Switch: Don’t Solve Problems–Copy Success
Fast Company has an excerpt from Chip and Dan Heath’s upcoming book Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
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Thanks for this Matt. This book has huge implications and also will require a lot of thought for Christian leaders. The thesis is solid, but the problem is that it sets the tone of change with out repentance.
Using wisdom to create a way to educate rural Vietnamese families in nutrition is an amazing work, but inevitably people will use these strategies to try to fix the effects of sin by behavior modification and not change of heart by the power of the Spirit.
You are absolutely right. Well said.
I was fortunate enough to get an advanced copy of Switch…just finished it last night.
As a Christian who believes that the heart rules all the choices of man, I was very skeptical about this book.
The back cover reads, “Psychologists have discovered that our minds are made up of two independent systems – the rational mind and the emotional mind – that compete for control in our heads all the time.”
But the very next sentence begins, “The rational mind WANTS…” Hmmm…sounds a bit emotional to me.
Well, I was pleasantly surprised that this book paints the picture of the human will as primarily driven by our emotions.
The analogy that runs through the book is our rational thoughts as the “rider” of the “elephant” which is our emotions down the “path” with is our environment and circumstances. The key throughout is to find ways to impact the elephant…sometimes you come in through the mind, sometimes you affect the circumstances, sometimes you go straight to the heart.
This book is very compelling and written in the same style as Made to Stick, namely lots of remarkable stories.
I would offer to Christians that God ultimately controls our hearts like a channel of water in his hand (Proverbs 21:1). But the hand of God uses means, even natural means. This book gives some great insight into those natural means such that we can truly affect how people feel to some degree.