New Book on Org. Change --> "Switch" by Chip & Dan Heath

1. I just finished reading the following book (which I discovered while writing a short article on organizational change):

"Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard"

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385528752

2. It's one of the newest books on organizational change (and it's currently a New York Times Best Seller)!

3. The authors introduce an evolutionary, bottom-up three step paradigm (for introducing sustainable change with little formal authority or resources):

I. Direct the Rider:

a. Follow the bright spots (Investigate what's working and clone it).

b. Script the critical moves (Formulate a vision with prescriptive behaviors).

c. Point to the destination (Establish lofty, hard-to-reach performance goals).

II. Motivate the Elephant:

a. Find the feeling (Appeal to the right-brained majority with visual, qualitative arguments).

b. Shrink the change (Break the change into smaller chunks).

c. Grow your people (Instill a sense of pride, self-esteem, uniqueness, distinctiveness, and extraordinariness among individuals).

III. Shape the Path:

a. Tweak the environment (Reduce complexity and simplify the change as much as possible).

b. Build habits (Create simple recipes for action, execution, and behavior).

c. Rally the herd (Get as many people involved as possible and scale the change up and out).

The case studies are particularly moving from cover-to-cover (which generally involve people helping people by starting small and humble and snowballing into change on an unprecedented scale) ...

(Chapter 5 had me rolling in aisles because I was laughing so hard, the book included a few software development examples, and several of the stories were far too close for comfort ...)

The lead author has a PhD in Psychology from Stanford and the co-author has an MBA from Harvard. This book is about popular, contemporary theories of psychology as they apply to organizational change. This goes against the mainstream of leading computer gurus who are trying to turn software development into a mathematical science as was tried in the 1970s. Economics reigns over psychology in business schools and architecture also reigns over psychology in engineering schools. Many systems engineering students don't understand how psychology applies to computer system design and development. We've been fighting this battle for over a century and it seems like we haven't learned anything (i.e., humans are not computers, yet). This must be Armageddon where the (mathematical) beast will be unleashed to make war against the (psychological) world ...

(The people in the "Switch" case studies, no matter how insignificant or under-capitalized, had some level of explicit or implicit organizational authority/acceptance to institute change. I've been a change consultant for over 25 years and have faced almost insurmountable challenges for advocating even the most basic or fundamental, but "unwanted" changes. I've since learned that advocating change only when it is invited serves me well. Using this principle, I've been far more successful. In other words, don't be naive when it comes to advocating change in politically-supercharged environments, which includes most of them. The provost of one of the world's largest universities was instantly fired by the school's president when he recommended allowing professors to pursue research and consulting opportunities in addition to their full-time teaching duties. This is the type of phenomenon that is rarely acknowledged, or simply unmentioned by even the world's best change consultants. While I agree with the techniques and findings described in “Switch,” readers must beware of unbridled enthusiasm and consider a healthy dose of political reality when advocating even the most basic organizational changes when you’re poor, hungry, and desperate. In other words, "beggars can't be choosers" ...)

(Here is an illustration of their groundbreaking new framework, http://davidfrico.com/switch.pdf ...)