Switch How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath

Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath
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Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip and Dan Heath
Abstract
According to many of his readers, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard book is not just an ordinary book, but it contains sensitive popular topics in management that have been dominating many leadership conferences and books for the last couples of years. According to Dan and Chip, the person leading the change movement should always focus on three fundamental ideas. Firstly, the first idea is motivating the elephant aspect of mind function. Secondly, the idea of directing the rider is the second concept. Lastly, the idea of shaping the path is the third concept. Besides, the book also talks about popular change myths such as the bright spot myth. For years, I have been facing the inability to find time for my personal studies. Therefore, the concept in the book entirely relates to my story. There are couples of things I disliked about this book. For instance, this book is based on selling the concept of change. After reading this book, I can now comprehend various ways of tackling my personal learning challenges. The idea of transformation is the drive that will make my inabilities into something productive in my life.
Keywords: change, elephant, rider and concept
Book Summary
The book written by Dan Heath and Chip Heath is a quite elaborate book regarding highlighting various organizational, personal and societal changes.

According to many of his readers, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard book is not just an ordinary book, but it contains sensitive popular topics in management that have been dominating many leadership conferences and books for the last couples of years. The book starts with an intense overview into human psyche so as to establish the factors that cause resistance to change in many people (Health brothers, 2016). According to Dan and Chip, people should learn the principles behind minds function and capability so that they can overcome the opposing forces in issues relating to change (Heath and Health, 2010). For instance, learning our mind abilities will assist us to restore our desire and avoid being overwhelmed by our individual caution, skepticism and fear consciousness.
Consequently, the concept of change is defined differently by varying individuals. For instance, corporate consultants dwell more on organizational change that is based on change management ideologies. Secondly, personal psychologists assist in personality change development that relies on self-help concepts. Lastly, activists base their ideas of change in large scale platform that is aimed at transforming things at a societal level. Therefore, the book has focused on different types of change such as organizational, personal and societal in equal measures (Heath and Health, 2010). The concept of change begins with one single nation. For example, you may decide to assist a relative facing gambling addiction or assist your office team to reduce additional expenditures or help the neighbor`s car to function. Therefore, all these ideas are motivated by the ability of a person to decide to lead the way. When you take the lead in transformational duties in this cases, the results will be the concerned relative will avoid casino at all cost, employees will reduce wasting money in expensive hotel or transport rides, and the neighbor will often take their cars to garage for regular servicing.
According to Dan and Chip, the person leading the change movement should always focus on three fundamental ideas (Heath and Health, 2010). Firstly, the first idea is motivating the elephant aspect of mind function. In this scenario, the elephant symbolizes our instinctive emotional side that is always skittish or lazy. This is also the side that will accept a fast payoff to disregard a long-term reward. Every person has this mechanism in their mind function. The elephant mind factors are responsible for many failures in regards to transformational development. In many success situations, it involves the idea of short-term suffering in the quest for long-term reward but the elephant factors are based on always trying to avoid the pain segment, and this result in overall failure (Heath and Health, 2010).
Secondly, the idea of directing the rider is the second concept. This is based on the rational side of our mind function, and it is the side responsible for holding chooses and reins on the way forwards on regards to changes issues (Health Brothers, 2016). However, the rider concept operates under the control of precariousness that makes it inferior to the elephant factor. For instance, during mind function, there might be six tons of elephant related factors while the rider factor is only 150 pound. Therefore, it will require you to give the rider side clear objectives and directions so that it can influence the elephant side to pursue the required path (Duplantis, 2016).
Lastly, the idea of shaping the path is the third concept. This is based on highlighting how the rider often fails in the quest to shape the elephant factor into a straight path (Health Brothers, 2016). The elephant quick satisfaction for instant rewards always pull down the rider`s strength. Besides, the book also talks about popular change myths such as the bright spot myth (Duplantis, 2016). In this concept, many people always prefer ideals that are provided within organization with known people while they have the tendency of resisting ideas adopted from other places by strangers.
Concrete Response
Contrarily, I developed a video memory from my past in the process of reading this book. For years, I have been facing the inability to find time for my personal studies. Many educational modules often recommend that active students should at least dedicate two to three hour daily for individual-based learning. However, I often face the challenge of concentrating for even less than twenty minutes. This is mostly because I am always distracted by personal unplanned schedule or social scenes that encourage me to neglect disciplined individual-based studying. For years, I have dwelled in procrastination as tool to avoid regular studies.
More ever, reduced motivation is a major reason behind my shady learning behavior. For example, I may decide to finish reading a course textbook during the night but immediately after ending a page, I am entirely bored, and that results to quitting the study and doing other entertaining activities such as watching movies.
Furthermore, the stages of academic challenges in school always rise as you continue further along the education curriculum. The capacity for a student to effectively balance between individual studying plan, school work and personal activities becomes a hard thing for many students. For me, it is a problem to properly equating my studying time so as to achieve better results. In exam period, I am usually paranoid and stressed of failure and this is the root cause for many of my exam failures. In most weekend and holiday, I usually have unlimited time but lack of motivation always influence me to avoid academic related activities. I remember saying, “school work is done during school time”. Therefore, the concept in the book entire relate to my story.
Reflection
There are couples of things I disliked about this book. For instance, this book is based on selling the concept of change. More ever, the idea of selling change to readers is not a sustainable strategy for overall success of influencing change to other people. The concept of change needs to be handled through a proper overview of change management and understanding (Business balls.com, 2016). The book has failed to explain the two nature of change but instead focus on the process of influencing change.
In evaluation of change, there are certain questions that pop up such as what are the impacts of a particular change either in organization, individual or society? At what time should we prefer the elephant factor over the rider’s factor of our mind function? and what is usually the cause of failure for individuals who follow the riders long process and failure while others who use the elephant factor of short process and they succeed?. Therefore, the authors have failed to show that the long way is not always the safest because the instinct of caution and fear may save your life, business or community from potential future threats.
Besides, the authors would have made this book interesting through the reviewing additional concepts on productive changes. The nature of change is that it has its positive and negative sides. Disastrous change can results to losses while proper strategies such as involvement of concerned parties, consulting professionals and intense study of the idea is the best way of influencing change to other people (Business balls.com, 2016). Therefore, Din and chip could have added more detail to the concept of change through establishing the types of change, methods of influencing change and impact caused by specific changes.
Actions
After reading this book, I can now comprehend various ways of tackling my personal learning challenges. The idea of transformation is the drive that will make my inabilities into something productive in my life. For instance, I have faced the issue of difficulties in finding time for individual-based studies. Therefore, I will change this behavior through using a three step procedure. The book emphasizes on the notion of increasing the rider factor to over the elephant factor (Heath and Heath, 2010). Therefore, step one will be based on finding additional motivation in learning. For example, the utilization of the web-based education system can be beneficial in my study. This is because it is a study module that offers relevant resources suitable for personalized studying. For instance, it engages the student through incorporating multimedia modules of academic resources such as static graph, texts, video of televised lectures and animations that can motivate the student to learn more.
In step two, I will personally ensure my studying timetable is followed with discipline and coherence. For example, I will have to compensate for any time I procrastinate a studying time. This means I will work extra hours to make up for time I wasted the previous time. The elephant factor hates the idea of punishment and suffering (Health Brothers, 2016). Therefore, through the utilization of a proper punishment mechanism it will assist in boosting the rider factors so that future rewards can be satisfactory to me.
Lastly, the third step is to seek assistance from friends, professionals and relatives. For instance, I can seek counseling from teachers on better ways to improve my personal studying. Additionally, I can request my friends and relative to always pressure to study when they notice a bit of laxity in my behavior.
References
Business balls.com. (2016). Change Management.
Retrieved from. http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm
Duplantis, Marie Jennifer.(2016). Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard summary.
Retrieved from. http://sustainability.psu.edu/sites/default/files/documents/Six%20Minute%20Summary%20of%20Switch-%20How%20To%20Change%20Things%20When%20Change%20Is%20Hard.pdf
Health Brothers.(2016). Switch: Chapter one.
Retrieved from. http://heathbrothers.com/switch-chapter-1/
Heath, C., & Heath, D. (2010). Switch: How to change things when change is hard. New York: Broadway Books.