This week’s book learning is from ‘Switch’ by Chip and Dan Heath.
Peter Bregman was hired by a consulting firm that needed to needed to move their timesheet system (i.e. where consultants indicated where their time needed to be billed) online, from paper.
There had been a lot of resistance to this move! So, following traditional carrots-stick thinking, management had issued a memo saying paychecks wouldn’t be issued to those who filled their timesheets on paper.
There was no change to the resistance. Exasperated, management had hired Bregman.
Bregman spoke to a couple of consultants and asked them to take him through the process. Peter soon noticed that that the problem was with the mandatory help wizard that annoyed the hell out of their people. Ironically, while it was created to make it easier, it just created a barrier.
The moment the help wizard was knocked off, all resistance was removed and everyone moved to the new system!
What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem. It is very easy for us to point to people as being the problem with the assumption that only carrots and sticks would make us move.
However, as Bregman found, all we often need to do is to make the path of change easier.
Here’s to inspiring change by making the path easier!
A Learning a Day 