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CHIP HEATH THE BESTSELLING AUTHORS $26.00 Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that's built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems-the rational mind and the emotional mind-that compete for con trol The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine This tension can doom a change effort-but if it is overcome, change can come quickly In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people -employees and managers, parents and nurses-have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: • The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients (see page 242) • The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping (see page 130) • The manager who transformed a lackadaisi cal customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service (see page 199) In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterin tuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can (continul!d on back flap) (continu.dfromfrontj/Ap) effect transformative change Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pat tern you can use to make the changes that mat ter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline CHIP HEATH is a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University He lives in Los Gatos, California DAN HEATH is a senior fellow at Duke University's Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneur ship (CASE) Previously, he was a researcher and case writer at Harvard Business School, as well as the cofounder of a college textbook publishing firm called Thinkwell Dan lives in Raleigh, North Carolina The Heath broth ers write a monthly column for Fast Company magazine www.heathbrothers.com Also available as an eBook and on audio from Random House Jackel design: w G COOKMAN Jacket phOiograph: JEFFREY COOLIDGE/GETTY IMAGES Author phorogrlliph: AMY SURDACKI Broadway Books New York· 2/10 'NWW.broadwaybusinessbooks.com Printed in the U.S.A SWITCH H OW TO CH ANGE T H INGS WHEN CH ANGE IS H ARQ CHIP HEATH and DAN HEATH Broadway Books New York Copyright © 2010 by Chip Heath and Dan Heath All rights reserved Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York www.crownpublishing.com BROADWAY BOOKS and the Broadway Books colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Heath, Chip Switch: how to change things when change is hard / Chip Heath and Dan Heath.-lst ed l Change (Psychology) I Heath, Dan, 1973-11 Title BF637.C4H43 201O 303.4-dc22 2009027814 ISBN 978-0-385-52875-7 Printed in the United States of America 10 First Edition C o ntents Three Surprises About Change D I R E C T T H E R I DE R Find the Bright Spots 27 Script the Critical Moves 49 Point to the Destination 73 M OT I VA T E T H E ELEP H A NT Find the Feeling 01 Shrink the Change 24 Grow Your People 49 S H APE T H E PA T H Tweak the Environment Build Habits Rally the Herd 79 203 225 11 Keep the Switch Going 250 How to Make a Switch 259 Overcoming Obstacles 261 Next Steps 265 Recommendations for Additional Reading Notes 269 Acknowledgments Index 295 293 267 Three Surprises About Change One Saturday in 2000, some unsuspecting moviegoers showed up at a suburban theater in Chicago to catch a :05 p.m mati nee of Mel Gibson's action flick Payback They were handed a soft drink and a free bucket of popcorn and were asked to stick around after the movie to answer a few questions about the con cession stand These movie fans were unwitting participants in a study of irrational eating behavior There was something unusual about the popcorn they re ceived It was wretched In fact, it had been carefully engineered to be wretched It had been popped five days earlier and was so stale that it squeaked when you ate it One moviegoer later com pared it to Styrofoam packing peanuts, and two others, forgetting that they'd received the popcorn for free, demanded their money back Some of them got their free popcorn in a medium-size bucket, T hr e e S u r p r i s e s A b o u t C h a n g e and others got a large bucket-the sort of huge tub that looks like it might once have been an above-ground swimming pool Every person got a bucket so there'd be no need to share The re searchers responsible for the study were interested in a simple question: Would the people with bigger buckets eat more? Both buckets were so big that none of the moviegoers could finish their individual portions So the actual research question was a bit more specific: Would somebody with a larger inex haustible supply of popcorn eat more than someone with a smaller inexhaustible supply? The sneaky researchers weighed the buckets before and after the movie, so they were able to measure precisely how much pop corn each person ate The results were stunning: People with the large buckets ate 53 percent more popcorn than people with the medium size That's the equivalent of 73 more calories and ap proximately 21 extra hand-dips into the bucket Brian Wansink, the author of the study, runs the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University, and he described the results in his book Mindless Eating: "We've run other popcorn studies, and the results were always the same, however we tweaked the details It didn't matter if our moviegoers were in Pennsylvania, Illinois, or Iowa, and it didn't matter what kind of movie was showing; all of our popcorn studies led to the same conclusion People eat more when you give them a bigger container Period." No other theory explains the behavior These people weren't eating for pleasure (The popcorn was so stale it squeaked!) They weren't driven by a desire to finish their portion (Both buckets were too big to finish.) It didn't matter whether they were hungry or full The equation is unyielding: Bigger container = more eating Best of all, people refused to believe the results After the movie, the researchers told the moviegoers about the two bucket sizes and the findings of their past research The researchers asked, ... Heath, Chip Switch: how to change things when change is hard / Chip Heath and Dan Heath.-lst ed l Change (Psychology) I Heath, Dan, 1973-11 Title BF637.C4H43 201O 303.4-dc22 2009027814 ISBN 978-0-385-52875-7... into a hard change problem (convincing people to think differently) And that''s the first sur prise about change: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem This is a book to. .. can''t ever seem to get his dirty shirts into a hamper So there are hard changes and easy changes What distin guishes one from the other? In this book, we argue that success ful changes share