To be successful with your innovation and change behavior, you need to focus on directing the rider. The rider is the rational part of the decision making behavior change equation. The rider needs clarity. Where are they going and how are they gonna get there? The rider wants clear instructions and a clear goal. An example from our book Switch, which is all about how to make change when change is hard, talks about the 1% milk campaign. So his team got together to say, we wanna make Americans healthier, in the face of this obesity epidemic. One way we can do that, is to reduce the amount of saturated fat in their diet. So they looked around and determined that the largest source of saturated fat in our diets is milk, and particularly, full fat milk. It was very popular at that time. So he launched this campaign, drink 1% milk. Switch from full fat to 1%. Because they gave clear instructions, and a clear goal they were able to increase their market share of 1% milk from 18% to 41% in just a year. More than doubling the market share of this healthier alternative, cannibalizing the sales from the full fat milk market. Jerry Sternin in 1990 was asked to open a new office for Save the Children in Vietnam. And when he got there they said help us. We need to fight childhood malnutrition. You have no budget. Go. Well, Jerry Sternin could have spent a lot of time writing papers about this, but instead, he decided to take action and sent his team out into rural villages around Vietnam to observe, and watch, and talk to these families that had malnutritious children. And he learned something very important. He learned that there was a cultural understanding that children should be eating soft, pale foods. That was good food for children. And that meant mostly rice. They were mostly rice farmers. Well because of that the kids were mostly eating caloric but non-nutrient dense food and they were malnutritious. He looked around in the villages though and there were some children who weren't malnutritious. He went and talked to those families and observed and found out what were they doing differently? He was looking for bright spots. Your kids are healthy, but you have the same resources as everyone else. Why are you a brighter spot in this dark situation? Well, he found out that these parents, when they're out in the rice paddies, gathering rice, they weren't just gathering rice, they were looking also for these tiny shrimp that swim in the rice paddies. They'd get some of those. They knew there were edible greens that grew in the ditches and they would gather those as well and would mix them in with the rice that they fed their children. Now those kids were getting protein from the shrimp, they're getting all kinds of nutrients from the greens. Those kids were healthier, Jerry Sternin was able to identify the bright spots and pass them on to teach other parents so they could improve their children's health as well. I'm a member of the Kaiser Permanente health providers system. One thing I've always liked is how they script the critical moves for their doctors, about washing hands. So any time I go in for an appointment and I'm gonna have some sort of an examination, the first thing the doctor does when they come in the room is wash their hands. So they know as soon as they come in the room with a patient their policy is, they wash their hands in front of me. Now, all kinds of health care systems understand this logic. You should wash your hands more often if you're a doctor, and you're touching lots of different people, in this environment where there's lots of germs. So wash your hands, it's better. If the doctor's required to think that each time, is this when I should wash my hands, are they dirty enough to wash again? That's a cognitive burden for the doctor. Eliminate the cognitive burden. Give them a script. When you come in the room, wash your hands. I love that. It makes me feel like I'm in a healthier environment. I'm confident in the system and the doctor doesn't have to worry about are they probably going to contaminate their patient? No because they follow the policy. Another way that you can help the rider is to point to the destination, describe that destination. First grade teacher in the Teach For America program did this really successfully. She showed up for her first day of class and found that her students were pretty well unprepared. Most of the kids had not gone to kindergarten. It wasn't mandatory in her state. They hadn't learned to read at home. This was the first time they were trying to read a book. So, she said to the kids, look, we need to create this learning atmosphere. I want to celebrate scholarship. Here's what I can do for you. At the end of this year, you finish first grade, you'll be third-graders. Now, technically speaking, they were gonna be second-graders. But to a first grader, a third grader is the equivalent of an Olympic athlete. These are their heroes. They're taller, they're faster, they're more coordinated. They're smarter. First graders want to be third graders. When she offered them that, she had their attention. During the year, she celebrated this culture of scholarship they knew where their destination was gonna be. And by March of the year, 90% of the students were reading at the third grade level, second grade level. 90% of the students were reading at the second grade level. She held a graduation for them. They knew that they had passed to the next level. They were on their way to becoming third graders. It was super beneficial to their motivation to see that destination in mind. We talked about for the rider, the importance of clarity. The value of identifying bright spots, scripting the critical moves and pointing to a destination.
