Dan Heath on How to Reset Your Brain for Success | EP 562

In this episode of the Passion Struck Podcast, John R. Miles sits down with Dan Heath, the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor of Made to Stick, Switch, The Power of Moments, and his latest transformative book, Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working. With over 4 million books sold worldwide, Dan shares his revolutionary framework for identifying what’s broken, leveraging small but impactful changes, and building momentum for meaningful progress. John and Dan explore how to reset systems, habits, and mindsets that no longer serve us. They delve into why small changes can yield big results, how to reallocate resources for maximum impact, and how progress fuels our sense of mattering and purpose. Whether you’re looking to fix inefficiencies at work, improve personal habits, or navigate challenging relationships, this episode is packed with actionable tools to help you move forward. Link to the full show notes: https://passionstruck.com/dan-heath-on-how-to-reset-your-brain-for-success/Sponsors:Rosetta Stone: Unlock 25 languages for life at “ROSETTASTONE.com/passionstruck.”Prolon: Reset your health with 15% off at “ProlonLife.com/passionstruck.”Mint Mobile: Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at “MINT MOBILE dot com slash PASSION.”Hims: Start your journey to regrowing hair with Hims. Visit hims.com/PASSIONSTRUCK for your free online visit. Quince: Discover luxury at affordable prices with Quince. Enjoy free shipping and 365-day returns at quince.com/PASSION. In this episode, you will learn:How to recognize when systems or habits aren’t working and why we often stay stuck. The concept of leverage points: identifying small changes that create big impact. Strategies to restack your resources—time, energy, and focus—on what truly matters. Why progress, even in small steps, is a powerful motivator for long-term success. The importance of starting with a “burst” to build momentum and create quick wins. Real-world examples, from streamlining Chick-fil-A’s drive-thru efficiency to resetting hospital systems, that show how intentional changes can lead to extraordinary outcomes. How to apply the reset framework to personal habits, relationships, and professional challenges. Connect with Dan Heath: https://danheath.com/For more information on advertisers and promo codes, visit Passion Struck Deals. Join the Passion Struck Community! Sign up for the Live Intentionally newsletter, where I share exclusive content, actionable advice, and insights to help you ignite your purpose and live your most intentional life. Get access to practical exercises, inspiring stories, and tools designed to help you grow. Learn more and sign up here. Speaking Engagements & Workshops Are you looking to inspire your team, organization, or audience to take intentional action in their lives and careers? I’m available for keynote speaking, workshops, and leadership training on topics such as intentional...

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00John R. Miles?

  Coming up next on Passion Struck.

• 0:02Speaker 01

  We're looking at the employees who gave a one or two or three out of 10 because they're very disengaged. They may be in danger of leaving. And so we've got to fire. We've got to put out the fire. It's an emergency. And what we don't do a lot of times instinctively is say, well, hang on a second. Yes, it's important to pay attention to problems. But do we understand why the nines and tens, the employees who are super duper happy at the far other end of the curve, do we understand why they're happy?

• 0:31John R. Miles?

  Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become passion struck.

• 1:13John R. Miles?

  Hey, Passion Struck fam. Welcome to episode 562. Have you ever wondered why some people seem to thrive even in the most challenging environments while others struggle to gain momentum? What's the secret to breaking free from stuck patterns, whether in your personal life, relationships, or work? Today, we're diving into that exact question and uncovering how to reset systems and habits to unlock meaningful progress. If you're new here, welcome. You have just joined a community that's all about transformation, purpose, and tapping into your fullest potential. We are thrilled to have you on this journey with us. This last week was a truly profound one for me. On Friday, I was so honored to be the master of ceremony at the Podcast Hall of Fame, where we welcomed in 11 new

• 1:58John R. Miles?

  inductees into the 2025 class. It was such an amazing evening, and I'll put the YouTube video for it in the show notes if you want to check it out. And speaking of inspirational, last week's Episodes were packed with transformative insights. On Tuesday, I explored happiness, compassion, and the power of mattering with Dr. Rick Hansen, a conversation that truly hit the heart of what it means to live a fulfilled life. Then, on Thursday, I spoke with Dr. Adam Galinsky about his new book, Inspire, and how to become a catalyst for positive influence and growth. If you missed these episodes, I encourage you to check them out. They provide such invaluable perspectives to help you thrive. And then, in my solo episode to honor the 16th anniversary of the Miracle on the Hudson,

• 2:42John R. Miles?

  I did an episode on Sully Sullenberger and the culture of mattering that led to that incredible landing where he saved all 155 lives on that aircraft. Before we dive into today's episode, I want to thank you for being here. Whether this is your first episode, or you've been with us for all 562, your dedication to living intentionally and creating a meaningful life is what drives this community. We've created episode starter packs to help you navigate key themes like self-mastery, emotional resilience, and the science of mattering. Check them out at passionstruck.com/starterpacks or on Spotify. Also, be sure to subscribe to my Live Intentionally newsletter at passionstruck.com for weekly tools and insights.

• 3:24John R. Miles?

  And join our thriving YouTube community of over 200,000 subscribers to watch each episode with immersive visuals. Today, I am absolutely thrilled and honored to welcome Dan Heath, the number one New York Times bestselling co-author of Made to Stick: Switch, The Power of Moments, and his latest book, Reset. With over 4 million books sold worldwide, Dan is a master at helping people and organizations unlock progress and create lasting impact. In this episode, we dive deep into Reset, a revolutionary guide for fixing broken systems, overcoming inertia, and reallocating resources to achieve maximum impact. Whether you're stuck in a frustrating work situation, struggling with personal habits,

• 4:05John R. Miles?

  or looking to improve team dynamics, this conversation is packed with actionable tools to help you move forward. Here's what we'll uncover in today's discussion. How progress fuels your sense of mattering and purpose. We go into the concept of leverage points, which Small changes that yield big results. Dan explains strategies for restacking resources to focus on what truly matters. We also go into practical tips like starting with a burst to build momentum. And lastly, we explore real world examples from Chick-fil-A's drive-through innovation to hospital system transformations that demonstrate these principles and actions. If you've ever felt stuck in a bad system, a frustrating habit, or an unproductive relationship dynamic, this episode will empower you with the tools to reset and start making

• 4:50John R. Miles?

  meaningful progress. Thank you for choosing Passion Struck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.

• 5:04John R. Miles?

  Passion Struck family, I have such an incredible guest for you today, Dan Heath. Welcome to the podcast, Dan.

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, John. Great to be here.

• 5:14John R. Miles?

  Dan, I have been a fan of you and your brother Chip's books for years. If the listeners aren't familiar with you, you also have a phenomenal podcast that I listen to quite frequently. It's called What It's Like to Be. Congratulations on all your achievements.

• 5:35Speaker 01

  Thank you. The podcast is still in its first legs. It's barely over a year old. We're about 50 million downloads short of your track record. We're doing our best and it has been an absolute pleasure. So the conceit for listeners not familiar with it, in every episode, I talk to somebody from a different profession. Cattle rancher, a Secret Service agent, a forensic accountant, a mystery novelist. And I just ask them a million nosey questions about what it's like to walk in their shoes, what stresses them out, what are the highs of their work, what's a good day, what's a bad day? And it is just such a treat to hear people talk about their work and really get into the nitty gritty details. And, and for me, it's just, it's a personal passion.

• 6:19Speaker 01

  I don't think this is ever going to be something that threatens Joe Rogan, but I really enjoy the process of making it.

• 6:26John R. Miles?

  Well, a couple of my favorites that I've listened to was Cindy Marble, who's a Secret Service agent, and it was so uncanny when I heard that. And her describing that what they're always trying to do is to prevent someone from taking the high ground. And then unfortunately, the Trump assassination attempt where it was a colossal fail on that.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  I went through exactly the same thought process as you because that interview was published just a couple of weeks before that shooting. And I was, I just remember wincing it. She had just said, this was the result of the JFK assassination that they learned. You can never let the bad guys take the high ground. And so to have such a lapse, but I will say, I think, this is just me speculating. So this is not factual, but my guess is what happened with that was also something that she mentioned in the episode, which is that the Secret Service plays this kind of unique, weird role in that it often is coordinating with a zoo of different law enforcement agencies. So you take a candidate on the trail, they want to go to the local diner, and you've

• 7:30Speaker 01

  got to get them from the airport to the diner through traffic, shutting things down and back. And so that may mean you're dealing with the airport authority and the sheriff and the local police, and it may transcend different jurisdictions. And my guess is what happened was basically a communication breakdown between this soup of different law enforcement agencies that were on site there. At least that's one man's personal theory of what we're wrong.

• 7:57John R. Miles?

  What does seem to be when you hear about it, how some were on walkie talkies, others were on cell phones, others had different bands, that there, it was really a cluster.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 8:09John R. Miles?

  Next situation.

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Agree, agree.

• 8:12John R. Miles?

  Another one I really liked, having spent a lot of time in London, was your interview with Jamie Owens, because I have always been amazed. At just the depths of knowledge that London cabbies have to have in order to be granted the right to drive a cab. But yours really brought out some different dimensions when they had famous guests in the cab and other things. So I really enjoyed that one as well.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  I was so excited to talk to Jamie because some of your listeners may know this already, but to be a London cabbie and drive the classic black cabs, they have to pass an exam that has been called the hardest exam in any discipline in the world. No joke. They call it the knowledge. You have to pass the knowledge to be licensed as a cab driver. And what that means is you have memorized basically every single road, street, alley, hotel, major building, bridge in Greater London, which is just a totally insane feat of mental gymnastics. And people spend years studying for this. I mean, you could probably become a doctor sooner than

• 9:22Speaker 01

  you could pass the knowledge. And so I just loved hearing him talk about what was involved with that and how do you train for it? And what are some of the crazy questions they get asked on the exams? And it was heartbreaking to hear that in the modern age, so there are two paths to basically get one place from one place to another in London. You can either take one of these proud London cabbies that have passed the knowledge, or you can use Uber. And the qualifications to become an Uber driver are effectively nothing, right? You've got spare time in a car. Maybe you pass a background check. There's no exam. There's no special vehicle. And it was just heartbreaking to hear such a proud profession kind of chipped away by the new entrant.

• 10:09John R. Miles?

  I mean, it really was. And having heard similar experiences from New York cab drivers, it rings true on both sides of the Atlantic. And one of the most fascinating things you were talking about their pre qualifications is during this exam, they're asked to take people from point A to point B. And oftentimes, the routes that they're given have construction, or it could even be maybe the prime minister is doing an event that day. And they have to be so up to knowledge on what's happening, that they take the most direct route in order to pass the test. Like you're saying, it's just mind boggling.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Well, Jamie told me, one of the funniest ones is he said, if they thought you hadn't done your homework in a particular area, they would ask you for some just incredibly obscure detail. That government building on the corner of such and such an elm, what color is the front door? So it's not just, you can't just stay at home and study the map. It's not just that. It's all the contextual knowledge. It's what does this look like? And what's the history of such and such? And they might ask you to get from a certain hotel to a restaurant, but they don't tell you the name or address of the restaurant. They just tell you which chef just opened it. And so you have to know all of that kind of secondary knowledge like that. And I was just in awe of it. I mean, it's like a kind of intellectual Everest to

• 11:33Speaker 01

  me is the way I look at it.

• 11:35John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. Dan, I'm going to ask you about one last episode here in a second. But before I do, I just wanted to tell you this, that passion struck really centers on this overwhelming idea that everyone matters. And I love the people you profile because some of my favorite guests are what I call everyday heroes, who no one really knows about, but they're doing jobs that really matter. And I find that intentionality is the key to creating meaningful change. So I was listening to your most recent episode with Sheldon Corsi, who's a Christmas tree farmer near Cincinnati. And the thing that

• 12:18John R. Miles?

  really hit me was he was talking about his job is he's a farmer like any other farmer. But the difference between him and others is that he makes people's Christmas dreams come true, and he makes other people feel like they matter. And I was, wanted to use that maybe as an intro, you can talk about that episode. But what does mattering mean to you?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I think that's a multi-dimensional question and it's fun being the host of this podcast because it's I get to see how a lot of different people address that. And it is, it's fascinating to see how different their answers can be. Sheldon, the Christmas tree farmer, he has this beautiful moment at the end when he talks about how on a day-to-day basis, he's occupied with the mechanics of the job. It's mowing the weeds in between the rows of Christmas trees and he is a master of shearing the Christmas tree using a very long blade and kind of hand sculpting their growth. And he does that thousands of times a year. And so on a day-to-day basis, he's consumed by the particulars, but he says every now

• 13:28Speaker 01

  and then, he just has a moment where he's able to stand back and maybe from a certain elevated place on the land that he works, he just looks out and sees all these trees that are the result of his careful crafting and cultivation over the years. He's hand sculpted every one of them and he just sees this beautiful vista and it's like he thinks, man, I've got it made. And so for him, it's like the achievement of that and then seeing ultimately those trees find a home with a family that are going to make that tree the centerpiece of their Christmas and getting to meet them and see them haul off the tree. His farm is one where you cut it down and take it with you. And so he gets to see all these trees he's raised for seven or eight years go into their eventual homes.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  So that's his way of thinking about mattering. And then you take other people that might have very different careers. A hairstylist I talked to months ago talked about how people sit in the chair. It's almost like a kind of therapy. We've probably all experienced this, you find yourself just chatting with the stylist or barber to pass the time. And she says, over a period of years, you see your clients grow. And it had just never dawned on me to think this way, but she said she had clients where she did their elementary school piano recital and then their prom haircut and their college graduation haircut.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  And then, oh my gosh, she's on site the day they're getting married. And just this trajectory of being able to see and grow up with your clients and see how they blossom and see how they change over time. That was her source of meaning and satisfaction. So it's been beautiful just to see how many different definitions there can be for what matters.

• 15:19John R. Miles?

  Oh, well, thank you so much for sharing that. I always love to get people's different definitions because when you hear mattering, it seems like such an easy thing to describe or think about, but it's really complex and really permeates all aspects of life.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 15:39John R. Miles?

  So I want to turn before we start discussing your newest book, one of your first books. I want to take people back into time. So the time period here is the end of 2006, beginning of 2007. And I worked as an executive at Lowe's Home Improvement and I had just gone from leading in a cybersecurity infrastructure operations to being tapped on the shoulder to lead all application development. And we had a about a billion and a half dollar budget where the vast majority of it was going to application development type efforts.

• 16:20John R. Miles?

  And we were, I remember I was talking to the head of strategy who is a real good friend of mine. And he told me, as I was taking the job, John, you're, you guys in IT are phenomenal at delivering solutions that are irrelevant by the time they're delivered.

• 16:42John R. Miles?

  And it really struck me and part of the issue was the idea cycle was taking too long to go through the process of the system that we were using to get projects to go through this gating system through the executive committee, through all these sub gates to getting delivered. And I happened to discover your book at this time and read it and it really changed my viewpoint on the anatomy of how do you explain things so that they're stickier and that there's more of an urgency built underneath them to get it done more quickly.

• 17:28John R. Miles?

  But I have to tell you, as I was going through this, I happened to go, I think it was probably eight or nine months later, I was at NRF, the National Retail Federation's big event in New York City. And I was fortunate enough to be working with a vendor who took us into this room and said, we have a special guest that we're going to introduce you to. And it was Tom Ridge, who had formerly been the first Director of Homeland Security. And so we're in this room and we're talking to him and we start, for one reason or another,

• 18:10John R. Miles?

  start talking about this war on terror that President Bush was deeply involved in and that he was at the epicenter when he was Homeland Security. And I happened to talk to him about it. And I said, Secretary Ridge, one thing that really strikes me is that This idea isn't sticking and part of the reasons it's not sticking is you're not using any type of scorecard for the American people to make them understand what progress is being made, what isn't being made, etc. And I took some ideas that you had from the book and I

• 18:51John R. Miles?

  actually said them to them and I'm not joking. Two weeks later, the president comes out with a national address and said, going forward, we're going to be using a scorecard to, he basically took everything I said to Tom Ridge and Tom Ridge had had, must have had a conversation with them and they actually incorporated our discussion into national policy. So

• 19:14Speaker 01

  No way. Wow. The temperature is yellow with that stuff? It came out of that?

• 19:20John R. Miles?

  Yes.

• 19:22Speaker 01

  So we can claim co-credit for that, that national spot. What was it? A stoplight? What was the metaphor? A temperature gauge or a stoplight or, or was it just a color spectrum? I forget.

• 19:33John R. Miles?

  Yeah. I mean, I was telling him that we use balanced scorecards all the time to look at the progress that we were making and to justify more attention being put on things so that they're sped up. And I suggested to him that they use the same type of thing to indicate pain points and progress and other things to make people understand what all the money and attention is doing.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  Man, what a, what a great story. Thanks for sharing that. Boy, you made the most of that moment.

• 20:03John R. Miles?

  Well, it was just one of those lucky things where I just decided to speak and he was kind enough to have that air of Adam that allowed you to speak to him and I felt comfortable doing it.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  That's so good.

• 20:14John R. Miles?

  Well, Dan, what we're talking about today, which is your brand new book that we'll have released when this episode comes out is titled Reset: How to Change What's Not Working. And to me, this whole idea of mattering, I think really plays into this whole idea of reset. How does this concept of mattering resonate with the framework you explore in Reset?

• 20:44Speaker 01

  I think the starting point for Reset, the problem it's trying to solve is the problem of mindless and undesirable autopilot. Like, you've reached a point in your personal life or at work where you're just, you're going through the motions, you're trapped in the gravity of the way things have always worked, and you want something better and different, and maybe you've made gestures in those directions before, but nothing's really changed. And so this kind of complacency has set in. In fact, the first story in the book, to me, has become a kind of symbol for this. So it starts in a receiving area in a hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  And in this receiving area, there was a red phone on the wall that rang all the time. It was usually like a staffer or a nurse calling to check on the status of some package they'd ordered, maybe some medication or some surgical gloves or whatever. And so somebody in the receiving area would pick up the red phone, get the call, and then go on a kind of scavenger hunt around the receiving area. Like, it was just chaos. It was trying to find something in a hoarder's attic in those days. And the numbers say it all. It took them an average of three days to get a package delivered within the hospital, which is just nuts, right? You order a medication and maybe FedEx or UPS get it halfway across the country in

• 22:06Speaker 01

  a day or two, and then to get from the basement of the hospital to the third floor might take another three days. So this is a fantastically expensive problem because sometimes medications expire right in the box because they're not put in the fridge in time. Sometimes it leads people to over-order because they're afraid they're not going to get their package in time. Sometimes people are trying to make side deals with the UPS driver to just bypass the receiving area and come straight to their floor. And what I would say about this situation is that the people working in the receiving area were not incompetent, they were not dumb, they were not lazy, they were stuck.

• 22:47Speaker 01

  They were working a hard day every day. They came to work, they did their best, they went home. And when you rack up enough days, and some of them have been working there for decades. So they might have had 20 years in a row with an average track record of three days to deliver a package. You just come to assume, well, that's just the way reality is, right? That's the physics of my world is it takes three days. And so the departure point for the book is to say, when you're in a situation where things aren't the way you want them to be, and you aspire for more, but you're skeptical you can get to more. What do you do to escape that trap? And so, so those are the first couple of pages in the book. And I think a metaphor for what's to come.

• 23:30John R. Miles?

  One of the things I love that you use throughout the book is really a simple, but well-meaning illustrations to convey many of the points. And in the same introduction that you're talking about, you use a metaphor of a boulder. I'm going to change this a little bit because something that analogy I use, and what I'm talking about here is being stuck. Is imagine you're at a point in time when you're driving a car and you don't have your cell phone. And your car runs out of gas.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 24:03John R. Miles?

  You're really stuck with two paths. You can either put your hand up in the air and try to get someone to come over and give you help. But if not, you're either going to have to walk or you're going to have to push your car to a place where you can fill it up. And let's take that path of pushing the car, because I think it's like your analogy to a boulder. So as you write in the book, when you're thinking about pushing this car, we often make the mistake of thinking that we can't do it because of a lack of effort.

• 24:41John R. Miles?

  Meaning it's going to take more effort to do it than we're possible, possibly able to achieve. But I love how you frame this because in order to move that car or the boulder, you've got to be smart and strategic. The thing that I really love that you use here is a term that you have in the book called a leverage point, which was originally popularized by Danella Meadows. But it really captures the situation because you're looking for a change of equilibrium on how do you push that car in an efficient way that you're going to start getting momentum?

• 25:25John R. Miles?

  And I think the same thing applies to changes we want in our life or in the work environment too. So can you take that analogy and maybe run with it a bit more?

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Absolutely. In fact, the very heart of the book is a very simple two-part framework. So the idea is to get unstuck, to get to a different and better equilibrium. You've got to do two things. One is to find leverage points, which is just an acknowledgement of the fact that in complicated situations, we can't change everything. We can't change most things or even maybe a significant fraction of things, but we can change something. And so leverage points are the something we want to find because that's an intervention or an action where a little bit of investment yields disproportionate returns. So that's part one. That's like, where do we aim our efforts?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  And then the second part is, how do we push in that new direction that we've identified? How do we get the force, the fuel we need to go in a new direction? And it's compounded by the fact that we probably don't just have satchels of free cash on the sidelines or idle employees that we can draft into duty. Like, we're probably stuck with what we have today, which means we've got to reorganize, realign, in the book, I use the phrase, restack resources to push on those leverage. Points. So that's it. Find leverage points, restack resources. Very simple. But of course, it's really complex to do those things. Like, the first half of the book is about the detective work of

• 27:03Speaker 01

  where do you find these magical leverage points that let you do a lot with a little? And the second half of the book is about how do you make these trade offs where you stop doing X and start doing Y? Or where you find previously untapped resources to employ? Like, where do you find those, that fuel that you need to push in a new direction?

• 27:24John R. Miles?

  And I can't wait to explore some of this. I want to start out with something that you describe as situations of bad equilibria, where people or systems are trapped in unsatisfactory patterns. And what are some of the telltale signs that we or our organizations are stuck in one of these cycles?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  I think we know it in our guts. I think what happens a lot of times is like, to go back to the receiving area. I don't think anyone in the receiving area felt like they were at their ideal level of performance. So it's not that they were deceiving themselves. It's more like a kind of learned helplessness or defeatist instinct. Well, it's always been this way. We've tried things over the years to do something different. They never went anywhere. So it must just be the way things are. So I think part of it is just reawakening our sense of agency. Hey, wait a minute. We don't just have to accept this as

• 28:29Speaker 01

  nature, as the way things are. We do have influence here. We can do something.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  And the second thing is sometimes it's helpful just to look outside to get a new influence. In fact, what eventually triggered, we can come back to Northwestern later, but what eventually triggered the turnaround? Because they did turn around completely. But the catalyst was a guy named Paul Suet, who came from outside, took over the department. His background was in lean manufacturing. And so he was used to looking at things from a systems lens. And when he came in, it was just immediately obvious, hey, things can be different here. And if I can convince this team to trust me on this journey, like, we can go from being the pariahs of the hospital to the superstars.

• 29:18John R. Miles?

  Well, it's absolutely true. And I want to go through a couple of chapters of the first section. And let's talk about chapter one, because to me, this really coincided with some of the value systems that I saw at Lowe's. This title, this chapter really emphasizes going and seeing the work. And Lowe's had its own fleet of aircraft. And part of the reason for that was because if you were on the supply chain side, merchandising side, or stores' operations side, those folks were constantly in the field, going to see the distribution centers, going to see the stores, because that's where the cash was

• 30:03John R. Miles?

  made, to get firsthand observations for spotting inefficiencies, or pain points, or something else. And in the book, you talk about the work of Don Kiefer and Todd Aster, and also a case study in the MIT Sloan Management Review. And I was hoping, maybe you could share that as an example for why it's so important to see this work.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yes. And first, I want to give proper credit to Nelson Repinning, who's an MIT professor, is the source of the phrase, "Go and see the work." That's the chapter title. So here's the spirit of that. Repinning and his colleagues tell the story of a corrugated box manufacturer. And the boss notices that their paper waste is higher than industry averages. So that's an example. We were just talking about looking outside. Well, you compare yourself to outside. Hey, wait a second. We're not performing as well as our competitors. Why is that? And so the boss just goes and sees the work, which means get closer to the ground level. So in a factory situation, it means walking the factory floor, watching the way things

• 31:18Speaker 01

  are made. In a hospital, it might be following a patient journey from check-in to procedure to check out. School, it might mean, and one of the stories in the book is about a principal who followed around a ninth grader all day long, including sitting in the classes and sitting in the lunchroom. That's going and seeing the work. So, so back to the paper box manufacturer, the boss walks around and notices this corrugating machine, which is one of their, their signature assets, is shut down during lunch.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  And he asked why, and the first couple of people he asked don't know, eventually runs down the answer is years prior, there was some instability from the local utility that provided electricity at the factory, and it seemed to be concentrated around lunchtime. So they just started kind of preemptively shutting down the machine because it wasn't good for the machine to have variable power and just be abruptly shut down. And so being good systems thinkers, they thought, aha, well, we'll get ahead of this. We'll prevent any damage to the machine by shutting it down. But the way organizations work is, over time, things just become habitual. And so it just becomes part of your day to day checklist. Well, okay, did we shut the machine down for lunchtime? Yes, check.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And months go by and months go by, and meanwhile, the utility has fixed the instability, but it doesn't change the fact that they're shutting down the corrugating machine at lunchtime. Years later, the boss is like, why are we shutting down this machine? Every time we shut down the machine, it creates waste because there's work and product. And then there's a startup cost and then there's whatever was in the machine when we shut it down. And so that's one of the major sources of waste. And nobody has a good answer and they eventually find they've been shutting the machine down for no purpose at all. And so that's an example of where, from a boss's perspective, when you're looking at numbers on a spreadsheet, our waste per month is such and such. It might tell you directionally, something's not great, but you can't really diagnose it.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  You can't really figure out, hey, what could we change to get a better answer until you go and see the work?

• 33:21John R. Miles?

  Oh, it's absolutely true. I would go on these visits with the Lowe's executives and I love going to the supply chain facilities. And if anyone's familiar with distribution centers, they're really focused on this concept of cycle time. Like, how long does it take once a package gets in to get it back out? And

• 33:42John R. Miles?

  Once you start seeing how everyone in these centers and the Lowe's ones were like a million, million and a half square foot are operating, that there's a lot of inefficiency. And so they, while I was there, implemented something called putting people on standard, which was they started to automate the way that they were picking so that the system would tell them where the next item was, how long they had to pick it, and did it in a coordinated manner. So it didn't have them moving all through the facility, but having had them go much more directly from point to point. So it's the same philosophy. So.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  That's a great example of one of the chapters in the book is about waste. And waste is wonderful because if you can find places where you're spending energy, time, money, cash, whatever,

• 34:34Speaker 01

  to no positive value, you can cut it instantly. Nobody suffers. And then you can use those assets to help assist in your push toward the leverage points.

• 34:45John R. Miles?

  Well, Dan, in chapter three, you discuss studying the bright spots, how focusing on what's already working can help replicate success. And in here, I loved what you wrote. You say averages are great for monitoring, but terrible for diagnosis. Averages can tell us something's wrong, but they're unlikely to tell us what's wrong or how to fix it. And one of the things that you brought up was net promoter score. And when I was at Dell, that's what we use to judge everything was NPS. And the problem with it is it's really an average. So you maybe use that as a backdrop to discuss these bright spots and why they're so important.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. So I think first of all, on the averages point, here's a simple way to think about it. So much of what leaders see is some kind of aggregate or average. They're just looking at big numbers like revenue, profit, net promoter score, employee engagement score. And these are directionally useful. If something's trending the wrong way, it tells you that. But consider this, let's say you've got a leader going through a 360 where people are giving that person feedback and there are two leaders that both have a seven out of 10 score. Pretty good, not great. You don't really understand anything about the situation until you've gotten closer to the data itself. For instance, imagine one leader was evenly

• 36:13Speaker 01

  split between 10s and 4s that averaged out to 7. So it's very bimodal. They're, half the team loves them and half the team is really unhappy, which is a very different situation than a different leader where everybody gave them a 7. Like, they're just moderately positive. No one is super excited. No one has a problem with them. You don't really understand the situation until you understand what's beneath the average. So, one corollary of that is if you untangle the averages, you can often find, remember, we're on the hunt for leverage points. You can often find those leverage points by looking at the most

• 36:54Speaker 01

  positive data points underneath the average. So let me explain what I mean. Like, employee engagement data is something a lot of organizations collect these days. You've got your employee pulse studies and somebody's looking at those. Is it going up? Is it going down? But again, if it's like a 69% score or something, these are scored in a lot of different ways. But let's just say it's like the manager, let's say you're at a 7 out of 10 level of happiness. You don't really understand anything until you've unpacked that and look at where the clusters of employees are. And specifically, I would argue that in most cases like this, our attention goes immediately to the problem areas. So, we're looking at the employees who gave a 1 or 2 or 3 out of 10 because they're very disengaged. They may be in danger

• 37:37Speaker 01

  of leaving and so we've got to fire, we've got to put out the fire, it's an emergency. And what we don't do a lot of times instinctively is say, well, hang on a second. Yes, it's important to pay attention to problems, but do we understand why the 9s and 10s, the employees who are super duper happy at the far other end of the curve, do we understand why they're happy?

• 38:02Speaker 01

  And that's the intent of studying the bright spots is to try to understand why, when we succeed, we are succeeding. And that may sound obvious, well, how could anybody not know that? But I'll tell you, my experience is people instinctively study the problems. And people know when they succeed, but they don't study it. They celebrate it or they're relieved that it was a success so they can spend more time on the problems. But we rarely study with the same tenacity what is working as we do what's not working.

• 38:34John R. Miles?

  I mean, I think that's a great point. And I always use this example is so many people talk about their bucket lists and what they want to accomplish. But I always tell them to look at their reverse bucket list. What are all the positive things that you've accomplished in your life that you never thought was possible? Because that really gives you that inner fortitude to feel like you can take on things. Or maybe you feel fear or self intimidation or something else. So I love that chapter.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Well, and I know a lot of your listeners are thinking about personal growth. And just for pure truth and advertising, just this book is probably 75% organizational and 25% personal. So I don't want to sell something improperly. But this bright spots idea translates directly to personal growth. I've used it many times myself because the idea is let's consider a new year's resolution. And most people set these lofty resolutions. And of course, we all know most people fail and they abandon them. And then we beat ourselves up. But the bright spots philosophy says something very different, which is maybe you started the year swearing that you were going to work out three times a week.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  And maybe at the end of January, you've only gone three times total instead of three times a week. So from the way we've been taught, that's a failure. But what bright spots says is no, you've got three bright spots. In the face of all the things you had to do, all the commitments you had, all the stresses you faced, all the unexpected problems, you still managed to triumph three times. And here's the important part, how? What was different about those three times? Was it a certain time of day? Did you go with a friend? Did you prepack your clothes in the car? So it was just 3% easier. If you can understand what allows you to succeed, even if it's in certain circumstances, that opens the door to try to reproduce that.

• 40:31John R. Miles?

  Such a well said point. And I think, as you said, the book does have more applicability to organizations, but I did find some direct bright spots throughout it that people could apply directly to their lives. And this was a key one, which is why I decided to focus on it.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm glad you did.

• 40:50John R. Miles?

  Another chapter I have to go into is chapter four, and I'm going to introduce it like this. My, my brother works at Chick-fil-A and absolutely loves working there. And I happened to be driving where I live here in St. Petersburg by a brand new Chick-fil-A that was being built. And I got him on the phone and I'm like, Pat, there's a new Chick-fil-A being built. And he said, can you stop and take pictures of the, the drive-through? And we are piloting a, a new double drive-through covered that we're putting into more markets. And I started asking him about the drive-through

• 41:31John R. Miles?

  because for me, when you go to so many of their stores, you almost don't even want to go into them because there are like 80 cars in line, it seems. And you're like, this is going to take 10 years to get through. And I thought that this whole section of the book was fascinating on targeting the constraint. And I'm hoping you can use that to dive into it.

• 41:55Speaker 01

  Yes. Well, in, in a certain way, I owe this whole book to Chick-fil-A. So I, I tell the story of during the pandemic, we've, my wife sent me out to fetch a dinner for the family. I've got two young girls and they'll only eat about eight foods and, and one of them is Chick-fil-A. So we spent a lot of time at Chick-fil-A and I went there and I was crushed because it was probably the longest line I'd ever seen in my life at a drive-through. I mean, it must have been at least 50 cars in line. And so, oh man, I hate lines. And so I just took a deep breath and just patiently started trying to come up with lies I could tell my wife to explain why I came home without the Chick-fil-A. Uh, but ultimately decided, okay, I'll put on my big

• 42:40Speaker 01

  boy pants and get in line. And what happened next completely flipped my emotions because this line was just steadily creeping forward. It was uncanny. It was almost like those automatic car washes you've probably been through where they just pull your car along. And I was totally fascinated by what they were doing and I resolved to figure it out. After I delivered dinner that night, it probably took me 10 or 15 minutes to get through a 50 car line. It blew my mind. So later I go back, I talked to the owner operator, a guy named Tony Fernandez. He tells me that their peak is processing over 400 cars in an hour. That's a car every nine seconds. That is just not the way the world, I mean, you could

• 43:25Speaker 01

  put your kids through college before Arby's would process 400 cars. Let's be honest. So this is just a freakish level of performance. And so I began talking to Tony to try to understand how he'd gotten there. And he had just this laser sharp philosophy. He said, drive through, flow, which is what they're managing to, is all about finding the bottlenecks, managing the bottlenecks, or the word I use in the book is constraint, but they're synonyms. What's the limiting force in the system? And so, for instance, in a lot of drive-throughs, the bottleneck will be the menu board, the plate, the little, you know, menu where you order. And there are some these days that have two lanes. Most of them still have one lane. And so if you get behind

• 44:07Speaker 01

  that one person that gets to the board, and then they roll down their window and as they're just dazzled by the array of choices in front of them, and they take five minutes to decide, like, that means your time in line went up by five minutes and the person behind you went up by five minutes. And so, as an example, that's a constraint that Chick-fil-A, at least my local Chick-fil-A said, well, what do we need a menu board for? I mean, it's nuggets and fries. Like, how hard is it? So they literally don't have a menu board anymore. They might have five human beings in the parking lot at once, taking orders right at your driver's side window. Those, you've probably seen this before, they'll walk up with an iPad and, what can I get you?

• 44:48Speaker 01

  I mean, imagine that, five people dealing with orders at once. There's not a drive-through on the planet that has five different menu board lanes. So that gives them this incredible ability to scale up and down. If they're busy, maybe four or five people are taking orders. If they're slow, maybe it's one or two. And here's the important thing. When you're thinking about systems, there's going to be a constraint, there's going to be a number one thing holding you back. So let's say in that case is the menu board. So Chick-fil-A figures out a way around that. Well, we can scale this up and down as needed. It's not like you fix the constraint forever. What happens is the constraint just moves somewhere else. So if you've got five people in the parking lot taking orders are streaming into

• 45:30Speaker 01

  the kitchen. Well, now the kitchen is the constraint. They can't keep up. They can't fry nuggets and fries that fast. So you've got to get them more help, better systems. And then once the kitchen can keep up, maybe the bottleneck pops over to what they call meal assembly, where they box and bag your food and get it ready to deliver to you. And so that's how you manage a system is one step at a time. You look what's holding you back, whittle away, move somewhere else, then shift your focus there, whittle away. And every time you do that, the system is getting better. And then that sounds very operational, and it is. Operations people talk a lot about bottlenecks and constraints. But I think it's also possible to see the personal implications of that and to start thinking carefully about what are the limiting factors and the constraints in our own lives?

• 46:17John R. Miles?

  Absolutely. Well said. The second portion of your book, as you described earlier, goes into this concept of restacking resources. And it's basically how can individuals or organizations identify where their time, energy, or money is being wasted and reallocate those resources to higher value activities. Sounds simple, but much harder to do than it sounds. And throughout this section, you go into start with a burst. Chapter seven is recycle waste. Chapter eight is do less and more. Chapter nine is tap motivation. And I love talking about motivation. And chapter 10 is let people drive and chapter

• 47:01John R. Miles?

  11 is get better, faster feedback. But I want to start out with start with a burst. And something that I want to go back to is that whole thing that I was talking about with getting

• 47:16John R. Miles?

  This car moving that's stuck on the side of the road.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 47:20John R. Miles?

  In the, in this analogy, the force you need to get it moving needs to be dramatically higher than the force you're going to need to keep it moving. And I think this is something that people don't look at enough, whether it's self-improvement or working on an initiative in a company and getting it moving is where that burst comes in. Can you use this to, to expand upon this concept?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  And that analogy actually works perfectly for the idea of a burst because you're right. It's to get the car moving at all takes far more force than what you need to keep it going. And so what does that mean? Well, I love the example, we cite this guy named Greg McLaughlin, who's an attorney, but for the course of the story, it's more important that he's a husband. And he was working on a new watering system for his wife's garden. And so they had set up a bunch of hardware to make sure the gardens stayed watered on the, the right schedule. But Greg McLaughlin said, the immutable law of the universe is that you can never get anything you, everything you need for a home improvement project with one trip to Home Depot. Or maybe in tribute to you, we should switch that to Lowe's. You can never get everything you need in one trip.

• 48:34Speaker 01

  And so he joked that even if you went to get one 60 watt light bulb and you got it, you would discover when you got home, it actually needs to be a 59 watt light bulb. And so this immutable law held true for him. And he figured out there was this one part he had bought that was defective. It was like a $2 cheap part. And so he said, from like the perspective of efficiency, it would make most sense for him to just add that to his next Lowe's trip, which inevitably would be a week or two in the future. And he could just get that and piggyback on whatever else he was doing. But he said, what mattered to his wife was not efficiency. It was finishing the project. She wanted the plants watered. And so he had to go back to get that $2 part. He said, he probably wasted $200 in labor costs because he's a lawyer.

• 49:18Speaker 01

  He's billing by the hour mentally and $6 in gas just to get that $2 part. And so he said, it was a disaster from efficiency. But he said it was a huge win from the sake of finishing the project, working to completion. And he points out that efficiency is not always synonymous with effectiveness. That what his wife wanted was watered plants. That was the test of success, not how quote unquote efficient it was. And so we use that as a, as a launching pad for this notion of when you want to change something. It's like that car on the side of the road situation. You need a burst of work upfront. That is designed not to be efficient, but to be effective, to get momentum going.

• 50:02Speaker 01

  And that can take a lot of forms. Like there's a methodology called a sprint. Used a lot in design and software circles where a team will literally clear their decks for a week. They'll all be in the same room collaborating live for one solid week. Everything else gets shelved and they're working towards something back to work to completion. At the end of the week, they're going to have a prototype or they're going to have a shell website or whatever it is they're working on. And that provides the momentum and think about how much BS that short circuits. If you don't do that stuff in a week, it's like you go from spending 35 focused hours in a week to spending 135. Unfocused hours over six months, but by compressing it.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  You get that lift off velocity that you need to start the change process.

• 50:51John R. Miles?

  Dan, the last chapter I want to talk to you about is chapter eight. I wrote in my own book about this concept of both and thinking and so much today. In the Western world, we tend to think of things as either or. And in this chapter, you introduce this principle of less and more. And in it, you write, this chapter is devoted to the trade off of less of this, more of that.

• 51:20John R. Miles?

  And what we're chasing in particular is a way to minimize the sting of those trade offs. And you say in organization, it's not always a zero sum gain. You can find low sting, high bang trade offs. Can you tell me what you mean by low sting, high bang trade offs?

• 51:41Speaker 01

  Yes, so this came out of a conversation I had with a guy named David Philippa, who's a consultant at an agency called Strategex. They're zealots for the Pareto principle. I'm sure everybody, everybody listening has heard that the 80 20 principle. And in the business world, you often hear 80% of the revenue comes from 20% of the customers. Philip I told me that's generally been true, although he said for profit, it's far more distorted. It's more like 20% of your customers are 150% of your profits. And what does it mean to have 150% of your profits? Well, what it means is you're serving a bunch of customers who are actually unprofitable. Like you would have a better business if you had a whole segment of customers go somewhere else.

• 52:23Speaker 01

  So Philip, I said, they do this thing where they will force rank customers by profitability from most to least profitable. And he said that in almost every case, what they find is that the enterprise's worst customers are over coddled, getting too much time and resources devoted to them, and their best customers are under coddled. So one tangible example is he says, a lot of times the on time delivery rates will be better for an organization's worst customers than their best, which just seems befuddling, right? How could you treat your worst customers better than your best? But the worst customers are just buying kind of nickel and dime stuff.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Maybe it's the kind of thing where you can stick one part in a box and mail it out and it's easy. And your best customers are spending tons of money with you and they're doing these complicated things. And maybe there are assemblies that require a lot of collaboration and maybe your shipping department procrastinates those. And so it's this paradoxical thing where you're treating your best people worse than your worst customers. Now, all that is about profit analysis, but I actually want to take that in a different direction.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  I wonder if that same analysis could also apply to almost any situation in life, including our personal relationships. Imagine if you did a ranking of all the relationships in your life from most precious to least. And so at the top might be your spouse and your kids and your parents and your relatives. And at the bottom might be those relationships that are consistently stressful, anxiety provoking, maybe even toxic, take a lot of your time, don't give much back. And isn't it almost certainly the case that we're probably under coddling those people at the bottom at the expense of the people we care most

• 54:15Speaker 01

  about? So, so that the, the chapter kind of makes this point that if we're looking for more resources to push in a new direction, back to this idea, find leverage points, restack resources, isn't this almost like an evergreen methodology you can use to steal from the over coddled customers and relationships and projects and time expenditures in your life and reallocate those to the under coddled, the ones at the top that you care most about?

• 54:46John R. Miles?

  Well, Dan, such a fantastic book overall. I really enjoyed reading this. It's something that I want to give my son who's 26 as he is getting more and more in the workforce to understand how to utilize these principles better. And I am so glad you've brought another phenomenal book to the world. If someone wants to learn more about you and where they can find the book and your other books, where's the best place for them to go?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Well, I was gonna say two things, but it's actually all in one place. My name is Dan Heath, spelled like the candy bar, danheath.com. And that will give links to, we talked about the book Reset. And we also talked about my podcast, what it's like to be. And both of those have, have really visible links on that danheath.com site. Thanks for asking that.

• 55:34John R. Miles?

  And the last thing I just wanted to say is for the listeners, Dan and his brother have Written so many other books that I would also recommend. Upstream, Power of Moments, and perhaps Switch, which is How to Change Things When Change Is Hard, which may be prior to this book, my favorite one that you had written.

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Oh, thanks.

• 55:59John R. Miles?

  Such an honor to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  Thanks so much, John. It's been a treat.

• 56:08John R. Miles?

  What an insightful conversation that was with Dan Heath. His practical framework for getting unstuck, finding leverage points, and restacking resources is a game changer for anyone looking to make meaningful progress, whether in work, relationships, or personal habits. One of the biggest takeaways from today's episode is the power of progress as a motivator and how it ties directly to our sense of mattering. Dan's examples from Chick-fil-A's efficiency to eliminating waste in a hospital receiving area remind us that even small, intentional changes can create a ripple effect of transformation. As we wrap up, think about the areas in your own life or work where you feel stuck. Are there leverage points you can target or resources you can reallocate to focus on what truly matters? Remember, meaningful change doesn't require monumental effort.

• 56:52John R. Miles?

  It starts with identifying a well-chosen something and taking intentional action. If today's episode resonated with you, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Please take a moment to leave us a five-star rating and review and share how you're applying these insights. And if you know someone who could benefit from Dan's message, please share this episode with them. Your support helps us grow this community and empower others to make intentional change. For links to everything we discussed today, including Dan's book, Reset, and tools he shared, check out the show notes at passionstruck.com. As a reminder, I'll also put the video for the podcast Hall of Fame there as well. You can also support the show by visiting our sponsors at passionstruck.com/deals, where you'll find discount codes and special offers from our partners. Every resource fuels the show and helps us bring you inspiring content every week.

• 57:36John R. Miles?

  Beyond the podcast, I am passionate about sharing these insights with organizations and teams through speaking engagements. If today's episode sparked something in you and you think these messages could inspire your organization, visit johnrmyles.com/speaking

• 57:50John R. Miles?

  Explore keynotes, workshops, and other opportunities. And don't forget to subscribe to our Live Intentionally newsletter and watch today's conversation on YouTube. Before we go, here's a preview of what's coming up next on Passion Struck. Joining us is Dr. Alison Woodbrooks, a Harvard Business School professor and author of Talk. In this episode, we dive into the science of conversations, why they matter, how to make them impactful, and how to navigate even the most challenging interactions. It's an episode packed with actionable insights you won't want to miss.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  So your question is, how can we think about the way that we communicate? How does that relate to us mattering? It's such a profound question. I think one thing that I've learned by doing this research and teaching this course about conversation is that our evidence to ourselves and to other people that we matter and that they matter, the place where that happens is so often during our conversations. And in these little tiny moments where we make small choices that show, oh, I believe in myself, or I believe in you. And the difference between micro kindnesses and micro harms, sometimes when you're looking at a transcript, they look very subtle.

• 59:01Speaker 02

  But I think in the emotional experience of those interactions, the difference can be massive in terms of how much you are conveying that you believe that you matter and how much you care about the other person and convey that they matter.

• 59:17John R. Miles?

  Thank you, as always, for spending your time with us here on Passion Struck. If you found value in today's episode, the fee is simple. Share it with someone who could benefit. And as always, do your best to apply what you learn here so that you can live what you listened. Until next time, live life passion struck.