Change is something inevitable in everybody’s life, more so in an IT leader’s life. Many a books have been written on this subject, so, what makes this book different?

This book is authored by the writer brothers Chip and Dan Heath who have written an extremely enjoyable book called Made to Stick. The first book was about presenting ideas and how to make them stick in others’ minds; this one is about planning and managing change.

The authors, who prescribe a three step approach, hold the view that our mind is divided into two parts, an analytical mind and an emotional mind – comparing them with the rider or mahout and the Elephant. This results in conflicting thoughts that we are all besieged with at some time or the other – and so, for instance, one part of your mind says that you are on a diet while the other part wants you to eat the chocolate triple sundae.

As they say in the introduc¬tory part of the book, “Our built-in schizophrenia is a deeply weird thing, but we don't think much about it because we're so used to it. When we kick off a new diet, we toss the Cheetos and Oreos out of the pantry, because our rational side knows that when our emotional side gets a craving, there's no hope of self-control. The only option is to remove the temptation altogether.”

Here comes the twist in the plot: the authors advocate that you must appeal to both the parts in order to get things done and manage change better. The third important part of the process is to shape the right path. It is different from just showing the path, it is creating an environment that enables change.

For instance, the book quotes the example of a doctor who is sent to a Vietnamese village for six months, with virtually no funds but with a mission to reduce malnutrition. Burdened by these constraints, the doctor instead focuses on finding what the authors call, ‘bright spots’. These were children who did not suffer from malnutrition in a pre¬dominantly malnourished popula¬tion. The team studied these house¬holds and found that the mothers in these households were feeding their children four times a day instead of the usual two meals a day in other households, though the amount of total food fed was the same. Rather than make a public announcement, the doctor chose to hold workshops for small groups of households to demonstrate his findings. The program was so successful that it reached 2.2 million Vietnamese people in 265 villages.

In this case, the rider is the direction that the doctor gave, the elephant is the will of the mother to feed their children well and the shaping of path lies in not making an announcement but creating an environment for the change and idea to thrive.

Cases such as these illustrate key points in managing change. A very brisk and refreshing read, the book manages to make its point without sounding too preachy.