Chip and Dan Heath co-authored the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die that I reviewed on this blog in November 2008.  Chip is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and Dan is a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE).  Their latest book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, is a theoretical and practical cookbook for individuals who are interested in making lasting changes in their companies, communities, and/or their lives.

The authors point out that for an individual to make a change, changes must be made in their environment, heart, and mind.  Unfortunately for most of us, the heart and the mind generally do not agree.  The Heaths cite more than a few psychological studies that profile the conflicts and benefits between the emotional and rational sides of our thinking.  In order to make change successful, both sides have to be satisfied.  Companies have people who are more emotional and people who are more rational.  Successful teams need to recommend solutions that meet the needs of both of those emotional/rational profiles.

Read the rest of this entry »

In December, I wrote a post about why the frequency of my writing slowed and would continue to slow.  The explanation was simple:  I had entered a doctoral program and was engaged in the final writing stage of my dissertation.  I am pleased to say that I satisfactorily completed all the requirements for my doctoral program at the University of Pennsylvania including defending my dissertation.  Now that I have had a couple of weeks to savor the accomplishment, I am ready to resume some of my “free time” activities that I postponed or slowed in order to go back to school and earn my doctoral degree.  As I begin to resume blog posts, I thought I would share my reflections on my area of studies.

When I completed my MBA from Tulane’s Freeman School of Business in 1978, I thought I had completed all of my formal academic studies.  After graduation from Tulane, I sat for and passed the CPA (Certified Public Accountant) exam, the CMA (Certified Management Accountant), and the Fellow exam for the Healthcare Financial Management Association.  Maintaining those certifications required annual continuing education hours, but not academic credits.  Usually, I could earn 40 hours of credit per year by attending a couple of two day seminars along with a single day seminar.

Read the rest of this entry »