Every time you start driving, you buckle your seat belt, stick your key in the ignition, and slowly press the gas pedal. Sometimes, if you’re on an incline, the car needs a little more gas, but in general the more you push on the gas, the more movement you get.
But what if you push and push and the car doesn’t budge? Then what?
Whenever change fails to happen, we think we need more horsepower. Employees not adopting that new strategy? Send out another email reminding them why they should. Customers not buying the product? Spend more money on advertising or give them yet another sales call.
But with all that focus on pushing on the gas, we often overlook an easier and more effective way: identifying what is blocking or preventing change. And eliminating these obstacles to action.
Sometimes change doesn’t require more horsepower. Sometimes we just need to unlock the parking brake.
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This book is about finding the parking brakes. Discovering the hidden barriers preventing change. Identifying the root or core issues that are thwarting action and learning how to mitigate them.
Each chapter lays out a key roadblock and how to address it.
Principle 1: Reactance
When pushed, people push back. Just like a missile defense system protects against incoming projectiles, people have an innate anti-persuasion system. Radar that kicks in when they sense someone is trying to convince them. To lower this barrier, catalysts encourage people to persuade themselves. You’ll learn about the science of reactance, how warnings become recommendations, and the power of tactical empathy. How a public health official got teens to quit smoking and how a hostage negotiator got hardened criminals to come out with their hands up, just by asking.
Principle 2: Endowment
As the old saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. People are wedded to what they’re already doing. And unless what they’re doing is terrible, they don’t want to switch. To ease endowment, or people’s attachment to the status quo, catalysts highlight how inaction isn’t as costless as it seems. Discover why sellers value things more than buyers, why the upsides need to be 2.6 times larger than the downsides to get people to take action, and why spraining a finger can actually be more painful than breaking one. How financial advisors get clients to invest more sensibly and how IT professionals get employees to adopt new technologies.
Principle 3: Distance
People have an innate anti-persuasion system, but even when we just provide information, sometimes it backfires. Why? Another barrier is distance. If new information is within people’s zone of acceptance, they’re willing to listen. But if it is too far away, in the region of rejection, everything flips. Communication is ignored or, even worse, increases opposition. You’ll learn how to swing a voter and how a political activist got committed conservatives to support liberal policies like transgender rights. Why big changes require asking for less, not pushing for more. And how catalysts find the unsticking points to change minds on the seemingly toughest issues.
Principle 4: Uncertainty
Change often involves uncertainty. Will a new product, service, or idea be as good as the old one? It’s hard to know for sure, and this uncertainty makes people hit the pause button, halting action. To overcome this barrier, catalysts make things easier to try. Like free samples at the supermarket or test drives at the car dealership, reducing risk by letting people experience things for themselves. Discover why lenient return policies increase profits, why farmers fail to adopt helpful innovations, and how a former minor-league baseball ticket salesman built a billion-dollar business on free shipping. And lest you think this idea is restricted to big businesses with a product or service to offer, I’ll show you how anyone can apply these concepts, from animal shelters and accountants to vegetarians and organizational change efforts.
Principle 5: Corroborating Evidence
Sometimes one person, no matter how knowledgeable or assured, is not enough. Some things just need more proof. More evidence to overcome the translation problem and drive change. Sure, one person endorsed something, but what does their endorsement say about whether I’ll like it? To overcome this barrier, catalysts find reinforcement. Corroborating evidence. You’ll see how substance abuse counselors encourage addicts to seek treatment, which sources are most impactful, and why and when it’s better to concentrate scarce resources rather than spreading them out.
Reactance, Endowment, Distance, Uncertainty, and Corroborating Evidence can be called the five horsemen of inertia. Five key roadblocks that hinder or inhibit change.
Each chapter focuses on one of these roadblocks, and how to reduce it. Integrating research and case studies to illustrate the underlying science behind each roadblock and the principles that individuals and organizations have used to mitigate it.
These five ways to be a catalyst can be organized into an acronym. Catalysts reduce Reactance, ease Endowment, shrink Distance, alleviate Uncertainty, and find Corroborating Evidence. Taken together, that forms an acronym, REDUCE. Which is exactly what great catalysts do. They REDUCE roadblocks. They change minds and incite action by reducing barriers to change.
After each principle, there is a short case study illustrating how these ideas apply to different domains—from changing the boss’s mind and driving Britons to support Brexit to changing consumer behavior and getting a grand dragon to renounce the Ku Klux Klan.
Note that not every situation involves all five roadblocks. Sometimes reactance is the key barrier. Other times uncertainty plays a larger role. Some cases involve a combination of a few barriers, and others involve only one. But by understanding all of them, we can diagnose which ones are at work and mitigate them.
This book has a simple goal: to reframe how we approach a universal problem. You’ll learn why people and organizations change—and how you can catalyze that process.
Throughout the book I’ll apply the idea of removing barriers to individual, organizational, and social change. And along the way you’ll see how catalysts have applied these ideas to a range of different situations. How leaders transform organizational culture and how activists ignite social movements. How salespeople close the deal and employees get management to support new ideas. How substance abuse counselors get addicts to realize they have a problem and how political canvassers change deeply rooted political beliefs.
We’ll talk about changing both minds and behavior. Sometimes concepts that change one also change the other, but other times we don’t need to change minds to drive action. Sometimes people are already open to changing their behavior; we just need to remove roadblocks and make it easier to happen.
This book is designed for anyone who wants to catalyze change. It provides a powerful way of thinking and a range of techniques that can lead to extraordinary results.
Whether you’re trying to change one person, transform an organization, or shift the way an entire industry does business, this book will teach you how to become a catalyst.2
I. Reactions happen when molecules collide. But rather than increasing the frequency of collisions, as adding energy does, catalysts increase their success rate. Instead of bouncing around on a bunch of blind dates, hoping something sticks, a catalyst acts as a matchmaker, encouraging reactants to encounter each other at the right orientations for change to occur.