Change or Die
"CHANGE OR DIE. What if you were given that choice? We're talking actual life and death now. Your own life and death. What if a well-informed, trusted authority figure said you had to make difficult and enduring changes in the way you think, feel, and act? If you didn't, your time would end soon-a lot sooner than it had to. Could you change when change mattered most?"This is the question Alan Deutschman poses in Change or Die, which began as a sensational cover story by the same title for Fast Company. Deutschman concludes that although we all have the ability to change our behavior, we rarely ever do. In fact, the odds are nine to one that, when faced with the dire need to change, we won't. From patients suffering from heart disease to repeat offenders in the criminal justice system to companies trapped in the mold of unsuccessful business practices, many of us could prevent ominous outcomes by simply changing our mindset. A powerful book with universal appeal, Change or Die deconstructs and debunks age-old myths about change and empowers us with three critical keys-relate, repeat, and reframe-to help us make important positive changes in our lives. Explaining breakthrough research and progressive ideas from a wide selection of leaders in medicine, science, and business (including Dr.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
3mentions
2people
2011–2024years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Change is very hard ..
my favorite:
ALAN DEUTSCHMAN :Change or Die (2005)
- "Could you change when change really mattered? When it mattered most? Yes, you say? Try again. Yes? You’re probably deluding yourself. You wouldn’t change. Don’t believe it? You want odds? Here are the odds, the scientifically studied odds: nine to one. That’s nine to one against you. How do you like those odds? This revelation unnerved many people in the audience last November at IBM’s “Global Innovation Outlook” conference. The company’s top executives had invited the most farsighted thinkers they knew from around the world to come together in New York and propose solutions to some really big problems. They started with the crisis in health care, an industry that consumes an astonishing $1.8 trillion a year in the United States alone, or 15% of gross domestic product. A dream team of experts took the stage, and you might have expected them to proclaim that breathtaking advances in science and technology — mapping the human genome and all that — held the long-awaited answers. That’s not what they said. They said that the root cause of the health crisis hasn’t changed for decades, and the medical establishment still couldn’t figure out what to do about it. Dr. Raphael “Ray” Levey, founder of the Global Medical Forum, an annual summit meeting of leaders from every constituency in the health system, told the audience, “A relatively small percentage of the population consumes the vast majority of the health-care budget for diseases that are very well known and by and large behavioral.” That is, they’re sick because of how they choose to live their lives, not because of environmental or genetic factors beyond their control. Continued Levey: “Even as far back as when I was in medical school” — he enrolled at Harvard in 1955 — “many articles demonstrated that 80% of the health-care budget was consumed by five behavioral issues.” Levey didn’t bother to name them, but you don’t need an MD to guess what he was talking about: too much smoking, drinking, eating, and stress, and not enough exercise."
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"Reframing alone isn’t enough, of course. That’s where Dr. Ornish’s other astonishing insight comes in. Paradoxically, he found that radical, sweeping, comprehensive changes are often easier for people than small, incremental ones. For example, he says that people who make moderate changes in their diets get the worst of both worlds: They feel deprived and hungry because they aren’t eating everything they want, but they aren’t making big enough changes to quickly see an improvement in how they feel, or in measurements such as weight, blood pressure, and cholesterol. But the heart patients who went on Ornish’s tough, radical program saw quick, dramatic results, reporting a 91% decrease in frequency of chest pain in the first month. “These rapid improvements are a powerful motivator,” he says. “When people who have had so much chest pain that they can’t work, or make love, or even walk across the street without intense suffering find that they are able to do all of those things without pain in only a few weeks, then they often say, ‘These are choices worth making.’ ” While it’s astonishing that most patients in Ornish’s demanding program stick with it, studies show that two-thirds of patients who are prescribed statin drugs (which are highly effective at cutting cholesterol) stop taking them within one year. What could possibly be a smaller or easier lifestyle change than popping a pill every day? But Ornish says patients stop taking the drug because it doesn’t actually make them feel any better. It doesn’t deal with causes of high cholesterol, such as obesity, that make people feel unhealthy. The paradox holds that big changes are easier than small ones. Research shows that this idea applies to the business realm as well. Bain & Co., the management consulting firm, studied 21 recent corporate transformations and found that most were “substantially completed” in only two years or less while none took more than three years. The means were drastic: In almost every case, the CEOs fired most of the top management. Almost always, the companies enjoyed quick, tangible results, and their stock prices rose 250% a year on average as they revived. IBM’s turnaround hinged on a radical shift in focus from selling computer hardware to providing “services,” which meant helping customers build and run their information-technology operations. This required a momentous cultural switch — IBMers would have to recommend that a client buy from competitors such as Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft when it was in the client’s interest. But the radical shift worked: Services have grown into IBM’s core business and the key to its success. Of course, radical change often isn’t possible in business situations. Still, it’s always important to identify, achieve, and celebrate some quick, positive results for the vital emotional lifts that they provide. Harvard’s Kotter believes in the importance of “short-term wins” for companies, meaning “victories that nourish faith in the change effort, emotionally reward the hard workers, keep the critics at bay, and build momentum. Without sufficient wins that are visible, timely, unambiguous, and meaningful to others, change efforts invariably run into serious problems."
via:
"FastCompany; By Alan Deutschman: Change or Die ; All leadership comes down to this: changing people’s behavior. Why is that so damn hard? Science offers some surprising new answers — and ways to do better."
- 1.Accountability in action 2.The art of extreme sel-care 3.the art of innovation 4.the art of war 5.authentic happiness 6.axiom 7.the big three 8.the brain that changes itself 9.broken windows, broken business 10.change or die 11.change your toughts, change your life 12.citizen marketers 13.confidence 14.confronting reality 15.dance of change 16.death by meeting 17.dynasties 18.the education of an accidental CEO 19.Einstein 20.Execution 21.felling good together 22.the fifth discipline 23.flawless consulting 24.flight plan 25.fooled by randomness 26.fountain head 27.the four obsessions of an extraordinary executive 28.the four seasons of mariage 29.getting to yes 30.giant steps 31.good business 32.the google story 33.the great bridge 34.group genius 35.the heart of change 36.highlight of the perfect sales process 37.how to start a consulting service 38.how to win friends and influence people 39.idioms 40.influencer 41.innovation and entrepreneurship 42.the innovator's dilemma 43.inside Drucker's brain 44.inspire! why customer come back 45.the intelligent investor 46.irrational exuberance 47.it's not about the coffee 48.Jack: straight from the gut 49.judgment 50.the leader in me 51.life makeovers 52.linked 53.the long walk 54.madde to stick 55.the magic of thinking 56.man's search for meaning 57.managing in the next society 58.managing oneself 59.managing transitions 60.the mariage you always wanted 61.the message 62.mindfulness 63.Moneyball: the art of winning an unfair game 64.the new psycho-cybernetics 65.the no asshole rule 66.outliers 67.the personnality code 68.planet google 69.pour your heart into it 70.the power of intention 71.the power of positive thinking 72.the richest man in babylon 73.rule 1 74.the science of getting rich 75.screamfree parenting 76.the search 77.shackleton's way 78.the snowball 79.social intelligence 80.speak to win: how to present with power in any situation 81.the spontaneous fulfillment 82.the structure of scientific revolutions 83.strength finder 84.success built 85.take time for your life 86.talking dirty with the queen of clean 87.team of rivals 88.the ten faces of innovation 89.the three signs of a miserable job 90.transparency 91.ultrametabolism 92.the wal-mart way 93.the warren buffet way 94.what make an effective executive 95.what would google do? 96.a whole new mind 97.the whuffie factor 98.winning 99.the wisdom of crowds 100.writing down the bones 101.zero 102.the 4 hour work week 103.the 80/20 individual 104.the 80/20 principal
