As I read this morning’s question, I immediately thought about a book published in 2010 titled, “Switch, How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.” Though the authors, Chip and David Heath, are better known for the bestseller, “Made to Stick,” the premise of this book is how to affect transformative change through “little bite-size victories.”
The book cites a premise about a fundamental resistance to change caused by a tension between an individual’s emotional and rational side. When a task/vision “feels” too big, the emotional side will resist. Thus, to avoid emotional sabotage, change is more readily sustainable through small, quantifiable targets leading to small victories. The theory is that a series of “small wins” will create a positive spiral of behavioral change, which ultimately will create transformative change.
The underlying motive of President Obama’s “school uniforms” approach is unknown. If the intent is primarily one of appearance, to offer a contrast to daily partisan Washington sniping, he may succeed in the short term. But without a quantifiable/measurable end that he can articulate, this approach will fail in the long term and the American public will see this for what it is.
Whether this “small ball” approach is intended for public relations/optics purposes or whether this is done as a catalyst for the grander “change we can believe in” vision then-candidate Obama touted in the 2008 campaign, no one really knows.
What we do know is the president’s policies to date have been harshly criticized for their ineffective and destructive results. As one colleague succinctly put it, his efforts at eating the elephant in one bite have been summarily rejected by the American people, so he is trying to eat the elephant one bite at a time.
But it is important to keep in mind that President Clinton’s success with this approach has little relevance to this president, because the socio-economic environment in which President Clinton was operating was so vastly different. The economic boom times of the mid- to late-90s was in many ways the perfect context in which to use this approach. Today, with the nation facing more (and more serious) domestic problems and potential foreign relations pitfalls than at any time in perhaps a generation, sunscreen requirements and discounts for disengaged dads just isn’t going to cut it – nor should it.
