Climbing The Summit 25,000Feet!

Chip and Dan Heath (brothers) presented a session on how to change when change is hard.


Their abbreviated bios off their web page http://madetostick.com/  include the following:

• Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He is the co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which has been a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller. Chip is also a columnist for Fast Company magazine, and he has spoken and consulted on the topic of "making ideas stick" with organizations such as Nike, the Nature Conservancy, Microsoft, Ideo, and the American Heart Association.
• Dan is the co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Dan is also a columnist for Fast Company magazine, and he has spoken and consulted on the topic of "making ideas stick" with organizations such as Microsoft, Nestle, the American Heart Association, Nissan, and Macy's.

I am currently reading their book Made To Stick. The theme of the book concentrates on why some ideas survive while others die. To make ideas survive we simply have to make them “sticky.” However, their talk associated with this Christian leadership event dealt more with their book, Switch, which I happen to have a pre-released copy of. The caption on the cover states, “How to change things when change is hard.” This book I believe will be released to the general public in February, 2010. You cannot quote it or blog about it until January of 2010, but we can talk about their session at the Leadership Summit.


The first question we must ask ourselves when it comes to change in the church is, “What really needs to change: the individuals or a ministry?” In my opinion there might be times when it would be a combination of both. When we need to change, a battle starts to unfold in our brain. There are three competing systems in our brains that react when we are contemplating change:

• the Rider (the rational side of us),
• the Elephant (the emotional side of us)
• and the Path (shaping the Path) the elephant should take.

This analogy comes from Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, in his wonderful book, “The Happiness Hypothesis.” The Rider knows where he wants to go, but the Elephant might not want to go. So the Rider has to convince and appeal to the Elephant where to go, what path to take.


We need to provide very clear directions for the Rider. Sometimes what is perceived as resistance is simply a lack of clarity. Once the Elephant is listening to the Rider and moves, how can we keep the elephant moving? The Elephant can sometimes be skittish and lazy, often looking for a quick payoff over a long term payoff. When change efforts fail, it is usually the Elephant’s fault, since most changes we desire involve short term sacrifices for long term payoffs. Changes often fail because the Rider can’t keep the Elephant on the path long enough to reach the desired destination.


As we shape the path for the Rider and Elephant to take we must consider that what looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. Consider the environment we are in -- altering it will influence the way people behave, irrespective of their Rider and Elephant.


The job of the leader is to appeal to both the Rider and the Elephant. If we reach the Riders of our team but not the Elephants, they’ll have understanding without motivation. If we reach the Elephants and not the Riders, they’ll have passion without direction. If the two are not moving together on the same path is will be a disaster, but when they are working together change can come more easily.


We all have rational and emotional people on our teams. In fact, depending on the issue, there might be some role reversals within the same people. Sometimes your hot button is not my hot button.

If we are to overcome acedia we need to get all people on board and this will take time, prayer, and possibly purchasing Switch, once it is available!