End-of-chapter Recommendations

Chapter 1

In this talk, which I highly recommend, engineer and innovator Tom Chi describes how he fights against guess-a-thons and gets his teams working in the medium of reality. To see what it’s like for a principal to step into the reality of a student, watch the PBS NewsHour segment I mention in the chapter. You’ll see Assistant Principal Karen Ritter run sprints, battle back-to-back sections of Algebra, and write an essay alongside her ninth-grade shadowee, Alan Garcia. If you’d like to take a deeper look at the illusion of explanatory depth research, head here for the academic article. (And to see that videos of teenagers struggling to explain toilets, go here.) If you’re curious about the swashbuckling world of turnaround specialists, start with James Shein’s Reversing the Slide. Shein’s book is both sharp and irreverent, making for an engaging read. Or, take a listen to my conversation with turnaround consultant, Jeff Vogelsang, who I interviewed on my podcast What It’s Like to Be… He’s the guy quoted in this chapter saying when you interview front-line people, they’ll “puke out” everything that was relevant. For more on “going to the gemba”—the inspiration for Repenning’s “go and see the work” advice—check out The Toyota Way. It’s a great summary of the Toyota Production System—much beloved of operations gurus. In this article and this talk, MIT professor Nelson Repenning details how you can increase the visibility of the work you and your team are doing. This is especially important for knowledge work, Repenning points out, where feedback is naturally far less visible than in manufacturing.

 

Chapter 2

If you need help picking the right boulder—i.e., knowing what to focus on in your work—then I’d recommend the thoughtful and practical Bullet Proof Problem Solving by Charles Conn and Robert McLean. Rory Sutherland offers an insightful take on potential solutions we overlook because we don’t think deep enough about the psychological goals of what we’re building. His Eurostar example, mentioned briefly in this chapter, comes around minute six. Linda Metcalf literally wrote the book on the Miracle Question, a step-by-step guide to seeing your way quickly through confounding situations to meaningful and lasting change. Its primary focus is on personal relationships, but it also includes some advice on how to build more effective connections within the workplace. If the truck-buying story inspired you to think more carefully about how to set the right goals, check out this paper called “Goals Gone Wild” (and an accompanying Q&A). When goals go wrong, they can go very wrong.

 

Chapter 3

I learned about the US Air Force’s cockpit study from Todd Rose’s fascinating book The End of Average. Rose, who headed the Mind, Brain, and Education program at Harvard, breaks down the myth of measuring individuals against the average in schools and at work. He’s really good at showing how there are usually multiple pathways to success: the three approaches children take when learning to read, the seven distinct routes to career success, and more. For a more psychological take on change, including a closer look at the power of bright spots thinking, check out Switch, by my brother Chip and me. For even more on bright spots—especially for social-sector work—see The Power of Positive Deviance by Richard Pascale, Jerry Sternin, and Monique Sternin. (“Positive deviance” = bright spots thinking.) If you’re a cat person—or simply interested in learning more about how a pair of vets managed to save millions of cats—check out the “Unleashing Social Change” podcast episode with Kate Hurley as a guest. For a master class on how Hurley approached fixes for overcrowding in shelters, watch her virtual lecture hosted by the San Diego Humane Society. Or, to learn more about the five life-saving strategies used in the Million Cat Challenge, check out the resources section of the campaign’s website. (As a teaser, one strategy was “managed admission,” which was basically a way of relieving bottlenecks, a topic we will explore in the next chapter.)

 

Chapter 4

For more on the theory of constraints, I’m not sure if anything can top the classic 1984 business book The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox. It offers practical examples and lessons on how to evaluate an entire system (versus its individual components) as well as insights on organizational culture, leadership, and teamwork. And did I mention it’s a novel? Also, 24 years after The Goal, Goldratt applied his philosophy of constraints to life more broadly through a conversation with his daughter, Efrat, in the book The Choice. For a practical, constraint-based approach to personal change, I’d recommend How to Change by Katy Milkman. She described her approach: “Change comes most readily when you understand what’s standing between you and success and tailor your solution to that roadblock.” If sticky-note-affirmations struck a chord, you can hear more from Laura Heck on my podcast, What It’s Like to Be... She gives us a peek into life as a couple’s therapist—from the power of mystery dates to the rampant misuse of the word “narcissism.” And finally, as a palate cleanser, enjoy this comedic take on what happens when “closing the gaps” at Chick-Fil-A goes too far.

Chapter 5

For more on Geordie Brackin and Mike Goldstein’s deep dive into the failings of career centers—and potential Leverage Points for a way forward—check out their white paper, Peeling The “College Career Services Office” Onion. For a detailed, day-by-day account of how the University of Iowa hospital’s radiology department fixed patient wait times within a single week, here is its fascinating case study. For the director’s cut version of the methane story, read David W. Brown’s New Yorker story "A Security Camera for the Planet." Also, be sure to watch Fred Krupp’s inspiring TED Talk announcing the MethaneRAD project and its vast potential—around the 3:00 mark, he shows how infrared cameras can detect leaks that are otherwise invisible. There are methodologies for “mapping the system” that I felt were too complex to explore in this chapter, but I still think they are really valuable: (1) Journey mapping (mentioned briefly) is a good way to “map the system” for customers, patients, students, etc. For a primer on customer journey mapping, check out Journey Mapping 101. (2) Developing a “theory of change”: This guide by Stanford’s Center for Innovation coaches nonprofits through creating a theory of change for their efforts to change the world. It’s about as comprehensive as you could hope for—complete with videos, exercises, and advice. (3) Drawing a “driver diagram”: This is a really helpful visual tool for identifying the elements of a system that “drive” a certain outcome. More on those here. 

 

Chapter 6

For more on “time confetti” (and how to avoid it), check out Brigid Schulte’s book Overwhelmed, as well as Ashley Whillans’ book Time Smart. You can read an excerpt here: “Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure.” If you think a design sprint might help your team vault forward quickly, Sprint is a terrific resource. In his book, the authors detail the sprint method they developed at Google and which they’ve applied in organizations big and small around the world. For remote teams looking to accelerate their collaboration, here’s an article on the ways “bursty” communication can help your team thrive.  If the “middle problem” of motivation resonated with you, it’s worth picking up a copy of Get It Done by Ayelet Fishbach. She draws on the burgeoning field of motivation science to develop a framework for navigating personal change. Another strategy for combatting the murky middle is to “multiply milestones,” which means finding intermediate achievements worthy of celebrating. My brother and I devote a chapter to that topic in our book The Power of Moments.

Chapter 7 

Want a reminder of the DOWNTIME categories? Here is one 2-page printable handout from the Eureka Institute that I especially liked. Also, remember the story of the hospital receiving area? Part of their miraculous transformation was DOWNTIME-driven. Here's the business school case study. (The teaching note, for educators only, has the full DOWNTIME analysis.) For a less practical and more theoretical foray into lean manufacturing more generally, you might take a look at The Machine That Changed the World. It’ll give you an overview of the evolution of lean, plus a deeper sense of why lean operations succeed where others fail. As an aside, Gary Kaplan (the AXA XL / “shift right” guy) is a champion of a methodology called “Rapid Results,” which he discusses briefly here. In short, Rapid Results sets up ambitious 100-day challenges that are led by self-managing teams. Though not waste-specific, the Rapid Results approach is certainly relevant to our overall mission to get rolling, and though I don’t write about it, it was one of the methodologies that informed the book’s framework. Finally, you can enjoy the full, director’s cut version of Catmull’s mission to protect Pixar’s creatives in his book, Creativity, Inc.  It’s a great book and has lots of behind-the-scenes tales about movies such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and WALL-E.

Chapter 8

John J. Murphy’s 2023 book Solution-Focused Therapy offers a rigorous and thorough overview of ways to get quick and lasting results with personal challenges; for an even deeper dive into SFT tools like bright spots and goal setting, be sure to pick up Solution-Focused Counseling in Schools. For more on how David Philippi applies his Pareto-inspired approach to effective leadership and family matters, check out his blog post “Dad, Son and CEO” as well as other posts on Strategex’s 80/20 paradigm. I briefly mentioned Michael Kaiser’s book The Art of the Turnaround. (“You can’t save your way to health.”) It is excellent—an insider’s view of how Kaiser turned around struggling and famous arts institutions such as the Royal Opera House and the Kennedy Center. A trio of researchers detail how companies have successfully weathered recessions by doing less and more in this Harvard Business Review article, “Roaring Out of a Recession,” which I mention in the chapter. 

Chapter 9

On the theme of “progress making believers of skeptics,” I want to return to the source I cited in the Introduction: Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer’s insightful book The Progress Principle. As a reminder, they found that making progress was the #1 motivator of employees. For a great primer on their research, check out Amabile’s Talks at Google presentation. Dr. Doug Eby, the Southcentral Foundation’s Executive Vice President of Specialty Services, offers a look into their radically different approach to primary care in this talk about the Nuka Model (part 1, Eby starts at 6:15, and part 2). For more on how Dianne Connery started tapping into her community to resuscitate and transform the Pottsboro public library, check out her inspiring presentation from 2016, “Flip the Script: Changing the Direction of the Library.”  Finally, a great all-purpose resource on motivation is Dan Pink’s book Drive.

Chapter 10

To see normal dialysis through the eyes of a first-time patient, read Steve Winfree’s account. Also, to cry your eyeballs out, tune in for an unexpected twist in Winfree’s life when his wife discovered later that she was an organ “match” and surprised him with the news that she would give him a kidney. You can read more about Dr. Gibney’s self-care dialysis efforts and a similar initiative at a Dallas healthcare system in this Harvard Business Review article. For a deeper look at Gabriele Wulf’s work on motivation and attention—mentioned in the context of the archery story—see her 2021 paper (open-access version), co-authored with Rebecca Lewthwaite, which describes the OPTIMAL theory of performance. For more on Spotify’s “alignment + autonomy” approach, watch this video created by Henrik Kniberg. For another bit of inspiration on letting people drive, listen to this podcast episode with James Daunt. Daunt is the independent bookseller who turned around Waterstones, the UK’s largest book retailer. He did so, in large part, by empowering the staff to decide how they could best serve their communities. (I love his story but didn’t have the space for it here.) If you enjoyed the T-Mobile TEX teams story, be sure to check out my original source, Matthew Dixon’s “Reinventing Customer Service,” published in 2018 in Harvard Business Review. It’s admirably detailed and fun to read. (Btw I also loved Dixon’s book The Effortless Experience, co-authored with Nick Toman and Rick DeLisi—essential reading for anyone looking to improve customer service.) 

 

Chapter 11

Here’s my second plug for the talk by Tom Chi that I recommended in Chapter 1. For those looking to understand both how to learn faster and why it’s important, there’s no better introduction. I’d also be remiss not to plug the excellent  Scrum here. The book provides an overview of the agile approach that has replaced waterfall and supercharged teams in the tech industry and beyond, from military operations to hospital administration to a high school science class. Practice Perfect by Doug Lemov, Erica Woolway, and Katie Yezzi is a great tool for shrinking the learning loop in your organization—it’s especially relevant for teaching and coaching. (I liked it so much I wrote a foreword for it.)  If you’re a creative type, and especially if have an interest in audio storytelling in particular, don’t miss Eric Nuzum’s book Make Noise, which further explores the benefits and clarity that comes with getting your great ideas (and the not-so-great ones) down on paper. For more on the HappyOrNot terminals used by the San Francisco 49ers, check out David Owen’s New Yorker story “Customer Satisfaction at the Push of a Button,” which traces their fascinating history. (The first installation was in a small grocery store in western Finland.)