Motivation
For something to change, somebody somewhere has to start behaving differently—in other words, all change is ultimately behavior change. Chip Heath, American author
This class is about theories and tools that may help you to lead change in different contexts. As to that, we will get to know a useful framework for understanding change, as well as methods and tools that might help you to make changes you want to make but can’t.
Knowing vs. doing
A fundamental tension of psychology: knowing what the right answer is vs. doing it.
Let’s have a look how this can be explained and turn to the theoretical foundations.
Theoretical foundations
The need for theory
Theory helps us to understand why interventions work (or fail), to predict outcomes in new situations, to generalize beyond specific cases, and to justify our change strategies.
Dual-process theory
System 1 vs. System 2
Psychology assumes that the brain has two independent systems at work at all times (Kahneman, 2011).
| System 1 | System 2 |
|---|---|
| Fast, automatic | Slow, deliberate |
| Effortless | Effortful |
| Associative | Rule-based |
| Emotional | Logical |
Daniel Kahneman’s Dual Process Theory posits that our cognition is controlled by two distinct “agents” (Kahneman, 2011).
- System 1 is the brain’s “autopilot.” It operates automatically and quickly, with little or no effort and no sense of voluntary control. It handles our intuition, instant impressions, and emotional reactions.
- System 2 is the “pilot.” It allocates attention to the effortful mental activities that demand it, including complex computations. The operations of System 2 are often associated with the subjective experience of agency, choice, and concentration.
We tend to identify ourselves with System 2 (the conscious, reasoning self), but System 1 is actually the one running the show most of the time. System 2 is “lazy”—it usually accepts what System 1 suggests without checking, leading to cognitive biases and errors in judgment.
Ego depletion & self-regulation
Self-control acts like a muscle.
Roy Baumeister’s research on ego depletion suggests that self-control is a finite resource (Baumeister et al., 2007). In experiments, participants who exerted self-control on one task (e.g., resisting tempting food) showed reduced performance on subsequent self-control tasks (e.g., persisting on difficult puzzles).
- Self-regulation failure is common not because of inadequate motivation, but because of insufficient resources
- Glucose depletion correlates with reduced self-control capacity
- Decision fatigue accumulates throughout the day
- This explains why change efforts often fail in the evening or under stress
The ego depletion effect has faced replication challenges in recent years, leading to debates about effect size and boundary conditions (Hagger et al., 2016). However, the core insight—that cognitive resources are limited—remains valuable for understanding change.
The fundamental attribution error
People vs. situation problems
We systematically overestimate personal factors and underestimate situational factors when explaining behavior (Ross, 1977).
Classic demonstration
- Seminary students preparing a talk on Good Samaritan
- Manipulated time pressure (situation)
- Encountered person in need en route
- Rushed students rarely helped, regardless of personality (Darley & Batson, 1973)
Ross (1977) demonstrated that people tend to explain others’ behavior in terms of stable personality traits while ignoring powerful situational forces. This is the Fundamental Attribution Error.
The seminary study by Darley & Batson (1973) is particularly striking because it shows that even people thinking about helping (preparing a talk on the Good Samaritan parable) and who likely have helping-oriented values (seminary students) are overwhelmingly influenced by situational factors (being in a hurry).
Implications for change:
- When people fail to change, we blame their character, motivation, or ability
- Often, the real problem is the situation/environment
- Modifying context can be more effective than trying to change people directly
- This underlies the “shape the path” component of the Switch framework
Implementation intentions
Pre-loading decisions through action triggers
Specifying the when, where, and how of goal pursuit significantly increases success rates (Gollwitzer, 1999).
| Simple Goal | Implementation Intention |
|---|---|
| “I intend to exercise more” | “If it’s Monday at 7am, I will put on running shoes and run for 20 minutes” |
| Weak commitment | Strong commitment |
| Moment-of-choice decision | Pre-decided action |
Gollwitzer (1999) research shows that implementation intentions—specific plans that spell out when, where, and how you will act—dramatically improve goal achievement (Gollwitzer, 1999).
The format is: “If situation X arises, then I will perform response Y.”
Why they work:
- Transfer control from self to environment (the cue triggers the action)
- Reduce need for conscious deliberation at critical moments
- Create automatic situation-behavior links through mental rehearsal
- Nearly double success rates compared to simple goal intentions
Meta-analysis by Gollwitzer & Sheeran (2006) found medium-to-large effects across various behaviors including health behaviors, environmental actions, and academic performance.
The Switch framework
Foundations
Heath & Heath (2011) elegantly integrate these foundations into a unified framework — Switch.
Chip and Dan Heath have mined the latest psychological research to work out how to engage our emotional brain, and encourage us to focus on “bright spots”—techniques proven to help us change bad habits—rather than merely telling us what we’re doing wrong. Psychologies Magazine
| Component | Theoretical Foundation | Core Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Direct the rider | Dual-process theory Decision fatigue |
Reduce cognitive load through clarity |
| Motivate the elephant | Self-determination theory Affective science |
Engage emotional/motivational system |
| Shape the path | Situationism Implementation intentions |
Modify environment to reduce friction |
Successful change requires addressing all three simultaneously—they’re interdependent, not sequential.
Leading change
If you want to change things, you’ve got to appeal both. The rider provides the planning and direction, and the elephant provides the energy. [..] A reluctant elephant and a wheel-spinning rider can both ensure that nothing changes. But when elephants and riders move together, change can come easily. Heath & Heath (2011)
- Direct the rider—give clear direction reduce mental paralysis
- Motivate the elephant—find the emotional connection
- Shape the path—reduce obstacles, tweak the environment, make the journey easy
Three hypotheses about change
- Direct the rider
- What looks like resistance is often a lack of clarity.
- Change requires crystal clear direction1.
- Motivate the elephant
- What looks like laziness is often exhaustion.
- Change requires engaging the emotional side2.
- Shape the path
- What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.
- Change requires an environment that makes change more likely3.
Strengths of the rider
- Visionary—willing to make short-time sacrifices for long-term payoffs
- Strong analytical skills that work well when parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy (not the case with big changes)
- Clever tactician
Weaknesses of the rider
- Limited resources of strength (e.g., willpower)
- Paralysis in the face of ambiguity and choice
- Restless focus on problems rather than solutions
From theory to practice
We’ve seen the theoretical foundations … but how do you actually use this framework?
Each component has specific, research-backed strategies:
- Rider: Clarity, direction, bright spots
- Elephant: Emotion, identity, momentum
- Path: Environment, habits, social proof
Let’s explore each in depth using examples reported in Heath & Heath (2011).
Direct the rider
Follow the bright spots
Investigate what’s working and clone it. Heath & Heath (2011)
Example: Jerry Sternin and mothers in Vietnam
In 1990, Jerry Sternin was working for Save the Children, asked to open a new office in Vietnam “to make a difference” within 6 months (see e.g., Marsh et al., 2004).
- Many children suffered malnutrition—a result of many intertwined problems: poor sanitation, universal poverty, no clean water, etc. (true but useless analysis).
- Sternin synthesized the “conventional wisdom” about feeding kids (norms).
- Sternin looked for very poor kids who are bigger and healthier than the typical child and analyzed what the mothers were doing differently (positive deviations).
- Sternin organized cooking groups where the mothers got highly specific instructions (Rider) and the feeling that they can make their kids healthier (Elephant), which also changed the culture of the village (Path).
- Six months later, 65 percent of the kids were better nourished and stayed that way; years later the program reached 2.2 million Vietnamese people.
Conclusion
Switch from a problem focus to a solution focus.
Ask the exception question—when does the problem you’re fighting not happen?
- Gather data on the issue
- Study the data to find the bright spots4 (the positive deviants)
- Make sure you understand the “normal way” things are done
- Study the bright spots to see what they’re doing differently
- Make sure none of those practices are “exceptional” in some way
- Find a way to reproduce the practices of the bright spots among other people
Script the critical moves
Don’t just think big picture,
think in terms of specific behavior. Heath & Heath (2011)
Example: Brazilian southern line
In 1996, GP Investimentor Limited bought parts of the Brazilian railway network (a deteriorating mess) and set a young talent in charge—Alexandre Behring.
- Behring only had 30 million Brazilian reals in cash on its balance sheet (i.e., nothing).
- To change direction and guide decision-making, Behring developed four rules:
- Money is only invested in projects that provide higher revenue in the short term.
- The best solution to a problem is the one that costs the least money up front.
- Quick fixes are preferred to slower options that provide superior long-term fixes.
- Reusing or recycling existing materials is better than acquiring new materials.
- In 2000, the company’s performance improved from a net loss of 80 million reals to a net profit of 24 million reals.
Conclusion
If you want to change things, be clear about how people should act.
Change brings new choices that create uncertainty, which fatigues/paralyses the rider and frightens the elephant (the paradox of choice5). Reduce uncertainty by:
- Remove ambiguity from the vision
- Transform aspiration (the change idea) into action (specific behavior)
- Get rid of any abstraction
- Give priority to critical moves that evoke more parts of the framework
Clarity resolves resistance. Heath & Heath (2011, p. 72)
- Does it evoke emotion? (Find the feeling)
- Does it feel do-able? (Shrink the change)
- Was it a part of success stories in the past? **(Find the bright spots)*
- Will your team see the connection with the big picture? (Point to the destination)
- Would it provide a quick win? (Grow your people)
- Would it create positive peer pressure? (Rally the herd)
- Is it consistent with the way people think about themselves in the firm? (Grow your people)
Point to the destination
Change is easier when you know where you’re going and why it’s worth it. Heath & Heath (2011)
Example: No dry holes at BP
After decades of success, in the 90s, BP had issues to find untapped oil resources.
- In 1989, BP had an average accuracy rate of just 1 out of 5 (global standard).
- The oil explorers behaved like salesmen and put pressure to drill every well (the logic behind: the payoff on hitting one big well will cover for the ones they did not hit).
- To reduce cost per Barrel, the CEO posed a clear destination: “No Dry Holes”—meaning no random shots, but systematic tests (using the knowledge they had).
- But No Dry Holes created an even bigger shift in BP’s culture—no one rationalized failure buy saying ‘Oh, we hit a dry well, but we learned’.
- In 2020, BP’s hit rate was 2 out of 3.
Conclusion
Paint a specific, rich, detailed picture of what the destination looks like to motivate people.
Some of Heath & Heath (2011) recommendations
- Avoid metrics as destinations (SMART goals are fine, but they should also be inspiring enough to motivate the elephant).
- Reduce uncertainty and, thus, opportunities for rationalization6.
- Consider moving from process (e.g., 100% handwashing compliance) to outcome (e.g., 0% hospital-acquired infection).
- If “backsliding” is a problem, consider a black and white goal (i.e., a goal that brooks no dissent)7.
- Back up the destination postcard with a good behavioral script—describe the moves for a jump start.
Motivate the elephant
Find the feeling
Knowing something isn’t enough to cause change. Make people feel something. Heath & Heath (2011)
Example: Chemotherapy game
After enduring weeks of brutal chemotherapy in the hospital, the children struggled to faithfully take their medications at home.
If you skip 20 percent of your doses, you don’t have a 20 percent higher chance of getting cancer again. Your odds go up 200 percent. Steve Cole, research director for HopeLabs
Hope labs developed a game called Re-Mission (Kato et al., 2008).
- They played Roxxi, a nanorobot in a silver suit that moved through the bloodstream and bombarded tumor cells with electro-green chemo beams; in between, Smitty, a mentor robot, provided additional information about chemotherapy and recovery.
- Kids adherence to their medication plans increased significantly.
Conclusion
Things you see are more likely to evoke emotion than things you read.
Make the need for change clear (tangible).
- Be cautious with negative emotions when people need to think flexibly or creatively. Negative emotions are effective to motivate people to tackle short-run challenges that require clear, forceful action.
- Inspire positive emotion, e.g., by pointing to a bright spot.
- Positive emotions broaden and build our repertoire of thoughts and action and encourage us to play.
Imagine that, in making the case for change to your people, you weren’t allowed to speak to them directly. Instead, you had a camera crew at your disposal who would film anything you wanted them to film, and you could pick any 10 minutes of footage that they shot. What would be happening in that footage?
Shrink the change
Downsize the change until it no longer frightens the elephant.
Example: Wash loyalty card
A local car wash ran a promotion featuring loyalty cards (Nunes & Dreze, 2006).
- Group A: For every car wash bought, customers got a stamp on their card.
Eight stamps meant a free car wash. - Group B: Customers needed to collect ten stamp, but they were given a “head start”
(2 stamps have already been added). - A few months later, only 19% of group A had earned a free wash vs. 34% of group B.
People find it motivating to be partly finished with a longer story then to be at the starting gate of a shorter one Heath & Heath (2011)
Conclusion
Small targets lead to small victories, small victories can trigger momentum. Heath & Heath (2011)
As the elephant is easily demoralized (Heath & Heath, 2011), make use of the endowed progress effect. This is the idea that if you provide some type of artificial advancement toward a goal, a person will be more motivated to complete the goal (Nunes & Dreze, 2006).
- Show progress, plan for small wins (i.e., immediate, meaningful payoffs).
- Set goals within reach, don’t let success feel to distant.
- Care for a boost of hope that change is possible.
Grow your people
Identities are central to the way people make decision (March, 2009).
Example: Junior-high math students
Blackwell et al. (2007) set up a study for seventh-grade math students in school in a low socioeconomic environment.
- The experimental group was taught that the brain is like a muscle that can be developed with exercise (two hours over eight weeks).
- The control group was taught generic study skills.
- The teachers, unaware of which group their students were assigned to, identified students who they thought had experienced a positive change during the term, whereof 76% were in the experimental group.
One hardcore, turned-off, low effort kind in the group said, ‘You mean I don’t have to be dumb?’ From that day on, he worked. Heath & Heath (2011)
Conclusion
Create a sense of identity and convey a growth mindset.
- Any change measure that violates a person’s identity easily fails (i.e., identity threat).
- Aspire people to be the kind of person who would make the change (i.e., engage in identity work).
- Changing identities is a quest, and every quest involves failure.
- Because the elephant hates failure, you should create the expectation of failure.
- A growth mindset helps to grow (Dweck, 2017), as it frames failure as a natural part of the change process (not of the situation).
- A growth mindset helps to establish confidence that the elephant is capable of conquering the change (he feels “big” relative to the challenge).
Shape the path
Tweak the environment
When the situation changes, the behavior changes. So change the situation. Heath & Heath (2011)
Example: Medication at Kaiser South
At Kaiser South Sans Francisco Hospital, nurses administer about 800 medications a day.
- Nurses are impressively accurate: on average, they commit approx. 1 error per 1,000 medications administered.
- However, a single error can be harmful or even deadly.
- In an effort to reduce medication errors, distraction was identified as a cause.
- Distraction isn’t a Rider (understanding) nor an Elephant problem (motivation).
- Instead of changing nurses behavior, medication vests have been installed, showing that nurses are administering drugs and should be left alone.
- Errors dropped by 47 percent.
Conclusion
Social psychology shows that often situations trump personal attributes. However, people have a systematic tendency to ignore the situation forces that shape other peoples’ behavior—the fundamental attribution error.
- Avoid the fundamental attribution error.
- Emphasize the “tweak” (focus on small changes).
- Investigate your environment quickly (What one thing can you shift to make the right behaviors more likely?).
- Try to rearrange the environment to remove the obstacles, provide signposts that show people which way to turn, eliminate steps (1-click …).
Build habits
When behavior is habitual, it’s “free”—it doesn’t tax the rider. Look for ways to encourage habits. Heath & Heath (2011)
Some of Heath & Heath (2011) recommendations to encourage habits:
- Set an action trigger: The power of action triggers is that decisions are “pre-loaded.” If you want to act in a new way, picture the exact time and situation when you will execute the plan.
- Can you piggyback a new habit on an old one? It’s easiest to start a new routine when you can build it on an existing routine that takes place at a specific time and place. If you often forget to take your vitamins in the morning, put the vitamin bottle on top of the toothpaste. You know you’ll remember to brush your teeth, so you can “piggyback” your vitamin intake with brushing your teeth. Similarly, it might be easier for hospitals to get doctors to wash their hands if they put sanitizer next to the trays from which they take a patient’s chart - squeeze and rub before taking the chart.
- Create a checklist: Suppose you had a five-item checklist for the most important routines in your business. What 5 things do you need to do every time?
- Stand up your meetings: “Stand-up meeting” are a way to keep discussions brief and focused. Given the way your meetings have evolved, what habits have you implicitly encouraged (whether good or bad)? Are there ways you could alter the format of your meetings—the routine—to make them more effective? If so, set an action trigger—I’m going to pilot this new “meeting style” next Thursday with the staff meeting.
- Publicize your action triggers: What is the aspect of your change efforts that people tend to put off, or that tends to get displaced in favor of more “urgent” work? Ask your team to set action triggers – and to announce their intentions publicly in a meeting.
Rally the herd
Behavior is contagious.
Help it spread. Heath & Heath (2011)
Some of Heath & Heath (2011) recommendations to spread behavior:
- Be smart about social pressure: If the majority of people on your team are already following the new plan, then publicize that fact, social pressure will influence the others to conform.
- Design a free space: Sometimes it is helpful to create small-scale settings within a community that are removed from the direct control of dominant groups, are voluntarily participated in, and generate the cultural challenge that precedes mobilization. (Polletta, 1999).
- If people embrace change, make sure their actions are visible: Fight resistance echo chambers by showcasing people who are actively supporting the change. Shine a spotlight on the early signs of success.
Conclusion
Rider x Elephant x Path
All three components matter.
- Rider without elephant — clear plans, but no motivation to act
(Example: detailed New Year’s resolutions abandoned by February) - Elephant without rider — energy without direction
(Example: enthusiasm for “change” but no clear path forward) - Both without path — fighting against the environment
(Example: asking people to do things digitally in a paper-loving bureaucracy)
Success = all three aligned
Challenges
You want to learn how to lead change more efficiently? Here are three challenges that might help you along the way.
- Level 1: Analyze a personal change problem, identify bright spots, analyze them and find ways to reproduce the practices.
- Level 2: Apply the framework to one personal change problem—find ways to direct the rider, motivate the elephant and shape the path in order to support your change.
- Level 3: Identify a change problem within a group (e.g., at work); try to get the mandate for the change; develop a picture of what the goal looks like, script the critical moves, create positive emotions, shrink the change or make people grow, and try to tweak the environment path wherever necessary.
Reading list
For digging deeper, I recommend reading the articles cited here, plus:
- The endowed progress effect: Nunes & Dreze (2006)
- Lewin’s change theory: Lewin (1951)
- Identities and identity work in organizations: Brown (2015)
as well as following books:
Literature
Footnotes
Steve Booth-Butterfield and Bill Reger, professors at West Virginia University, were contemplating ways to persuade people to eat a healthier diet. They concluded that you don’t need to change drinking behavior, but purchasing behavior. Thus, they launched a campaign that was punchy and specific in motivating people to buy skimmy milk (instead of the fuzzy message to act healthier) (Booth-Butterfield & Reger, 2004).↩︎
In 2004, Donald Berwick, a doctor and the CEO of the Institute of for Healthcare Improvement, wanted to save a massive number of lives by reducing the “defect” rate in healthcare (e.g., administration of medication at the wrong time). Besides providing a crystal clear direction, he also motivated people by making them feed the need for change—he confronted hospital administrators with the mother of a girl who’d been killed by a medical error (Berwick et al., 2006).↩︎
A study of Brian Wansink of the Food and Brand Lab at Cornell University shows in his popcorn studies that “people eat more when you give them a bigger container. Period.” (Wansink, 2006, pp. 16–19)↩︎
Bright spots don’t have to be shining success stories, just look for situations when things are working better than others.↩︎
How it can be that more choice is actually bad for us? (Schwartz, 2009; Schwartz & Ward, 2004)↩︎
When the elephant really wants something, the rider can be trusted to find rationalizations for it.↩︎
Please consider that black and white goals create a danger of demoralization if you don’t meet them consistently.↩︎
Social learning
If others do it, it must be appropriate.
Bandura (1977) Social Learning Theory demonstrates that people learn behaviors by observing others, particularly those they identify with or admire. His famous Bobo doll experiments showed children imitating aggressive behaviors they observed in adults.
Cialdini (2006) principle of social proof shows that people look to what others are doing to determine appropriate behavior, especially in ambiguous situations. His research on hotel towel reuse found that messages highlighting “most guests reuse towels” were more effective than environmental appeals.
Important distinctions:
Descriptive norms are typically more powerful for behavior change