Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

With the online tracking sheet, Cachon was using the hotel-towel strategy. He was publicizing the group norm. Other people are getting their work done on time. Why won’t you?

Gollwitzer says that when people predecide, they “pass the control of their behavior on to the environment.”

things to change, somebody somewhere has to start acting differently. Maybe it’s you, maybe it’s your team. Picture that person (or people). Each has an emotional Elephant side and a rational Rider side. You’ve got to reach both. And you’ve also got to clear the way for them to succeed. In short, you must do three things: → DIRECT the Rider FOLLOW

The most important lesson we can learn from Kazdin and the animal trainers is this: Change isn’t an event; it’s a process.

The answer may sound strange: You need to create the expectation of failure—not the failure of the mission itself, but failure en route.

We all talk about the power of peer pressure, but “pressure” may be overstating the case. Peer perception is plenty. In this entire book, you might not find a single statement that is so rigorously supported by empirical research as this one: You are doing things because you see your peers do them.

Peter Gollwitzer argues that the value of action triggers resides in the fact that we are preloading a decision. Dropping off Anna at school triggers the next action, going to the gym. There’s no cycle of conscious deliberation. By preloading the decision, we conserve the Rider’s self-control.

Action triggers simply have to be specific enough and visible enough to interrupt people’s normal stream of consciousness.

The next time your team resolves to act in a new way, challenge team members to take it further. Have them specify when and where they’re going to put the plan in motion. Get them to set an action trigger.