Do you feel that change is always difficult? Your employees do not want to change anything and perhaps oppose the change right up front? Perhaps you are also against change once in a while.
But why is it that there are other changes we want? Which we might even be looking forward to? Like when you were getting married or the way you looked forward to the birth of your first child? Here the resistance to the change was not great, was it? Despite the fact that these are probably two of the biggest changes you can face.
That's why Dan and Chip Heath call the change schizophrenic. And this is because what happens inside us when we are faced with a change is controlled by two, sometimes opposing, forces. In their book SWITCH: How to Change Things When Things are Hard, they call the two powers the Elephant and the Rider. Freud called it Id and Superego, others again 'doer' and 'planner'. All these terms describe the two systems working within us simultaneously.
The elephant corresponds to the Id or 'Doer'. That is, the part of you that acts, that is controlled by emotions, that has the energy and gets things done. At the same time, the Elephant is also lazy and tends to go for the quick reward. The rider is reason, your self-control, the side of you that decides now is the time to lose weight. While the Elephant, when it comes down to it, wants one more piece of cake. However, it is not always the Elephant who is the villain. The rider has e.g. a tendency to think everything through, to overanalyze and to stall when it comes to acting.
“[…] our emotional side is an elephant, and our rational side is its rider. The Rider, perched atop the Elephant, holds the reins and seems to be the leader. . The Rider's control is precarious, though, because he's so tiny relative to the Elephant. Anytime the 6-ton Elephant disagrees with the direction, the Rider is going to lose. He's completely overmatched.”
– Chip and Dan Heath: SWITCH: How to Change Things When Things are Hard (2009)
If you want your change to be successful, you must appeal to both. The Horseman provides planning and direction, while the Elephant provides the energy.
In addition, the Horseman and the Elephant must act in an environment that affects their patterns of action. This environment is what the Heath brothers call The Path. Often a lack of ability to change is not due to the people, with the situation or 'path' they are on.
In an experiment with unknowing moviegoers and popcorn, it turned out, for example, regardless of whether the popcorn delivered was vreally bad, then the people who got the biggest buckets ate the most popcorn. It was not the fault of the individuals, but solely a matter of the situation they were put in that mattered for how much popcorn they ate.
The Heath brothers lay out a skeleton for how to influence both, the Elephant, the Rider and the Path.
To successfully change something, you must do these three things simultaneously:
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