This blog looks at books such as Switch – How to Change Things When Change is Hard by Chip Heath & Dan Heath, published by Random House Canada, Toronto, 2010 because as Dividend buyers part of what we want is not to change.

To create and sustain change, you have to act more like a coach and less like a scorekeeper. You have to embrace a growth mindset and instill it in your team, The reason is in the middle of the project everything can look like a failure, it is only at the beginning and the end do success occur. In the middle it is often 3 steps forward and 2 steps backward – think snakes and ladders. This means if failure is a necessary part of change, then understanding failure is a critical step. The important thing to learn is people will persevere only if they perceive falling down as learning rather than failing. What is the attitude towards failure in the company?

Many times we attribute behavior to the way they are rather than the situation they are in. The Path can be made easier to navigate and no matter what your role is there is an element of control. Tweaking the environment is about making the right behavior a little bit easier and the wrong behaviors a little harder. Remember the easiest path – most people will take.

How can you create a habit that supports the change you are trying to make? There are only two things to think about (1) the habit needs to advance the mission and (2) The habit needs to be relatively easy to embrace.

One of the best tools to do this is the Checklist. Why are they effective? They educate about what is best, showing them the ironclad right way to do something. You can ignore but you cannot dispute it.

How to keep the journey going? Reinforcement is the secret to getting past the first step on the next ones. The problem is most of us are not good at reinforcement we are quicker to complain than to praise. Learning to spot and celebrate approximations requires us to scan the environment and look for little rays of sunshine and it is not easy. Change is not an event it is a journey.

In the book there are more examples and downloadable on http://www.switchthebook.com/resources

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the good thing is these companies tend to have longevity which allows change to happen and many companies are not the same as they were founded, something has changed. Something good and consistent which customers keep paying for at a margin which the company can make a profit and pay dividends. The history is of some change, just because it is making a profit does not mean standing still. The key is making it easier for the people who continues to buy your goods and services.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.