There Is No Denying That

“Change Is Hard”

Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

By Chip Heath and Dan Heath
(Broadway Books, 320 pp., $26)

Reviewed by Paula Ketter

Reviewed by Paula KetterChip Heath and Dan Heath, the bestselling authors of Made to Stick, tackled the issue of change in their new book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. This is a subject that many authors and subject matter experts have tried to explain and solve, but none have done it more thoroughly as the Heaths. They waste no time explaining that the obstacles of change are not exclusively about behavior or as easy as “People resist change.”

In the first chapter, they give comprehensive examples of the three surprises about change:

What looks like a people problem is often a situational problem. For people’s behavior to change, you have to influence not only their environment, but their hearts and minds. Often, their hearts and minds disagree. Fervently.

So, when you hear people say that change is hard because people are lazy and resistant, that’s just flat wrong, according to the authors. The opposite is true. Change is hard because people wear themselves out. What looks like laziness is really exhaustion.

If you want people to change, you must provide clear directions.

According to the authors, confronting change is all about understanding the way our brains are constructed and harnessing the strengths of different parts of our brain. Our minds are made up of two independent systems—the rational mind and the emotional mind—and those systems compete for control all the time.

The book is filled with stories, research, and examples of how to appeal to both brain systems. The authors don’t claim to know all the answers, and they clearly state early on that the framework they lay out for you is no panacea, but the explanations they provide will make it easier for change agents to effectively implement lasting change.

The last chapter of the book, “Overcoming Obstacles,” may be one of the most valuable chapters in the book. It lays out for you 11 common problems that people encounter when they fight for change, and advice from the Heaths on how to defeat them. This is a cliff note version of the book, so don’t skip to the last chapter, because it won’t make sense to you unless you’ve read the other 11 chapters.

This is a very well-written and informative view of change. The examples are real and the strategy is compelling.

I give the book three cups of Joe.

Paula Ketter is editor of T+D; pketter@astd.org.

Managing the Telecommuting Employee: Set Goals, Monitor Progress, and Maximize Profit and Productivity

Michael Amigoni and Sandra Gurvis

(Adams Business, 297 pp., $14.95)

As more businesses realize every day, telecommuting certainly has its share of plusses. It’s a greener alternative to regular commuting and can help recruit and retain good employees. But as more people work from home, troubles can also ensue. This book builds awareness of the communication, relationship, motivation, and productivity issues that telecommuting can introduce. The authors offer 18 chapters of advice for keeping the teleworkforce as engaged and industrious as the onsite staff, while not only maintaining organizational success but building on it. It even focuses on HR, tax, and legal topics.

The Other Kind of Smart

By Harvey Deutschendorf

(AMACOM, 224 pp., $17.95)

Emotional intelligence, or “EQ,” often represents the skill set that stands between those who eke out a living and those who achieve their fullest potential in business and in life. Deutschendorf provides an authoritative window into why you should care about your EQ level, and why it’s really not all that difficult to do in the first place. Filled with the kinds of techniques, background, and inspiring case studies one might expect, the book also contains a mini-quiz and a fully stocked cache of additional resources to get readers on the road toward a major EQ boost. This is an excellent place for anyone to start learning about emotional intelligence and connecting the dots for how to make it a part of everyday life—in the office and beyond.

Kirkpatrick Then and Now: A Strong Foundation for the Future

By James D. Kirkpatrick and Wendy Kayser Kirkpatrick

(Kirkpatrick Publishing, 146 pp., $19.95)

This book could be described as the “raw goods” of the Four Levels, both historically and with a lens into the future. Some background of Donald Kirkpatrick’s life and work, as told in his own words and with an assist from Jack Philips and Dave Basarab, leads the “Then” portion of the book. The four levels as originally described are included, with reprints of the original articles published in T+D all those years ago. The “Now” section is a solid round-up of the Kirkpatrick Business Partnership Mode and the five Kirkpatrick foundational principles, which describe “the elements of the model that have always been ‘in there,’ but tend to be misunderstood or misused.”