Book Review Switch: Practical Change Management by Dan and Chip Heath

Switch: How to change things when change is hard

by Chip Heath, Dan Heath

In Switch, Chip and Dan Heath discuss the need to engage peoples emotional side if you want to make a change. It is not enough to make the logical case for change, you have to engage with the emotional dislike or even fear of change.

The book uses the analogy of an 'elephant' (representing the emotional side of change), its 'rider', who is trying to direct the elephant, and the 'path', which represents the change. By understanding the rider and the elephant and shaping the path this can be a useful framework to introduce change in an organisation or personally however large or small.

The book is based around a huge number of case studies on how to implement change initiatives, drawing out examples of how sucessful change is based around the elephant, rider and path.

This book is a must for people wanting to understand the realities of change (business and personal) and how to make change stick.