Authors: Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Following in the wake of their book, “Made to Stick”, the brothers Chip and Dan Heath have produced another insightful book on how to drive change. They make their points through some memorable stories. I still remember the one about Jerry Sternin. When he and his wife arrived in Vietnam in the nineties, nearly half the children were malnourished and starving. He had six months to turn this around. He could have commissioned studies to figure out what was the root cause behind this malaise, but all the information he would have got — that there was malnutrition, poor sanitation, poverty, lack of access to clean water — would have been “true but useless” (TBU). Millions of kids can’t wait for the time it will take to fix all of these systemic issues in Vietnam. Partly in desperation, he looked for success stories: Mothers who had discovered ways to feed and care for their children effectively. They found that these women had some common positive behaviors. They fed their children multiple times a day; many of them went to rice paddies to collect tiny shrimp and crabs and mix it with the rice; they also mixed sweet-potato greens which was considered a low-class food. Sternin and his team of volunteers, publicized these findings and created a grass-roots movement to spread the word among the different villages in Vietnam. The program reached 2.2 million people in 265 villages and resulted in a huge turnaround in infant mortality in Vietnam.
There are many such stories in the book and they are hugely motivational. Read this book and ask yourself what you are going to change next.
Following in the wake of their book, “Made to Stick”, the brothers Chip and Dan Heath have produced another insightful book on how to drive change. They make their points through some memorable stories. I still remember the one about Jerry Sternin. When he and his wife arrived in Vietnam in the nineties, nearly half the children were malnourished and starving. He had six months to turn this around. He could have commissioned studies to figure out what was the root cause behind this malaise, but all the information he would have got — that there was malnutrition, poor sanitation, poverty, lack of access to clean water — would have been “true but useless” (TBU). Millions of kids can’t wait for the time it will take to fix all of these systemic issues in Vietnam. Partly in desperation, he looked for success stories: Mothers who had discovered ways to feed and care for their children effectively. They found that these women had some common positive behaviors. They fed their children multiple times a day; many of them went to rice paddies to collect tiny shrimp and crabs and mix it with the rice; they also mixed sweet-potato greens which was considered a low-class food. Sternin and his team of volunteers, publicized these findings and created a grass-roots movement to spread the word among the different villages in Vietnam. The program reached 2.2 million people in 265 villages and resulted in a huge turnaround in infant mortality in Vietnam.
There are many such stories in the book and they are hugely motivational. Read this book and ask yourself what you are going to change next.
