To Fix Broken Work Systems, You Need to Reset

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 21 January 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you've ever tried to change things at work, you know the headwinds you face. Teams and processes are often trapped in longstanding, ineffective patterns that are hard to budge. Dan Heath, senior fellow at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, explains proven techniques to reset. Those include making the problem visible, jolting incremental progress to start gaining traction, and motivating teams into a new direction. He shares real-life examples of how leaders and teams broke through seemingly intractable work situations. Heath is the author of the new book Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish.
0:25.6	Here are some phrases you might hear in an organization. We tried that before, but it didn't work.
0:28.6	If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
0:31.6	Well, that's the way we've always done things around here.
0:34.6	Now, sometimes those reactions to a new idea or suggestion are based on good experience,
0:41.3	and they're uttered by well-intentioned people.
0:44.3	Other times, those phrases can be a tell, a tell that you're at an organization with too much
0:51.3	inertia, too much decision paralysis, too many people stuck in their ways and processes.
0:57.9	To change that, you have to do more than just run a couple of experiments.
1:01.9	It takes a reset, according to today's guest.
1:06.2	Dan Heath is a senior fellow at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and his new book is Reset,
1:12.8	How to Change What's Not Working.
1:15.1	Dan, thanks for joining us.
1:16.5	Thanks so much, Kurt.
1:33.2	So I think the idea of being stuck is something that almost everyone can relate to, whether it's in your own career or your own behavior patterns, or just as we're going to talk about
1:39.4	today, being mired in dysfunctional and inefficient work systems.
1:44.1	How does it come about that people get to that point of, well, that's just how things are
1:48.4	and I can't change them?
1:49.9	I think there are a few reasons.
1:51.3	I remember Michael Jordan had a great quote.
1:54.3	Practice doesn't make perfect, which is what you hear a lot of times.
1:58.3	Practice makes permanent.
	...

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