Want Change? Get Specific!
While the number of books and articles about change can be overwhelming, there are some universal truths that tend to appear in most. The one I have been thinking about a lot lately is how important it is to be specific when we are attempting to change ourselves or influence others to change.
In his books, Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, Marshall Goldsmith uses the term “criteria” to get at the concept of being specific. For example, when coaching an executive who wanted to spend more time with his kids – Goldsmith pushed the executive to be specific. Exactly how much time with which kid? When? Committing to spending 4 one-on-one hours with each child allowed this executive to track his progress and truly change.
The authors of Influencer present a similar idea in their book – claiming that for change to succeed, we need to get specific about who needs to change which exact behaviors. They use the term “vital behaviors” to describe the concept and share scores of examples where change succeeded because the leader got specific.
Most recently, Chip and Dan Heath provided support for the need for specificity in their book, Switch: How to Change When Change is Hard. The Heath brothers use the term “black & white goal” and argue that a concrete goal of zero defects, zero safety incidents, or zero snacks results in much more real change than a vague goal like reduce accidents, or calories.
There you have it – three books from the experts – saying the same thing (albeit a bit differently). If you want change, you have to get specific. So NO sweets for me until I lose the pounds I gained eating BBQ all week in Austin!
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