6 fine summer reads
A good book is the best travel companion – wherever you are. Be transported with these titles chosen by LBS faculty.
1. Switch: How to change things when change is hard
by Chip and Dan Heath:
Recommended by Richard Jolly, Adjunct Professor of Organisational Behaviour
“Switch is a classic book about why we don’t do the things we know we should be doing. The Heath brothers pick up Haidt’s brilliant metaphor about how the human brain works. We have our rational, strategic part that tells us what we should be doing – sitting like a rider on top of the elephant. Unfortunately, the other part of our brain – the elephant – is larger and more powerful, and is telling us what we want to do.
It’s the rider that sets our early morning alarm for a trip to the gym; it’s the elephant that presses the snooze button when the alarm goes off… The challenge is how to get the elephant and the rider going in the same direction. The answer is to shape the path – make the right behaviours a little bit easier and the wrong behaviours a little bit harder.
So whether you are trying to get fitter or looking to transform a major corporation, this framework has practical, invaluable lessons for all of us about how to align the elephant, the rider and the path. We use this as the core text for many courses on change at the school – highly recommended.”
