Finished reading: Upstream by Dan Heath 📚
I really enjoyed this book and it has a number of great case studies that are generally interesting even outside the context of the subject matter. The book is structured in a way to make it digestible and applicable to a wide variety of use cases.
One of the more useful takeaways for me was the idea of “ghost victories”.
there is a separation between (a) the way we’re measuring success and (b) the actual results we want to see in the world, we run the risk of a “ghost victory”: a superficial success that cloaks failure.
The book goes into the various types of ghost victories as well as a series of questions to help “pre-game” against ghost victories. Very useful stuff.
A famous example of a ghost victory would be the drop in crime in New York City during the 90’s. The CompStat program and the leadership of Bill Bratton were hearlded as key change agents for reducing crime in NYC. The problem is that crime everywhere in the US, not just NYC, was dropping in the 90’s. How does a program in NYC magically have the same effect as an unknown source in Boston? We don’t know what caused the drop in crime in the 90’s but few still believe CompStat was the cause.
The book is filled with examples like this, some of which will leave your mouth open in awe. If you’re looking for a book about effecting change in an organization, Upstream and Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard are two great options.
