. See Albert Bandura and Dale H. Schunk (1981), “Cultivating Competence, Self-Efficacy, and Intrinsic Interest Through Proximal Self-Motivation,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 586–598.

5-Minute Room Rescue. Check out http://www.flylady.net/pages/FLYFaq.asp (accessed December 17, 2008).

Personal finance guru Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey describes the Farrars’ situation and his debt-fighting techniques in Ramsey (2007), The Total Money Makeover, Nashville, Thomas Nelson. The Farrars’ story is on pp. 116–117. We’ve looked at a lot of financial plans by various gurus, and Ramsey’s strikes us as the most consistent with the psychological principles of change we review in Switch. Ramsey’s own experience is on this page, and the “motivation is more important than math” quote is on this page.

Steve Kelman … procurement reform. See Steve Kelman (2005), Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Kelman disputes the classic assumption in the organizational change literature that people resist change. He argues that in many situations there is a pent-up demand for change that merely needs to be “unleashed” by top leaders; he makes a compelling—and inspiring—argument that this is the case. The chocolate-chip cookie milspecs is on p. 4. The “set other changes in motion” quote is on p. 83. The story of the credit card and past performance pledges is on pp. 82–88. The A grade from the Brookings Institution is on p. 4.

$320 billion in discetionary purchases. The dollar amount is from Kelman, Unleashing Change, p. 3. The comparison is from the Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2004–2005, Washington, DC; U.S. Census Bureau. Table 642 reports the 2002 output of “computer and electronic products” as $139.9 billion and the output of “motor vehicles, trailers, & parts” as $119.3 billion. So there’s actually room left over.

A miracle scale ranging from 0 to 10. See also the discussion of the miracle scale in Steve de Shazer, Yvonne Dolan, Harry Korman, Terry Trepper, Eric McCollum, and Insoo Kim Berg (2007), More than Miracles: The State of the Art of Solution-Focused Brief Therapy, New York: Haworth Press, pp. 61–72. There’s a great example of the scaling question in practice in the case study of Lee the dock manager in Scott D. Miller and Insoo Kim Berg (1995), The Miracle Method: A Radically New Approach to Problem Drinking, New York: Norton, pp. 39–59.

Track patients’ self-reported progress. Once the 0 to 10 scale is set up, it becomes easier for clients to notice and start talking about even small improvements toward their goal. When a therapist identifies a substantial change on the scale—say, a half-point improvement toward the goal—the therapist will ask, “How did you do it?” Therapists are trained to be persistent in asking the how question several times: “It’s important to be persistent even if, and oftentimes particularly if, the client seems to be struggling a bit at first to formulate an answer. The question implies the client did something that was helpful; things didn’t get better without a reason.” Some therapists call this process positive blaming. Try it with your kids when they make an improvement. See discussion around p. 63 of de Shazer et al., More than Miracles.

NFL coach Bill Parcells. See Bill Parcells (2001), “The Tough Work of Turning Around a Team,” reprinted in Harvard Business Review on Turnarounds (pp. 105–114), Boston: Harvard Business School Press; the quotation is on pp. 111–112.

UCLA coach John Wooden. Quoted in Robert Maurer (2004), One Small Step Can Change Your Life: The Kaizen Way, New York: Workman, p. 11.

Small wins. See Weick (1984), “Small Wins: Redefining the Scale of Social Problems,” American Psychologist, 39(1), p. 46.

David Allen. See Allen (2001), Getting Things Done, New York: Viking Penguin, p. 239.

Al-Anon. See Al-Anon Family Groups (1995), How Al-Anon Works for Families and Friends of Alcoholics, Virginia Beach, VA: Al-Anon Family Groups; the quotation is on p. 73.

George kissed Paula. See Michele Weiner-Davis (1992), Divorce Busting, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 92.

Chapter Seven

College student Paul Butler. The facts of the Butler story are from an interview Dan Heath conducted with Butler in October 2008. For a short version of the story and a photo of Butler, go to http://rareconservation.org/about/page.php?subsection=History (accessed May 28, 2009).

Pride campaigns. Information about Rare’s Pride campaigns is available on Rare’s website: http://www.rareconservation.org. Rare now focuses more on protecting precious areas, such as reefs and forests, than on preserving particular species. But Rare conservationists continue to work on precious areas by rallying the public around what they call a “charismatic species” that symbolizes specific areas that need protection. For instance, the Napoleon wrasse fish was the charismatic species in the waters surrounding the Togian Islands of Indonesia, which contain 262 species of coral and countless other species that depend on the coral.

James March … identity model. See March (1994), A Primer on Decision Making: How Decisions Happen, New York: Free Press, especially ch. 2, where March provides a beautiful contrast of consequence-based decision making and decision making through identity. For a longer treatment of this topic, see Chip Heath and Dan Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, New York: Random House, 2007, pp. 182–199, including the story of the hugely successful “Don’t Mess with Texas” antilittering campaign, which was a textbook application of identity.

Concerned about the rapid turnover among its nurses. For more on this story and on Appreciative Inquiry, see Tom Krattenmaker (2005), “Change Through Appreciative Inquiry,” in Managing Change to Reduce Resistance (pp. 49–58), Boston: Harvard Business School Press. The Wood quotation is on p. 57. The improvement statistics are from Diana Whitney, Amanda Trosten-Bloom, and David Cooperrider (2003), The Power of Appreciative Inquiry: A Practical Guide to Positive Change, New York: Berrett-Koehler, pp. 94–95.

Brasilata. Background information comes from the Brasilata website (accessed February 13, 2009). Revenue in 2007 was 384,102,000 Brazilian reals, per this page: http://www.brasilata.com.br/en/financas_resultados.php. The number of ideas per inventor is from http://www.brasilata.com.br/en/projeto_historico.php. For the car-bumper inspired can, go to http://www.brasilata.com.br/en/prod_18un_b.php. For the energy-saving idea stories, go to http://www.brasilata.com.br/en/projecto_fatos_relevantes.php. All conversions between U.S. dollars and Brazilian reals were calculated on February 13, 2009.

Citizens for Safe Driving. See Jonathan L. Freedman and Scott C. Fraser (1966), “Compliance Without Pressure: The Foot-in-the-Door Technique,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 4, 195–203. This study started a whole field that investigates “foot-in-the-door” techniques. Most of these techniques seem to work because they form (or reform) people’s identity. For an insightful analysis of these techniques, under the label “commitment and consistency,” see Robert Cialdini (2000), Influence: Science and Practice, 4th ed., New York: Allyn & Bacon, ch. 3. For the “Once [the home owner] has agreed …” quote, see Freedman and Fraser, “Compliance Without Pressure,” p. 201.

“Fixed mindset” … “growth mindset.” This quiz and all the fixed/growth-mindset material come from Carol S. Dweck (2006), Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, New York: Random House. The quiz is on p. 13. Every teacher, coach, manager, and parent should read Dweck’s book.

The brain is like a muscle. See Lisa S. Blackwell, Kali H. Trzesniewski, and Carol S. Dweck (2007), “Implicit Theories

of Intelligence Predict Achievement Across an Adolescent Transition: A Longitudinal Study and an Intervention,” Child Development, 78, 246–263.

Dramatic transformations. The quotation is from Dweck, Mindsets, p. 59.

“Failure in the middle.” See Rosabeth Moss Kanter (November 23, 2003), Leadership for Change: Enduring Skills for Change Masters, Harvard Business School Note 9-304-06, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, p. 11, based on her 2001 book Evolve! Succeeding in the Digital Culture of Tomorrow, Boston: Harvard Business School Press.

“Three steps forward and two steps back.” See Michele Weiner-Davis (1992), Divorce Busting, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 212.

Amy Edmondson. See Edmondson (2003), “Framing for Learning: Lessons in Successful Technology Implementation,” California Management Review, 45, 34–54. To protect her research participants, Edmondson used pseudonyms for the hospitals and the medical personnel.

Recover fully in three weeks instead of two months. The MICS recovery statistics are from Barbara Kuhn Timby and Nancy E. Smith (2006), Introductory Medical-Surgical Nursing, 9th ed., New York: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, p. 532.

A famous story about IBM. See Paul B. Carroll (1993), Big Blues, New York: Crown; the quotation is on p. 51.

Molly Howard. Dan Heath interviewed Molly Howard in August 2008. The Principal of the Year award is described in Del Jones (March 16, 2008), “USA’s Top Principal Could Teach CEOs a Thing or Two,” USA Today, http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2008-03-16-principal-advice_N.htm (accessed February 6, 2009). Howard told Heath, “Companies can pick and choose the raw materials. Public education accepts all. We are a zero-reject business. That’s a big, big difference.”

Chapter Eight

W. Edwards Deming. See Deming (1982), Out of the Crisis. Boston: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Center for Advanced Engineering Study. The fires story is on p. 325.

Fundamental Attribution Error. See Lee Ross (1977), “The Intuitive Psychologist and His Shortcomings: Distortions in the Attribution Process,” in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (vol. 10), New York: Academic Press. Echoes of the Fundamental Attribution Error are found in the conventional wisdom of many fields. Marketers talk about finding the right psychographic for a consumer good. Health psychologists talk about the importance of targeting people who are “ready” to stop smoking. Human resources people talk about getting the right people on the bus. Change experts talk about classifying the three types of people in any change effort: Believers, Fence Sitters, and Resisters. But social psychology is filled with examples that show situations trump personal attributes. For example, the food-drive study discussed in section 2 of this chapter says that you’re three times better-off with a food-drive Resister with a map than with a true Believer without one.

Marriage therapist Michele Weiner-Davis. See Weiner-Davis (1992), Divorce Busting, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 42. The kind of thinking fostered by the Fundamental Attribution Error has been shown to hurt marriages. Research has shown that couples experience more distress when they insist on attributing their relationship problems to traitlike characteristics of their partner that are global and stable. These attributions lead to more negative conversations and serious fights when couples try to work through their problems. See Norman Epstein, Donald H. Baucom, and Lynn A. Rankin (1993), “Treatment of Marital Conflict: A Cognitive-Behavioral Approach,” Clinical Psychology Review, 13, 45–57.

Distinguish “saints” from “jerks.” The food-drive study is described in L. Ross and R. E. Nisbett (1991), The Person and the

Situation: Perspectives of Social Psychology, New York: McGraw-Hill, pp. 132–133.

Peter Bregman. The source of this account is Bregman’s blog, “The Easiest Way to Change People’s Behavior” (March 11, 2009), http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/bregman/2009/03/the-easiest-way-to.html, and an interview between Chip Heath and Bregman in May 2009.

Becky Richards … “medication vests.” This story is based on an interview between Chip Heath and Becky Richards in June 2008 and a conference presentation by Richards at the BEACON collaborative in San Francisco in April 2008.

“Sterile cockpit” rule. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterile_Cockpit_Rule (accessed July 23, 2009). The rule was developed by the FAA in 1981 after investigations showed that some aircraft crashes during the 1970s were caused when flight crews were distracted from their instruments by idle chatter in the cockpit.

The IT group … “sterile cockpit.” See Leslie A. Perlow (1997), Finding Time: How Corporations, Individuals, and Families Can Benefit from New Work Practices, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. The quotations about the results of the “quiet hours” experiment are on p. 126. Perlow conducted this study for her graduate school dissertation. As an outsider to the company, and only a student at the time (she’s now a senior professor at Harvard), Perlow was responsible for a simple intervention that the division vice president declared “a new benchmark”!

Amanda Tucker. This story is based on an example Tucker recounted in May 2009 in a Stanford Graduate School of Business class on “How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.” Used with her permission.

Haddon Matrix. For an overview of the Haddon Matrix, see a presentation online produced by the San Francisco Department of Health (which in turn draws on work by Carolyn Fowler at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health): http://www.ccsf.edu/Resources/Faculty/jeskinne/documents/HAD2Complete.pdf (accessed June 14, 2009). Our thanks to Carolyn Fowler and Eric Tash for their insights on the Haddon Matrix.

Rackspace. The Rackspace story and quotations are from two interviews between Dan Heath and Graham Weston, conducted October 2007 and February 2009. Revenue growth data from internal company data were supplied to the authors.

Chapter Nine

Mike Romano. Mike’s name and a few irrelevant details were altered to protect his identity. The information comes from an interview between the soldier and research assistant Elaine Bartlett in January 2009.

The White House was so troubled. The case study of drug use by soldiers before and after the Vietnam War is in Lee N. Robins, John E. Helzer, and Darlene H. Davis (1975), “Narcotic Use in Southeast Asia and Afterward,” Archives of General Psychiatry, 32, 955–961.

36 percent of the successful changes. See Todd F. Heatherton and Patricia A. Nichols (1994), “Personal Accounts of Successful Versus Failed attempts at Life Change,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 664–675.

Peter Gollwitzer. Gollwitzer’s summary of his work on triggers—Gollwitzer calls them “implementation intentions”—can be found in Gollwitzer (1999), “Implementation Intentions: Strong Effects of Simple Plans,” American Psychologist, 54, 493–503. Most of the studies described in this section are referenced in that article. The quotation about “passing control to the environment” is on p. 495.

Recovering from hip-or knee-replacement surgery. See Sheina Orbell and Paschal Sheeran (2000), “Motivational and Volitional Processes in Action Initiation: A Field Study of the Role of Implementation Intentions,” Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 30, 780–797.

Recent meta-study. Peter M. Gollwitzer, Paschal Sheeran, and Thomas L. Webb (2005), “Implementation Intentions and Health Behaviors,” in M. Conner and P. Norman (eds.), Predicting Health Behavior: Research and Practice with Social Cognition Models (2nd edition). Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.

Stand-up meeting. See William G. Pagonis with Jeffrey L. Cruikshank (1992), Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War, Boston: Harvard Business School Press; the quotation is on pp. 185–186. For the use of stand-up meetings in software development, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting (accessed May 27, 2009). Agile programmers disdain the typical IT style of delivering a whole program all at once (and typically late). Instead, they collaborate on a series of quick prototypes, each of which receives customer input, in the hope of catching problems early and preventing costly rework later.

Two cups of soup each day. See Barbara J. Rolls, Liane S. Roe, Amanda M. Beach, and Panny M. Kris-Etherton (2005), “Provision of Foods Differing in Energy Density Affects Long-Term Weight Loss,” Obesity Research, 13, 1052–1060.

Natalie Elder. Dan Heath interviewed Natalie Elder in August 2008.

The humble checklist. Parts of the section on checklists originally appeared in our Fast Company column (March 2008), “The Heroic Checklist,” http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/123/heroic-checklist.html.

Holy Grail of checklists. See Atul Gawande (December 10, 2007), “The Checklist: If Something So Simple Can Transform Intensive Care, What Else Can It Do?” New Yorker, pp. 86–101.

Checklists educate people about what’s best. We’re not advocating the kind of checklists that are associated with some quality improvement processes—for example, the elaborate procedure manuals compiled for ISO 9000 certification. To educate people about what’s best and to help them avoid blind spots, a checklist has to be simple enough that people will actually use it. The pre-flight checklist for a 747 is less than one page long. If your checklist requires more than one sheet of paper, you need to simplify it.

Chronic parking problem. For the parking study, see C. F. Gettys et al. (1987), “An Evaluation of Human Act Generation Performance,” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 39, 23–51.

“Standardize on the mission-critical elements.” Dan Heath interviewed Dr. Pronovost in January 2008.

Chapter Ten

A stream of smoke. See Latané and Darley (1968), “Group Inhibition of Bystander Intervention in Emergencies,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 10, 215–221. Latané and Darley’s work on bystander nonintervention is one of the cleverest streams of research in social psychology. Because it’s a classic, professors of social psychology teach it often, and they recommend to their students a simple technique to overcome nonintervention: Point to someone and give that person a specific instruction such as “You call 911.” It’s not that people aren’t willing to help. It’s just that the Rider is caught in an infinite loop, trying to look at everyone else for cues about how to behave, and those cues aren’t coming.

Obesity is contagious. See Nicholas A. Christakis and James H. Fowler (2007). “The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years,” New England Journal of Medicine, 357, 370–379. The quotation is from Gina Kolata (June 25, 2007), “Study Says Obesity Can Be Contagious,” New York Times. Be on the lookout for Christakis and Fowler’s book Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives, New York: Little, Brown and Company (2009).

Drinking is contagious. See Michael Kremer and Dan Levy (2005), “Peer Effects and Alcohol Use Among College Students,” Working paper, Harvard University.

Guests at the hotel reuse their towels. See Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, and Robert B. Cialdini (2008), Yes! 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive, New York: Free Press, ch. 1.

Gerard Cachon. Chip Heath interviewed Gerard Cachon in August 2008 and May 2009.

Designated driver. Statistics are from Harvard University’s School of Public Health, http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/research/chc/harvard-alcohol-project/ (accessed June 14, 2009). The Grant Tinker quotations are from Nikki Finke (December 29,

1988), “A TV Crusade on Drunken Driving,” Los Angeles Times, p. 5E.

“Sugar-daddy” relationships. Statistics about cross-generational relationships are from Population Reference Bureau (2007), Addressing Cross-Generational Sex: A Desk Review of Research and Programs. The American teens statistic is on p. 16; the statistic for sub-Saharan Africa is on p. 9.

Fataki. We led the workshop that developed the Fataki idea and the first three radio commercials. A video of Chip Heath talking about the work on the day the first radio spots were recorded is on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer website: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/africa/july-dec07/aids_11-30.html. Dan Heath was, at that moment, Photoshopping a prototype of the first Fataki billboards.

Lou Gerstner … “Culture … is the game.” See Louis V. Gerstner (2002), Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?, New York: HarperBusiness, p. 182.

Katherine Kellogg. Thanks to Kellogg’s careful work, this is one of the most closely observed change efforts in the entire organizational behavior literature. See Katherine C. Kellogg (2008), “Not Faking It: Making Real Change in Response to Regulation at Two Surgical Teaching Hospitals,” Working paper, MIT.

Chapter Eleven

Skateboarding monkey. Parts of the section on Amy Sutherland and exotic-animal training originally appeared in our Fast Company column (April 2008), “Your Boss Is a Monkey,” http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/124/your-boss-is-a-monkey.html (accessed June 14, 2009).

“What Shamu Taught Me.” The New York Times article is from June 25, 2006, and can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/fashion/25love.html (accessed May 17, 2009). Also see Amy Sutherland (2008), What Shamu Taught Me About Life, Love, and Marriage: Lessons for People from Animals and Their Trainers, New York: Random House. The “verbal grooming”

quotation and other details are from an interview between Dan Heath and Amy Sutherland in January 2008.

Psychologist Alan Kazdin. See Kazdin (2008), The Kazdin Method for Parenting the Defiant Child: With No Pills, No Therapy, No Contest of Wills, New York: Houghton Mifflin. The quotations are from p. 34.

Change isn’t an event; it’s a process. Chip Heath thanks Bo Brockman for teaching this idea.

Steven Kelman. On pp. 22–24, Kelman explains why mere exposure and cognitive dissonance may cause people to resist change. Then, in an insightful analysis on pp. 123–127, he shows how the same factors make change hard to stop once they get going. See Kelman (2005), Unleashing Change: A Study of Organizational Renewal in Government, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press.