Most Popular Books by Chip Heath

Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that''s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind - that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: ● The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients ● The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping ● The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.

The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work. While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later? What if a manager knew how to create an experience that would delight customers? What if you had a better sense of how to create memories that matter for your children? This book delves into some fascinating mysteries of experience: Why we tend to remember the best or worst moment of an experience, as well as the last moment, and forget the rest. Why “we feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.” And why our most cherished memories are clustered into a brief period during our youth. Readers discover how brief experiences can change lives, such as the experiment in which two strangers meet in a room, and forty-five minutes later, they leave as best friends. (What happens in that time?) Or the tale of the world’s youngest female billionaire, who credits her resilience to something her father asked the family at the dinner table. (What was that simple question?) Many of the defining moments in our lives are the result of accident or luck—but why would we leave our most meaningful, memorable moments to chance when we can create them? The Power of Moments shows us how to be the author of richer experiences.

Chip and Dan Heath, the bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick, tackle one of the most critical topics in our work and personal lives: how to make better decisions. Research in psychology has revealed that our decisions are disrupted by an array of biases and irrationalities: We’re overconfident. We seek out information that supports us and downplay information that doesn’t. We get distracted by short-term emotions. When it comes to making choices, it seems, our brains are flawed instruments. Unfortunately, merely being aware of these shortcomings doesn’t fix the problem, any more than knowing that we are nearsighted helps us to see. The real question is: How can we do better? In Decisive, the Heaths, based on an exhaustive study of the decision-making literature, introduce a four-step process designed to counteract these biases. Written in an engaging and compulsively readable style, Decisive takes readers on an unforgettable journey, from a rock star’s ingenious decision-making trick to a CEO’s disastrous acquisition, to a single question that can often resolve thorny personal decisions. Along the way, we learn the answers to critical questions like these: How can we stop the cycle of agonizing over our decisions? How can we make group decisions without destructive politics? And how can we ensure that we don’t overlook precious opportunities to change our course? Decisive is the Heath brothers’ most powerful—and important—book yet, offering fresh strategies and practical tools enabling us to make better choices. Because the right decision, at the right moment, can make all the difference.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The instant classic about why some ideas thrive, why others die, and how to make your ideas stick. “Anyone interested in influencing others—to buy, to vote, to learn, to diet, to give to charity or to start a revolution—can learn from this book.”—The Washington Post Mark Twain once observed, “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.” His observation rings true: Urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas—entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists—struggle to make them “stick.” In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain ways to make ideas stickier, such as applying the human scale principle, using the Velcro Theory of Memory, and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds—from the infamous “kidney theft ring” hoax to a coach’s lessons on sportsmanship to a vision for a new product at Sony—draw their power from the same six traits. Made to Stick will transform the way you communicate. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the Mother Teresa Effect; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us the vital principles of winning ideas—and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

A clear, practical, first-of-its-kind guide to communicating and understanding numbers and data—from bestselling business author Chip Heath. How much bigger is a billion than a million? Well, a million seconds is twelve days. A billion seconds is…thirty-two years. Understanding numbers is essential—but humans aren’t built to understand them. Until very recently, most languages had no words for numbers greater than five—anything from six to infinity was known as “lots.” While the numbers in our world have gotten increasingly complex, our brains are stuck in the past. How can we translate millions and billions and milliseconds and nanometers into things we can comprehend and use? Author Chip Heath has excelled at teaching others about making ideas stick and here, in Making Numbers Count, he outlines specific principles that reveal how to translate a number into our brain’s language. This book is filled with examples of extreme number makeovers, vivid before-and-after examples that take a dry number and present it in a way that people click in and say “Wow, now I get it!” You will learn principles such as: -SIMPLE PERSPECTIVE CUES: researchers at Microsoft found that adding one simple comparison sentence doubled how accurately users estimated statistics like population and area of countries. -VIVIDNESS: get perspective on the size of a nucleus by imagining a bee in a cathedral, or a pea in a racetrack, which are easier to envision than “1/100,000th of the size of an atom.” -CONVERT TO A PROCESS: capitalize on our intuitive sense of time (5 gigabytes of music storage turns into “2 months of commutes, without repeating a song”). -EMOTIONAL MEASURING STICKS: frame the number in a way that people already care about (“that medical protocol would save twice as many women as curing breast cancer”). Whether you’re interested in global problems like climate change, running a tech firm or a farm, or just explaining how many Cokes you’d have to drink if you burned calories like a hummingbird, this book will help math-lovers and math-haters alike translate the numbers that animate our world—allowing us to bring more data, more naturally, into decisions in our schools, our workplaces, and our society.

From Chip and Dan Heath, the bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick, comes The Myth of the Garage: And Other Minor Surprises, a collection of the authors’ best columns for Fast Company magazine—16 pieces in all, plus a previously unpublished piece entitled “The Future Fails Again.” In Myth, the Heath brothers tackle some of the most (and least) important issues in the modern business world: • Why you should never buy another mutual fund (“The Horror of Mutual Funds”) • Why your gut may be more ethical than your brain (“In Defense of Feelings”) • How to communicate with numbers in a way that changes decisions (“The Gripping Statistic”) • Why the “Next Big Thing” often isn’t (“The Future Fails Again”) • Why you may someday pay $300 for a pair of socks (“The Inevitability of $300 Socks”) • And 12 others . . . Punchy, entertaining, and full of unexpected insights, the collection is the perfect companion for a short flight (or a long meeting).

Limited rationality - Rule following - Multiple actors : teams and partners - Multiple actors : conflict and politics - Ambiguity and interpretation - Decision engineering.

The goal of this volume is to explore the social and political dynamics of rumor and the related concept of urban or contemporary legend. These forms of communication often appear in tandem with social problems, including riots, racial or political violence, and social and economic upheavals. The volume emphasizes the connection of rumor to a set of social concerns from government corruption and corporate scandal, to racial, religious, and other prejudices. Central to the dialogue are issues of truth, belief, history, public policy, and evidence. Rumor has been recognized as one of the most important contributing factors to violence and discrimination. Yet, despite its significance in exacerbating social discord and mistrust, little systematic scholarly attention has been paid to the political origins and consequences of rumor. Rumor is defined as a proposition for belief that is not backed by secure standards of evidence. Rumor can be traditional or not, and can be expressed as a simple claim of fact. In both instances groups of claim-makers, operating out of their own interests and with a set of resources, attempt to depict reality, and if possible, impact the future. The need for this book is underscored by changing patterns of technology. What in the past was grounded in face- to-face interaction is now often found on the Internet, which is a major source of rumor. An appreciation of how new electronic forms of communication affect communal belief is essential for explicating rumor dynamics. The volume is comprehensive. Essays cover race and ethnicity, migration and globalization, corporate malfeasance, and state and government corruption. While editors and contributors well appreciate the dynamic nature of rumors and legends, the high quality of the effort make it evident that the issues that are raised and reoccur will serve to channel and inspire research in this major field of communications research for years to come. Gary Alan Fine is professor of sociology at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. Veronique Campion-Vincent is a folklorist at the Maison des Sciences de l''Homme, in Paris, France. Chip Heath is associate professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School for Business at Stanford University in California. Each are accomplished authors and researchers--as are the participants in the volume itself.

Chip Heath y Dan Heath explican por qué algunas ideas sobreviven y otras mueren.

Apprendre à se motiver et à motiver les autres pour tout réussir (au travail comme à la maison) Au travail comme à la maison, quand on veut changer quelque chose (améliorer son chiffre d’affaires, se mettre au vélo, pousser son conjoint à arrêter de fumer...), une montagne d’obstacles surgit forcément : trop de contraintes, pas le courage, trop compliqué... Malgré nos bonnes volontés, nous résistons au changement ! Pourtant, c’est facile d’y arriver ! Au programme, dans ce livre : Un concept simple pour expliquer les mécanismes du comportement : imaginez que vos émotions (peur, instinct...) sont un éléphant et que votre raison est le conducteur perché sur le dos de l’animal. Il essaye tant bien que mal de faire avancer l’éléphant mais c’est impossible sans la bonne méthode ! Trois étapes efficaces pour arriver à changer : 1. Donnez une direction au conducteur avec des objectifs accessibles et précis, de petites étapes... 2. Motivez l’éléphant (suscitez des émotions, échelonnez pour faire moins peur...). 3. Tracez votre propre chemin (modifiez votre environnement, créez des habitudes...). Avec de nombreux d’exemples et mises en situation : nul besoin de héros ni de grands moyens, tout le monde peut changer ! Un petit pas après l’autre...

Waarom zijn broodjeaapverhalen zo hardnekkig en vergeten we alledaagse waarheden zo gemakkelijk? Hoe maakt een krant een kop die ervoor zorgt dat we door willen lezen? En waarom onthouden we complexe verhalen wel, maar complexe feiten niet? Waarom floreren sommige ideeën van meet af aan, terwijl andere razendsnel ter ziele gaan? En hoe verbeter je de kansen van waardevolle ideeën? In De plakfactor leggen Chip en Dan Heath uit hoe je de kleefkracht van ideeën kunt versterken. Deze onmisbare gids laat zien dat ‘sticky’ ideeën hun kracht ontlenen aan zes belangrijke eigenschappen, die ook jij kunt leren beheersen. Dit boek gaat over een van de belangrijkste aspecten van menselijk gedrag en zal de manier waarop je ideeën overbrengt ingrijpend veranderen. De plakfactor is provocerend, onthullend en vaak verrassend grappig. Het onthult de cruciale principes van succesvolle ideeën en de strategieën om je eigen boodschap meer kleefkracht te geven.

Pourquoi certains moments, même brefs, nous marquent à vie ? Pourquoi nos souvenirs les plus précieux se concentrent-ils sur une courte période de notre jeunesse ? Pourquoi avons-nous tendance à nous souvenir du meilleur, du pire ou du dernier instant d''une expérience vécue ? Dans ce nouvel ouvrage, Chip et Dan Heath décryptent les ressorts de ces instants puissants capables de changer une vie et vous apprennent à créer des expériences mémorables pour vos interlocuteurs, vos clients, vos enfants... Les moments les plus marquants de notre vie doivent souvent beaucoup au hasard ou à la chance... Cet ouvrage vous apprendra à les susciter vous-même. « Tout simplement stupéfiant. » - Jake Knapp, auteur du best-seller Sprint « Ce livre formidable regorge à chaque page d''idées pratiques et de récits mémorables. [...] Ne passez pas à côté. » - Eric Ries, auteur des best-sellers Lean Startup et Le Modèle Startup.

Traditional Chinese edition of Switch: How to Change Things when Change Is Hard. Dan and Chip Heath, the authors of "Made to Stick," tell stories of people and organizations who overcame the seemingly insurmountable hurdles to make changes they know they should. In Chinese. Distributed by Tsai Fong Books, Inc.

¿Por qué es tan difícil lograr cambios duraderos en nuestros trabajos, nuestras comunidades y nuestras propias vidas? El obstáculo principal es un conflicto intrínseco en el cerebro, nos dicen Chip y Dan Heath, dos reconocidos especialistas en comportamiento organizacional. Los psicólogos han descubierto que la mente está gobernada por dos sistemas diferentes --la mente racional y la mente emocional-- que compiten por el control. La mente racional quiere un cuerpo perfecto; la mente emocional quiere comerse esa galleta. La mente racional quiere cambiar el trabajo; la mente emocional ama la comodidad y la rutina. Esta tensión puede causar que muchos esfuerzos por cambiar fracasen, pero si se superan, el cambio puede llegar rápidamente. En Switch, los hermanos Heath muestran cómo personas comunes y corrientes han unido estas dos mentes, logrando espectaculares resultados: ● La directiva que ayudó a Target a pasar de ser una compañía minorista regional que facturaba tres billones de dólares, a convertirse en un gigante de más de 63 billones de dólares. ● La directora de servicios clínicos que, junto con su equipo de enfermeras, logró reducir drásticamente los errores en la administración de medicamentos en su hospital. ● El director de atención al cliente que transformó su compañía de una que ignoraba totalmente el servicio al cliente a ser una compañía definida por él. En este convincente relato, los Heath reúnen décadas de investigación en los campos de la psicología, la sociología y los negocios entre muchos otros, para explicar por qué cambiar es tan difícil y dar a conocer nuevas maneras de lograr cambios duraderos. Switch muestra que los cambios exitosos siguen un modelo, un modelo que puedes utilizar para lograr los cambios que tú quieras, tanto si tu interés se centra en cambiar el mundo como en cambiar tu cintura. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives? The primary obstacle is a conflict that''s built into our brains, say Chip and Dan Heath, authors of the critically acclaimed bestseller Made to Stick. Psychologists have discovered that our minds are ruled by two different systems - the rational mind and the emotional mind--that compete for control. The rational mind wants a great beach body; the emotional mind wants that Oreo cookie. The rational mind wants to change something at work; the emotional mind loves the comfort of the existing routine. This tension can doom a change effort - but if it is overcome, change can come quickly. In Switch, the Heaths show how everyday people - employees and managers, parents and nurses - have united both minds and, as a result, achieved dramatic results: * The lowly medical interns who managed to defeat an entrenched, decades-old medical practice that was endangering patients * The home-organizing guru who developed a simple technique for overcoming the dread of housekeeping * The manager who transformed a lackadaisical customer-support team into service zealots by removing a standard tool of customer service In a compelling, story-driven narrative, the Heaths bring together decades of counterintuitive research in psychology, sociology, and other fields to shed new light on how we can effect transformative change. Switch shows that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern you can use to make the changes that matter to you, whether your interest is in changing the world or changing your waistline.