from the Willow Creek Leadership Summit: Craig Groeschel, pastor of Lifechurch.tv, interviews Chip and Dan Heath, authors of best-selling book Made to Stick, about their just-releasing book, Switch: How to Change When Change Is Hard.
John Heinz, of University of Virginia, talks of the human rider atop a 6-ton elephant, an image of the human rider knowing where to go, but the elephant is a big mass. When we want to change, we also have part of us that does not want to change. We want to lose weight; we also want to eat the cookie.
Crystal Jones, a 1st grade teachers in an inner-city school, wants to help students get on the path toward graduation from high school, but that goal means nothing to them. So she motivates them this way: “If you’re willing to work hard, we’re going to make you 3rd graders by the end of this year.” On the playground, those 3rd graders are like Olympic heroes. And so by partway through the year, she has the kids go through a graduation ceremony to 2nd grade. And the
Q: If you have 2 ministries working well, 5 working okay, and 2 not working at all, most of us would rush to fix the bottom 2. What would you say?
A: No, ignore the bottom 2 and ignore the middle 5 and focus on the top 2. Focus on the bright spots. This approach is used in solution-focused brief therapy. “When was the last time you were sober, and what was different about that time?” Or, “When were you enjoying each other as a couple, and what can you learn from that?”
Example: Many of the causes of poverty are TBU, True But Useless. Instead, focus on the bright spots. Story of a project in VietNam, researching the children in a village and found the healthy ones: Which of them have parents who have no more resources than others? Those are our bright spots, whom we can learn from. They found they were serving 4 small meals per day rather than 2, which was the norm. They were serving different foods: tiny shrimp (thought to be an adult food) and sweet-potato greens (thought to be a low-class food), which added protein and vitamins to the children’s diets. These practices began to spread. Years later, they had reached 2.2 million people.
Big problems are generally solved by a series of small solutions.
Q: Suppose we have a strong junior high and senior high ministry, but when people leave for college, they don’t come back. How can you, as you say in your book, “Shrink the Change”?
A: Reaching 20-somethings is hard: they have busy lives and are trying to find someone, settle down, etc. Suppose you started a Bible study on 1 time per week, downtown, on integrity in the workplace. Start on Tuesday night, so it doesn’t interfere with weekend activities of finding the right person for life. If the change stays big, you won’t do it. If it feels like it could be one small victory, you can begin.
Q: Sometimes we get discouraged by people who don’t want to change. What to do?
A: Elephants get discouraged. Example: When ideo does a project, a team leader draws a U-shaped curve, moving from Hope (a high) to a Valley of Insight (a low) back up to Confidence (ending on a high). The Valley of Insight can be tough, discouraging, because insight doesn’t come quickly as we want it to.
Q: In change, how do you deal with setbacks?
A: Think about the way people interpret tough times. On an ideo time, they think “This is the Valley of Insight; this is part of the process.” If they hadn’t been forewarned, they might have thought the process is too hard, we’re not good enough.
Tiger Woods won more golf tournaments faster than anyone in history, yet he decided to overhaul his golf swing. They have a growth mindset, they have built into the whole process a tolerance for failure. The phrase “Failure is not an option,” but the truth is “Failure is a necessity.” It’s how you get stronger. “In a weird way, failure may be an early-warning sign for success.”
An employee of IBM lost $10 million and was called into Tom Watson’s office. He was called in. Watson said, “I assume you know why I called you here today.” “Yes, sir, it’s to let me go.” “Let you go? I just spent $10 million educating you!”
Q: In the book, you say we might not have a person problem, we may have a situation problem. What does that mean?
A: We tend to attribute things to people rather than situations (“the fundamental attribution error”).
More people will give if we set up automatic deposits. More people will serve if we set the right time for that service, say, at lunchtime. Reframe the problem from a people problem to a situation problem.
