Direct the rider. Give crystal-clear instructions for the rational side. Lay out the exact directions without any vague directives.
Motivate the elephant. Engage the emotional side. Don’t just show charts and spreadsheets. Get visual and tactile.
Shape the path. The problem that needs changing is not necessarily a people problem, it might be a situation problem. Shape the situation, or the path, so that the rider and elephant can have an easier time traveling it.
Small Steps
Here is one hands-on practical tool that the authors sugges:, “One way to shrink change, then, is to limit the investment you’re asking for – only 5 minutes of housecleaning, only one small debt. Another way to shrink change is to think of small wins – milestones that are within reach… when milestones seem too distant, they should look for ‘inch pebbles.’”
That means that if you want to lose weight but the thought of an hour-long exercise class is just too daunting, commit to a five-minute walk in the morning. Then, commit to a five-minute walk every morning for a week. Bump that up to ten minutes, then to twenty, and soon you will be well on your way to weight loss.
In the same vein, if you have a ton of company coming for Shabbos and you don’t know where to begin, decide that on Wednesday you are going to make the desserts. Once you check that milestone off of your list, you can move on to side dishes or vegetables. Each milestone will give you the needed feedback that you can move forward.
The same goes for large organizations. If the company wants to effect change, it needs to give a few small instructions that require a very small amount of time. Slowly, those can add up and create maximum change. NFL coach Bill Parcells in Harvard Business Review wrote, “When you set small, visible goals, and people achieve them, they start to get it into their heads that they can succeed.”
All of these small changes work their way into the framework of the elephant and the rider because they are helping the elephant move forward. The Heaths explain, “The Elephant has no trouble conquering these micro-milestones, and as it does, something else happens. With each step, the Elephant feels less scared and less reluctant, because things are working. With each step, the Elephant starts feeling the change. A journey that started with dread is evolving, slowly, toward a feeling of confidence and pride. And at the same time the change is shrinking, the Elephant is growing.”
And with the Elephant’s growth, your capacity to grow and change balloons! So, get out there and make those very small changes. They just might add up to something big.