Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
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This is a fantastic book that is useful in so many areas in life. Need to motivate a coworker or direct to make a difficult change? Feel a need after church to make a change in your personal conduct? Want to know how to help your child stop some annoying behavior?
This book will definitely help you understand both the process and actionable steps you can take towards making change a reality.
The style of the book is a mixture of research mixed with actionable recommendations for each step of the change process.
The highest compliment that I can pay any book (of this non-fiction style) is that it is written with the reader in mind. "Switch" deserves high marks in this area. Specifically, the goal of the book seems to be to make the material easy to understand, implement and remember by the average reader. No writing to fellow researchers, professors or subject matter experts here.
One memorable example of keeping the reader's learning a top priority is the periodic "thought experiments" that sprinkle the book. These are mock situations presented at the end of a chapter that challenge you to use the concept introduced to solve the problem presented by thinking through what you've learned. The answer follows, but it feels less like lame questions at the end of a textbook chapter, and more like a realistic challenge to come up with a useful solution to common problems we all face.
Grab a copy of the book and give it read sometime. You won't be disappointed.
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If Mark isn't going to write a book!
This is a book that follows the manager tools mission of being ACTIONABLE. It gives you a specific set of routines on how to approach the change and motivate yourself and your team.
Similar to their previous book Made to Stick the authors are very thoughtful about their recommendations and most importantly how to apply them .
Highly recommend this book!
If Mark isn't going to write a book!
This is a book that follows the manager tools mission of being ACTIONABLE. It gives you a specific set of routines on how to approach the change and motivate yourself and your team.
Similar to their previous book Made to Stick the authors are very thoughtful about their recommendations and most importantly how to apply them .
Highly recommend this book!
Good follow up to Cialdini
One of the things that struck me about this book is that much of the theoretical underpinnings can be traced back to Robert Cialdini's 'Influence: Science & Practice', which itself has a 5-star MT-recommendation.
And the Heaths have provided a very MT-like context by providing practical ways to put the theory to work in the workplace.
It's the perfect follow up to Cialdini's superb effort.
One of those books you want to re-read right away!
I just thought this book was fantastic. It started a bit slow but quickly picked up steam. Many times throughout the course of reading it, I found myself slipping away into deeper thoughts about the theories and concepts of the subject. And that, I feel is what made this work so invaluable to me. I was able to directly align and relate the ideas the Heath's were discussing to everyday events that I had experienced in my career.
Another invaluable part of the book for me was that it truly inspires action. During and after reading Switch, I felt more inclined to act and tackle problems that seemed either beyond my level, or too large and complicated in the past.
Although the ideas the Heath brothers put forward in this book are not new, they bring them to a level of understanding that anyone can relate to. This book goes beyond business, and I have strongly recommended it to parent and teacher friends as well as colleagues. I know I am gushing but this is certainly one of the best personal improvement and leadership books I have read in a long, long time.