Reset: How to Change What's Not Working (Part 1 of 2)

 

Issue No. 636 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting (Jan. 23, 2025) features my first of two reviews of Dan Heath's new book, Reset. Must-read! Plus, click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies). Click here for our recent review of The Purpose Code.     Why “Guess-a-thons” Don’t Work: Part 1 of 2 What’s not to like about a hot-off-the-press book by one of the Heath brothers? This one, by Dan Heath, hits the bullseye (pun intended)!   Reset:  How to Change What's Not Working by Dan Heath (Jan. 21, 2025)   Just one chapter in, I knew it would take two reviews to adequately inspire you and your team to dive into this Very Relevant Topic. Does your organization, company, or church struggle to “escape the stifling gravity of entrenched systems?” Are these familiar phrases?    • “We’ve always done it this way!”    • “It always takes this long!” (Read the Introduction about the hospital receiving area. It took three days to dispatch incoming packages to the right department. Honest.)    • “My boss is oblivious to the real problems here.”  Learn about the “progress principle”—and why “the biggest motivator of employees is nowhere on the screen of the average boss.”  This fabulous book will hook you immediately. Heath promises: “We’ll encounter cases involving:    • military planes, music apps, radiology clinics,    • church services, car dealerships, and archery competitions.” This bestselling author adds, “We’ll investigate mysteries: Why the middle is the roughest part of a change effort. Why inefficiency can sometimes accelerate progress. Why ‘getting buy-in’ is the wrong way to think about change.” Chapter 1, “Go and See the Work,” is must-read. Learn why “people may think they understand the systems they depend on better than they actually do.” This is brilliant! See what an assistant principal learned from the “Shadow a Student Challenge”—and the grades she gave her own school! View the PBS News Hour video. Read the script.  Warning: When you “go and see the work”—on the frontlines of your operation—get ready for a wake-up call! “If you aren’t embarrassed by what you find, you probably aren’t looking closely enough.” As in other books by Heath and/or Heath, you’ll want to read the funny footnotes first. Per the “embarrassment warning” above, Dan Heath footnotes this: “Note that this spirit of examination—the genuine desire to get closer to the truth—is the heart of ‘going and seeing the work.’ This is in sharp contrast to the CEO who conducts a stage-managed visit to a factory or field office for the sake of good optics: I am an enlightened leader who enjoys mingling with you common folk!” This is the fifth book I’ve reviewed by Heath and/or Heath, including:    • The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. (I named this my 2017 book-of-the-year. Read my review.)    • Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen, by Dan Heath. (Read my review.)    • Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. (Read my review.)    • Making Numbers Count: The Art and Science of Communicating Numbers, by Chip Heath and Karla Starr. (Read my review.) MORE TEASERS: Don’t wait for my second review coming—just order the book or audio today so you can add value to the water cooler gripe sessions at work. (You’re back in the office, right?)    • LOL! “I went to Chick-fil-A to fetch dinner for my family, and unexpectedly, I came home with a book idea. (Also, more expectedly, some fries and nuggets.)”    • Learn how and why Dan Heath’s local Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru can serve 400 cars in an hour. (“That’s a car every nine seconds. Your kids could get through college before Hardee’s would finish 400 cars.”)    • “You’ll also learn how five million cats’ lives were saved, and perhaps most dramatically of all, how one father got his kids to clean their room. With enthusiasm.” GUESS-A-THONS:    • “Glaring problems are sometimes the legacy of past solutions—improvisations and workarounds.” (Although, read here why some workarounds actually work.)    • Why “mapping out the flow” makes the “invisible visible. Think whiteboards and markers.” (This reminded me of Gen. McChrystal’s whiteboard in Team of Teams.”)    • Decision-making exposed! Read about “guess-a-thons,” and “substituting experience for conjecture,” and “decisions based on cognitive vapor.” (Oh, my!) SOUND FAMILIAR? Heath writes, “Going and seeing the work can be particularly important when things stop working. Your marriage hits a rocky patch. Your sales start drying up. Teachers leave your school faster than you can replace them.” He adds, “Because when unexpected problems arise in our organizations, it often reveals that we didn’t know as much about our ‘system’ as we thought we did.” Heath quotes two psychologists who “asked people to assess how well they understood certain familiar devices. How well do you understand how a zipper works? A flush toilet? Go ahead—score yourself and then watch this hilarious and insightful video, “You Don't Know How Toilets Work: The Illusion Of Explanatory Depth.” Did I mention? Stay tuned for my second review in the next issue—and learn why it pays to give “your team the autonomy to own the change effort.” TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for Reset: How to Change What's Not Working, by Dan Heath. Listen on Libro (6 hours, 17 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending me a review copy.   YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS: 1) Visit DanHeath.com for a one-page summary of Reset, plus Heath’s 10-minute video summary of his book. Who will you empower to present three key ideas from the book for your “Ten Minutes for Lifelong Learning” segment at your next staff meeting? 2) Are you giving your frontline people autonomy to improve your systems? (See Chapter 10, “Let People Drive.”) My brother, Paul (1939-2015), beautifully demonstrated this principle at a CLA (CMA) national conference in Nashville one year. Click here to read “Add Process Management to Your Resume. Mentor your people to ‘think systems’” from Chapter 18, "The Systems Bucket," in Mastering the Management Buckets.        SECOND READS: Fresh Solutions From Classic Books You have changed—and your problems have changed—since you read this the first time! Book #6 of 99: The Power of Moments For your team meeting this week, inspire a team member to lead your “10 Minutes for Lifelong Learning” session by featuring Book #6 of 99 in our new series, “Second Reads.” The big idea: REREAD TO LEAD! Discover how your favorite books and niche chapters still have more to teach you and the people you’re coaching and mentoring. The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip Heath and Dan Heath  (Simon & Schuster, Oct. 3, 2017, 320 pages) I named The Power of Moments my 2017 book-of-the-year and reviewed it twice!    • Two reviews: Issue #372, Nov. 25, 2017, and Issue #370, Oct. 11, 2017.    • Order from Amazon.    • Listen on Libro (6 hours, 24 minutes).    • Management Bucket #6 of 20: The Program Bucket My SECOND READ Insights/Ideas: I missed this brilliant idea the first time I read this. This month, I was reminded of this New York Times bestseller when I had coffee with a friend who shares my appreciation for The Power of Moments. (He’s writing a book and is also reading Dan Heath’s new book, Reset.) So in looking at “Moments” again—I realized I have been neglecting this really Big idea about milestones. The Heaths write: “…there are some milestones that seem to get ignored. Students get short-changed, for instance. Sure, they advance in ‘grade,’ but why not celebrate their 1000th day in the classroom, or their 50th book read? And why don’t we celebrate teachers for their 1,000th student taught?” And I would add: while nonprofits celebrate the generosity of “major” donors, why not also recognize the milestones of all donors? “Dear Maria: We rang a bell in our office today because your faithful giving of $10 per month since November 2016 has now totaled $1,000 of lifetime giving to our camp. Thank you!”  By the way, Free Wheelchair Mission is a nonprofit leader in celebrating milestones. (Visit their website and read my review of Miracle Wheels, by Don Schoendorfer.)   CLICK HERE FOR BOOKS BY JOHN        New AI Podcast: BucketCast  Welcome back to our new mini-feature, “BucketCast.” Click on this link to listen to the AI-generated podcasters who comment on my book review of Lead with Prayer: The Spiritual Habits of World-Changing Leaders, by Ryan Skoog, Peter Greer, and Cameron Doolittle. I named this my 2024 book-of-the-year. (For more podcasts, click here.) IMPORTANT NOTICE! Some of the above links may not work. (Sorry!) Effective Oct. 1, 2025, all 657 eNews issues, previously archived on Typepad.com are slowly (!) being movedto this website. New book reviews will also be archived here at John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. And/or, click here for John’s recent book reviews on Amazon. Don’t Read This Book When You're Hungry! This book is so delicious—I reviewed it twice! Learn about “The Four Nevers” at In-N-Out Burger: 1) "Never give excuses. 2) Never argue with the Customer. 3) Never put the Customer on the defensive. 4) Never make a big deal of a complaint.” Click here to read my reviews of The Ins-N-Outs of In-N-Out Burger, by Lynsi Snyder. For more book reviews, visit the Pails in Comparison Blog.