Miner County, South Dakota, population 2884, is located in the southeast part of the state...50 or so miles northwest of Sioux Falls. Like many communities in the Great Plains, Miner County has been devastated with a decline in farming and an exodus of young people. (For a revealing chronicle on the challenge of the Plains States, see "The Emptied Prairie" from the National Geographic.)
For Miner County, this decline all began to change a few years ago with a "stump-pulling" party...a community effort to improve a blighted small-town center. As a result of this grassroots effort, a local high school teacher assigned his students to survey the local economy. When the survey was completed, the students uncovered that, if local residents simply spent 10% more locally by shopping at the local retailers rather than driving off to the outlet malls in Sioux Falls, tax revenues would increase to $7.6 million, created funds to invest in the local economy.
With this simple target, residents were motivated to change their behavior to reach this attainable goal. The following year, tax revenues exceeded their wildest expectations...climbing to $15 million by the next year. In time, some businesses ventured into the business of repairing wind turbines — a good match for a community where people had grown up around farm equipment. Today, there’s a thriving “green tech” wind turbine repair industry in the county, and the population is growing again.
As Chip Heath points out, Miner County residents were able to create change for two reasons: 1)They came up with a clear and simple direction for the rider — do 10% more shopping locally. 2) They also motivated residents by creating a strong feeling of community, exemplified by the stump-pulling party and the student-sparked change.
These examples, and more, are explored in a fascinating new book, "Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard." The authors, brothers Chip and Dan Heath are, a professor of organizational behavior in the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and a senior fellow at the Social Enterprise Center at Duke University, respectively.
In their research on change, the two most common quotes they heard were, "Change is hard", and "People hate change". Yet they were puzzled. Why do some huge changes, e.g. marriage or the arrival of a new child, come joyously...but trivial changes, like submitting an expense report on time, are met with intractable resistance?
Why Change is Hard
The answer was found in the work of psychologists who discovered that we have two separate systems in our brains, the rational and the emotional. The rational system is a thoughtful, logical planner. The emotional system is impulsive and instinctual.
When the two systems are in alignment, change can come quickly. When they aren't, change doesn't happen...or, at best, happens at a glacial pace.
In their research, the Heath brothers studied people in the midst of making difficult changes...and were able to uncover similarities in the successful strategies for change. "Switch..." is their attempt to share these "success templates" with the rest of us.
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