Upstream

January 13, 2020
Heath (The Power of Moments, coauthor), a senior fellow at Duke’s CASE Knowledge Center, urges a preventive, rather than reactive, problem-solving approach in his eloquent manifesto. With the frenetic pace of modern life, Heath observes, it’s easy to become accustomed to putting out fires instead of looking for the spark that’s igniting them. His examples of proactive, “upstream” thinking include a domestic violence prevention task force which, by bringing together police officers, victims’ advocates, health-care workers, and others, has eliminated intimate partner-perpetrated murders in the Massachusetts communities it has served for 14 years running. His takeaways include the need to “unite the right people” (as the domestic violence task force demonstrates), pay attention to early warnings, and find the right point of “leverage” to solve a problem. To illustrate this last principle, Heath cites a mentoring program which, by teaching young men peaceful conflict resolution skills, drastically reduced arrests and violent crimes in a Chicago neighborhood. He finishes by addressing larger-scale problems, using as an example a hurricane preparation exercise conducted in New Orleans just 13 months before Katrina that saved many thousands of additional people from dying. This is a pragmatic guide for those seeking big changes on either an individual or organizational level. Agent: Christy Fletcher, Fletcher & Company

January 15, 2020
Psychology meets neuroscience and self-help in this engaging study by business writer Heath (co-author: The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact, 2017, etc.). If the fish floating down a river have three heads, then it behooves any curious-minded person to travel upstream and find out why. Just so, if half of high school students are failing in a certain district, then one can either try to throw money and words at the problem ("Stay in school, kids!") or venture into the alien territory outside the classroom to find out how to keep them going. That's just what happened in Chicago, writes Heath, where teachers formed interdisciplinary teams offering support to legions of at-risk students, determining that if first-year students can be kept on track, they're likely to stay in school to the end--and wind up making at least $500,000 more over a lifetime as compared to their dropout peers. The author examines numerous turning-point moments when finding "upstream" things to fix might have led to better and different results. For example, when, in 1974, a scientific paper was published describing a disappearing ozone layer, that was the time to do something about it--not now. "Creating urgency" is one task the would-be problem-solver must address. Another is getting the right people on board to create desired effects, such as lowering teen drug use by making it outré "What if drug and alcohol use came to feel abnormal in their world rather than normal?" A change of mindsets is rarely easy, but it can be done, and best so, by Heath's account, by looking farther along at the chain of events than the problem itself. That habit of mind, he writes, helps explain why the incidence of death by thyroid cancer is so low in South Korea, and it also points to a central truth: "Systems have great power and permanence; that's why upstream efforts must culminate in systems change." A smart, provocative book that guides readers to better decision-making when confronting seemingly intractable problems.

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March 6, 2020

Heath (Duke Univ. CASE Knowledge Ctr.), who has coauthored four books with his brother Chip Heath, e.g., Made To Stick, here writes a solo work about moving "upstream" to get at the source of problems before they occur. Using examples such as an online travel company's plans to decrease customer service complaints, Heath shows how the principles of upstream thinking are applied to achieve positive results, and how this approach has been used to prevent or ameliorate issues. The approach involves getting buy-in from a variety of stakeholders who work together to examine a problem from all angles, assess multiple data points, and tackle the issue in a concerted fashion. VERDICT Many of the situations addressed in this book--from customer service to crime to chronic illness--are daunting. Yet, the commitment and ingenuity used to tackle the issues are nothing less than inspirational. Every organization could benefit from upstream thinking.--Carol Elsen, Univ. of Wisconsin, Whitewater Libs.

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