The Three Keys to Change

Back at GM's headquarters in Detroit, top executives assumed that Toyota achieved its spectacular results through cutting- edge technology. Detroit sent envoys to Fremont to see what was happening. It turned out that snooping on Japanese technology had been GM's real motive behind making the deal with Toyota in the first place. But there was no gee- whiz gadgetry to see. Nummi's machinery was three decades out of date: It was 1950s technology! The shocking improvements had happened there because the unionized American workers constantly came up with ideas for improving quality and cutting costs. These were the very same workers who had been so hostile and embittered. Now they talked unabashedly about the sense of "family" they felt at the Nummi factory. Toyota's secret wasn't the technology it applied; it was the psychology. What did Toyota's executives know that enabled them to win over thousands of workers who had been considered "unmanageable"?

The Ornish heart patients, Delancey ex-convicts, and Nummi autoworkers are classic examples of the psychology of change. They may seem like very different situations, but they all show what's gone wrong with our common beliefs on this issue. We like to think that the facts can convince people to change.

We like to think that people are essentially "rational"--that is, they'll act in their self- interest if they have accurate information. We believe that "knowledge is power" and that "the truth will set you free." But nine out of ten heart patients didn't change even when their doctors informed them about what they had to do to prolong their lives. Ex-convicts knew how hard their time could be if they were arrested again, but it didn't make a difference.

After we try "rationally" informing and educating people, we resort to scare tactics. We like to think that change is motivated by fear and that the strongest force for change is crisis, which creates the greatest fear. There are few crises as threatening as heart disease, and no fear as intense as the fear of death, but even those don't motivate heart patients to change.

The fear of losing their jobs didn't compel the Fremont workers to change.

The fear of a long prison sentence didn't intimidate most criminals to "go straight." Even after they were incarcerated for years under awful conditions, they still weren't deterred. What if the laws demanded even harsher punishments? That only made the problem worse, actually. In the decade leading up to the 2002 Justice Department study, the states built more prisons and judges imposed longer sentences. The result? The rearrest rate actually went up by five percentage points, from 62.5 percent to 67.5 percent.

Finally, we often believe that people can't change or that they "resist" change. We think that this is simply human nature. Our most distinguished experts--the MDs and PhDs and MBAs who run the health care and criminal justice systems and the largest manufacturing corporations--think that it's naive and hopeless to expect the vast majority of people to change. They know that patients don't listen to their doctors. In fact, even when patients with severe heart disease are prescribed "statin" drugs, which dramatically lower cholesterol counts and reduce the risk of cardiac arrest, they typically stop following their doctors' orders and give up taking the medication within a year--and all that's involved is popping a little pill once or twice a day.

The people who run things know that ex-cons rebel against the authority of their parole officers. They know that assembly workers struggle against the power of their bosses. So the experts, disgruntled with the ignorance and incorrigibility of the masses, take on the heroic role of saving us from ourselves and from one another. They come up with coronary bypass surgery as a quick fix, or they argue for building more prisons and requiring longer sentences or simply locking up criminals for life, or they try to "automate around the assholes," as one GM executive crudely described the company's grand strategy in the years when it closed down the Fremont plant. They remake their fields around their belief in the impossibility of change. The Ornish and Delancey and Nummi cases are shocking because they prove that dramatic change is possible even in the situations that seem the most hopeless.

Change or Die is a short book about a simple idea. Whether it's the average guy who has struggled with a stressful life for so many decades that he has become seriously ill, or the heroin addict who commits felony after felony, or the managers, salespeople, and laborers who try to make it through unnerving shifts in their business, or virtually anyone who comes up against unexpected challenges and opportunities, people can change the deep- rooted patterns of how they think, feel, and act.