Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working – A Comprehensive Summary

Dan Heath’s “Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working” is a powerful guide for individuals, teams, and organizations feeling stuck in unproductive cycles. Drawing on extensive research, numerous interviews, and compelling case studies, Heath dismantles the myth that change requires massive effort or external crises. Instead, he argues that the path to progress lies in strategically identifying “Leverage Points”—small, well-chosen interventions that yield disproportionate returns—and then “Restacking Resources” to apply focused energy to those points. This book is a practical roadmap for anyone seeking to break free from inertia, overcome decision paralysis, navigate internal politics, and move from constant “firefighting” to meaningful forward motion, transforming “I didn’t make progress” into “I’m capable of making progress.”

Introduction

The book opens with the compelling story of the Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s package receiving area. In 2016, packages took an average of three days to reach their destination within the hospital, leading to spoilage, reorders, and immense frustration. This wasn’t a crisis, but a “bad equilibrium”—a dysfunctional yet self-sustaining system. Paul Suett, the new supply chain performance manager, was hired to restore sanity. Recognizing that “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets,” Suett knew he had to change the system. He started by listening to his team’s complaints, like jammed cart wheels, and immediately addressed them, signaling his commitment.

Suett challenged the team to deliver packages within one day and involved them in diagnosing “waste”—any activity not adding value for the customer. They realized the constant ringing of the “red phone” (inquiring about packages) was waste. By observing their own operations, they found only 38% of their time added value. A pivotal change was moving away from batching (performing one operation on a pile of packages before moving them on). Through a simple sticky-note exercise, Suett demonstrated that continuous flow, not batching, was faster. Within six weeks, 90% of locations received daily deliveries, saving over $20 million. The red phone stopped ringing. This transformation, driven by smart, strategic changes rather than brute force, illustrates the book’s core framework: Find Leverage Points and Restack Resources to push on them. The book promises to equip readers with five methods for finding Leverage Points and six strategies for Restacking Resources, all while highlighting that progress itself is the most powerful motivator.

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Chapter 1: Go and See the Work

This chapter introduces the first method for finding Leverage Points: observing up close the reality of your work. Nelson Repenning, an MIT professor, calls this “Go and see the work,” emphasizing its reliability in revealing problems.

Karen Ritter, an assistant principal at East Leyden High School, exemplified this by shadowing a ninth-grader for a day. Despite initially grading her school an A for “Supportive Environment,” her direct experience revealed issues. Alan, the student, was stuck in a double-length remedial algebra class, which crowded out his interests and felt “brutal.” Ritter’s perception of “Student Engagement” plummeted from a B to a C-minus. This observation helped her identify two Leverage Points: reconsidering automatic placement in remedial periods and encouraging more interactive teaching. The school later acted on both.

Repenning states that “If you aren’t embarrassed by what you find, you probably aren’t looking closely enough.” He shares the example of a Panama City corrugated box plant where the president, by “seeing the work,” discovered the corrugator machine stopped daily for lunch due to an old electric power instability problem that had been fixed years ago. Such “mismanagement” is often the accidental accretion of outdated habits. For knowledge work, “seeing the work” means making the invisible visible, such as mapping out the flow of activities in a consulting engagement to identify delays or low-value steps.

Tom Chi, a co-founder of Google’s X lab, argues that most corporate decisions are “guess-a-thons,” based on arguments rather than direct experience. “The only thing to listen for is: When I hear something, is it a guess or is it a direct experience?” “Go and see the work” shifts decision-making from conjecture to reality. This is particularly crucial when things stop working, as it often exposes the “illusion of explanatory depth”—people think they understand a system better than they do (e.g., how a toilet or bicycle works), but when it breaks, their functional understanding proves insufficient. Turnaround consultants, by contrast, excel at this. They “parachute” into failing businesses, walk the halls, and crucially, talk to front-line employees, who “will tell you what’s going on, if you’re good at asking open questions and shutting up and letting them ramble.” This simple act of observation and consultation helps uncover “doable and worth doing” Leverage Points.

Chapter 2: Consider the Goal of the Goal

The second method for finding Leverage Points involves critically examining the goals you’re pursuing to ensure they align with your ultimate mission. Heath illustrates this with the story of Ryan Davidsen’s truck-buying experience. The dealership relentlessly pursued high customer satisfaction scores, even resorting to browbeating customers into giving top ratings. While their scores were likely outstanding, their actual customer experience was abysmal. This demonstrates Goodhart’s Law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The dealership successfully hit the target but failed their true mission.

To avoid such misalignment, Heath advises asking: “What’s the goal of the goal?” Rory Sutherland, an advertising guru, highlights this by questioning the £6 billion spent on cutting London-Paris train travel by 20 minutes. He suggests that for a fraction of the cost, Wi-Fi or even supermodels serving wine could have improved the journey’s “enjoyment and usefulness far more.” The ultimate goal was passenger satisfaction, not just speed.

Marisa Lavars, a mother facing health challenges, initially set a New Year’s resolution to “get fitter.” But when prompted to consider the “goal of the goal” (to be the “best Mum I can be” and model “living my best life”), she realized other pathways were more meaningful and doable, such as spending fun, engaged time with her kids through board games and LEGOs, even when her health was poor.

The “Miracle Question” from solutions-focused therapy is another powerful tool: “Imagine that in the middle of the night tonight, as you are sleeping, a miracle happens… the problem you are stressed about has been solved… What are the first things you notice, as you start your day, that reveal to you that the miracle happened?” This question helps surface tangible behaviors that signal success. For a couple whose marriage was struggling, it transformed abstract desires into concrete actions like “she would look up from her book when I came home.” This question sharpens and narrows the view of success, ensuring Leverage Points are “doable.” Together, “What’s the goal of the goal?” (broadening to see the destination) and the “Miracle Question” (narrowing to identify first steps) provide clarity.

The power of this approach was demonstrated by the Department of Education’s (ED) shift in handling federal student loan forgiveness for disabled veterans. Initially, the goal was to help veterans “apply” for the benefit. But the application process was cumbersome and suspicious, leading to low participation. By asking “What’s the goal of the goal?” (to improve their financial security), leaders realized they could simply proactively forgive the loans by matching databases, eliminating the application entirely. This “radically simple idea” transformed tens of thousands of lives, proving that clarifying the true destination can lead to revolutionary, effective Leverage Points.

Chapter 3: Study the Bright Spots

The third method for finding Leverage Points is to analyze your own best work and replicate that success. Heath highlights that “averages are great for monitoring but terrible for diagnosis.” To find Leverage Points, we must “disaggregate our rolled-up numbers” and look for “bright spots”—unusually positive data points within the context of your goal.

The US military’s 1950s airplane cockpit redesign illustrates the danger of designing for the “average.” Despite measuring 4,000 pilots across 140 dimensions, Gilbert S. Daniels found that zero pilots fit the “average range” on just 10 key dimensions. Designing for the average meant designing for no one. The Air Force learned to create adjustable cockpits, leading to soaring pilot performance. This shows the need to look beyond averages to individual differences.

Ken Davis applied this “bright spots” thinking at Gartner in 2009, facing a sharp drop in customer retention due to the Great Recession. By “going and seeing the work,” he first cleared distractions for “client partners,” allowing them to focus on retention. He then dug into the data and found 17 client partners who achieved 100% or better wallet retention—his bright spots. By studying their daily routines, calendar setup, and call preparation, he identified nine specific behaviors that separated top performers from the worst, such as using a “defined daily process.” These behaviors, like making more client calls to encourage subscription usage (the biggest factor in renewal), became the Leverage Points. Gartner then trained the entire team on these practices. This led to Gartner’s retention numbers hitting new highs for 10 consecutive years, resulting in over $100 million in increased revenue by focusing on replicating internal best practices.

Kate Hurley, a veterinarian, applied this to animal shelters. Facing overcrowded shelters with high euthanasia rates, she sought bright spots. She learned about Ebenezer Gujjarlapudi, a new shelter director in Jacksonville, Florida, who, unaware of conventional wisdom, asked if “ear-tipped” feral cats (already spayed/neutered and vaccinated from TNR clinics) could simply be returned to the field instead of being euthanized. This “return to field” concept was heretical, as shelters traditionally aimed for adoption. Hurley recognized its “near-magical power”: it addressed overpopulation, disease spread, and staff burnout. It also freed up space for adoptable cats. The counterintuitive outcome was that in places like San Jose, returning 10,000 cats to the field led to a 30% reduction in cats entering the shelter, attributed to the “carrying capacity” of the community. This bright spot led to the Million Cat Challenge, which saved over 5 million cats by 2024, proving that success is possible because it’s already happening somewhere.

Chapter 4: Target the Constraint

The fourth method for finding Leverage Points is to identify and address the primary limiting factor or bottleneck holding you back from your goal. Heath introduces this concept with the seemingly paradoxical efficiency of Chick-fil-A drive-thrus. Despite often having the longest lines (436 seconds on average), they serve the most cars per hour. His local Chick-fil-A on Roxboro Road (Durham, NC) serves up to 400 cars an hour (a car every nine seconds).

Tony Fernandez, the owner/operator, explains their success stems from relentlessly “managing the bottlenecks.” An early Leverage Point was “face-to-face ordering” where staff took orders outside, reducing wait times at the menu board, increasing kitchen prep time, and allowing for scalable ordering (more staff, more lanes). As technology advanced, payment moved outside. When one constraint (e.g., ordering) was resolved, another emerged (e.g., meal assembly, or the “beverage cockpit”). The team used observation (even drones) to spot new bottlenecks, leading to innovations like “closing the gaps” (cars creeping forward while ordering) which improved flow and customer perception of progress. This iterative focus on the current constraint is key; investments not directed at the constraint are “worthless” in improving overall system speed.

Heath uses a donut stand analogy: if taking orders takes 90 seconds and cooking takes 60, buying a faster fryer does nothing because the order-taking is the bottleneck. You must first add another order-taker, then the fryer, and so on, to truly accelerate the system.

The concept extends beyond factories. In home-care, Laura Shaw-deBruin of Norwood Seniors Network targeted labor quality and retention (a 65% industry turnover). Her constraint was finding reliable caregivers willing to work for affordable wages. Her Leverage Points included a rigorous hiring process (only 3% hired) and a strong mentorship program to “feel connected.” This focused effort led to Norwood’s churn rate consistently staying below 30%, proving that even in complex human-centered businesses, identifying and addressing the core constraint yields disproportionate results.

Finally, Heath emphasizes that constraints are contingent on goals. Changing your goal changes the constraint. For the disabled veterans’ loan forgiveness (Chapter 2), the goal shifted from “making it easier to apply” to “proactively forgiving loans.” This changed the constraint from “reducing application friction” to “getting permission to compare databases.” Understanding what truly holds you back allows you to spot precise Leverage Points.

Chapter 5: Map the System

The fifth and final method for finding Leverage Points is to zoom out and understand the entire system, rising above silos to spot “hidden levers.” Geordie Brackin and Mike Goldstein, concerned that college degrees weren’t translating to good jobs for low-income students, mapped the system from high school through college and the job search. They found college career centers ineffective, operating as “guess-a-thons” rather than providing tailored help.

Their map highlighted a gap: the period during the actual job search. Inspired by “high-dosage” math tutoring, they conceived of “high-dosage career counseling”—30 hours of intensive, one-on-one coaching for recent graduates. For clients like Faith Carter (Ivy League graduate making $26k/year) and Michael Deleon (struggling to get promotions), this coaching was revolutionary. It helped Carter target appropriate jobs and Deleon refine his interview technique. All of Brackin’s first 30 clients got better jobs within months, with a median gain of $11,000 annually. This Leverage Point, a targeted burst of assistance outside traditional silos, was effective because it addressed a crucial, overlooked stage in the system.

Mapping the system specifically requires spanning silos, the inevitable divisions within and between organizations. The University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics (UIHC) radiology department, for example, mapped patient flow to eliminate a two-week CT scan wait. By seeing the whole system, they identified that nurses were administering “contrast” dye, leading to a costly hour-long wait. Since it was just a drink, the receptionist could do it upon check-in, saving immense time. They also created “spaghetti charts” to visualize technologist movements, reducing unnecessary steps by 91%. These changes, which only emerged from a system-level view, helped them serve 84 patients daily instead of 64, increasing revenue by $750,000—all in five days.

The second crucial component is challenging assumptions. Steven Hamburg, chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), illustrates this with methane emissions. Scientists historically discounted methane’s climate impact because its atmospheric lifespan is shorter than CO2’s, focusing calculations on a 100-year timeframe. However, methane is 80 times more potent in trapping heat during its shorter life. Hamburg realized the assumption was problematic: methane mattered significantly in the short term, acting as a “hidden lever” for rapid climate impact reduction. EDF’s solution: detecting and plugging methane leaks from gas infrastructure using infrared cameras, then launching MethaneSAT to provide real-time global leak data. This effort, driven by challenging a core assumption and mapping the global system, aims to cut 45% of methane emissions in a few years, equivalent to closing a third of all coal plants.

Chapter 6: Start with a Burst

This chapter introduces the first method for Restacking Resources: beginning with an intense and focused period of work on a Leverage Point. Greg McLawsen’s anecdote about installing a hose system highlights the principle: sometimes, achieving a meaningful result (watering vegetables) requires an “inefficient” flurry of dedicated effort (multiple trips to Home Depot for a $2 part) until the project is 100% complete. This concept is an antidote to “time confetti”—the fragmented, scattered nature of modern work where time is carved into slivers by meetings, emails, and constant task-switching. Task switching makes us slower, less effective, and more stressed.

Design sprints, as outlined in the book Sprint, provide a blueprint for a burst: a multidisciplinary team dedicates five consecutive days to a single problem, protecting their focus. The goal is to produce a tangible output, like a prototype. While remote work complicates “same-room” collaboration, “bursty communication” (reserving hours for real-time collaboration) can replicate its benefits, as delays from asynchronous communication are the true enemy of remote teams.

Matthew Knies, leader of ExxonMobil’s Technical Data Center (TDC), applied this. Faced with a multiyear backlog of seismic data files—a “state of utter disarray” that risked costly re-collection and missed business opportunities—Knies set an ambitious goal to vanquish the backlog in 18 months. His Leverage Point was archiving. He initiated a weekly “all-hands archiving” burst every Thursday, where the entire team (including him, scraping stickers) worked together. The tangible progress—seeing two or three cartloads of files shipped out each week—was “addictive,” proving the progress principle (making progress in meaningful work is the single most important motivator).

This “look backward, then look forward” strategy, championed by motivation researcher Miguel Brendl, helps “minimize the middle”—the motivational slump in long change efforts. By shortening the “middle” into weekly bursts, Knies kept momentum, transforming a skeptical team into one “proud of each other.” His boss, initially laughing at the ambition, later saw the shelves with “holes through them.” The burst, focused on team-level goals over individual ones, transformed the TDC from “pariahs” to a team that believed in themselves.

Chapter 7: Recycle Waste

The second method for Restacking Resources is to end work that doesn’t serve the mission, thereby freeing up resources without painful trade-offs. “Waste” is defined as anything that doesn’t add value to your work in the customer’s eyes. This concept is heavily influenced by the Toyota Production System and its DOWNTIME acronym for eight categories of waste: Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Nonutilized talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, and Excess processing.

The City of Asheboro, NC, exemplified recycling waste by reducing fuel costs in trash collection. Their “special” bulk trash trucks drove down every street, even when no large items needed picking up. By equipping regular sanitation workers with mobile devices to log GIS coordinates for special pickups, the city’s four special trucks could now drive point-to-point, eliminating wasted miles and fuel (“Transportation” waste). This saved thousands of dollars without impacting service quality.

Sweetgreen, the salad restaurant, eliminated the need for large metal mixing bowls (saving washing, water, and labor) by designing a new hexagonal takeout bowl shallow enough to mix salads directly in it. This illustrates how eliminating waste requires seeing the whole system and challenging habits.

In non-factory settings, “Nonutilized talent” is a critical form of waste. At Gartner (from Chapter 3), Ken Davis realized that client partners, highly skilled in advising clients, were wasting time on scheduling calls. By “shifting right”—transferring lower-value activities like scheduling to support staff or automation—underwriters’ productivity at AXA XL tripled, as they could focus on higher-value “subjective work.” This is about letting people operate at the top of their range.

Micromanagement is also a form of waste, combining “Excess processing” and “Nonutilized talent.” Ed Catmull of Pixar famously eliminated an “oversight group” that nitpicked creatives, realizing they added “nothing to the process but tension.” Jeff Bezos distinguishes “Type 1 decisions” (consequential, irreversible, needing careful deliberation) from “Type 2 decisions” (reversible, to be made quickly by high-judgment individuals). Many organizations waste time by applying Type 1 processes to Type 2 decisions. Recycling waste, whether it’s unnecessary truck routes, redundant mixing bowls, or excessive oversight, provides a “free lunch”—resources reclaimed without downside, ready to be restacked on Leverage Points.

Chapter 8: Do Less and More

The third method for Restacking Resources is to shift effort from lower-value work to higher-value work, minimizing the sting of trade-offs. Unlike recycling waste, which offers a “free lunch,” this method acknowledges that reallocating resources often involves making choices.

Rosa, a mother overwhelmed by morning chaos with her ADHD daughter, sought a solutions-focused therapist. By focusing on “bright spots” (when her daughter was “a model child”) and identifying Leverage Points like “waking up 20 or 30 minutes before waking the kids,” Rosa dramatically improved her mornings. This meant going to bed earlier, a clear trade-off of evening time with her husband for morning calm. This “zero-sum” trade-off highlights that change is often “INSTEAD OF,” not “AND.”

David Philippi’s firm, Strategex, applies the Pareto principle (80/20 rule) to help businesses. They found that for many companies, the top 10% of customers generate 80% of revenue, and the top 20% often generate 150% of the profit, meaning the majority of customers are unprofitable. Philippi’s clients make the mistake of “undercoddling their best customers and overcoddling their worst.” For example, the largest customers often receive worse on-time delivery rates due to the complexity of their orders. Strategex advises focusing ruthlessly on perfecting service for the best customers and adjusting the “offer” (e.g., raising prices, setting minimum order sizes) for unprofitable ones, even if it means losing them (a “double victory” as they become a competitor’s problem). This is a strategic shift of resources.

This principle extends to personal lives: we might be “undercoddling the most important people and overcoddling the least.” Philippi prioritizes his family, refusing client dinners to spend time with his kids, recognizing that “every day we have a choice.”

A practical tool for this is the STOP, START, LESS, MORE quadrant: you list things to stop doing entirely, new things to start, existing things to do less of, and existing things to do more of. The “STOP” and “LESS” quadrants are often the hardest, but essential for freeing up resources.

Art Mollenhauer’s turnaround of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago (BBBS-MC) in 2006 perfectly illustrates this “LESS and MORE” approach. Inheriting an insolvent organization, Mollenhauer was ambidextrous: he cut unprofitable programs (about a fifth of them) and fired a third of the board and a quarter of the staff (“LESS”). Simultaneously, he made strategic investments (“MORE”), such as an expensive board retreat and hiring a corporate partnership manager. He even insisted on moving to a new, decent office, despite the financial strain, as a symbol of valuing the staff. This blend of defense and offense is crucial for sustained change, as “You cannot save your way to health.” Research on companies surviving recessions confirms this: blending cuts and investments was the best strategy.

Chapter 9: Tap Motivation

The fourth way to Restack Resources is to harness existing motivation, viewing it as untapped energy. Ezra Fox, struggling to get his kids to clean up, “applied his marketing skills” and turned cleanup into games like “Hide the Evidence” or a family race. This wasn’t a trick, but an act of empathy—attending to his children’s desires (fun, sneakiness, beating Dad) rather than just issuing orders.

Dr. Doug Eby from Southcentral Foundation, an Alaska Native-owned health care system, demonstrates this empathy by tailoring health advice for a diabetic patient around his core life values: hunting, fishing, and connecting his grandkids to their heritage. By linking maintaining eyesight and feeling in fingertips/toes to these activities, Eby taps into what truly matters to the patient, enabling him to “get him” to act. As therapist John J. Murphy says, “You can’t rearrange the furniture unless you’re invited into the house.”

Many leaders mistakenly treat change as something to be “foisted on employees,” then ask, “How do I get people to buy in?” This is backward. To get unstuck, “go where the energy is.” Tapping motivation means finding the intersection of “what’s required” and “what’s desired.” While popular changes are easy, a team will have diverse interests. The “genius swap” exercise, where team members list tasks they’d “pay to get rid of” and tasks they’d “pay to take on,” can reveal surprising matches, like one person hating budgeting while another “pined for it.” This allows for reallocating responsibilities to align with individual passions. For tasks nobody wants, leaders can question their necessity or plan to hire someone who enjoys them.

Dianne Connery, leading the dying Pottsboro Library, applied this “waterfall approach” by doing the “opposite” of its previous bureaucratic, “Shrimp Tail Doctrine” mentality. She abandoned rigid rules and said “yes” to community members’ ideas, unleashing a “explosion of activities.” They brought in canning supplies, bicycles, sewing machines, hosted “Cocktails & Coloring” fundraisers, and even miniature horses, transforming the dusty library into a social hub. Her strategy was to make the library “so important to the community that there would be rioting in the streets if we had to close.” By tapping diverse motivations, the library secured ongoing government funding and became a national exemplar.

Finally, to sustain motivation, recognition is key. Frank Blake, former CEO of Home Depot, famously said, “You get what you celebrate.” He told a powerful story of a cashier who gave away lumber for free to a grieving customer building his grandson’s coffin, modeling empowered customer service. Blake, a zealot for recognition, sent thousands of handwritten thank-you notes, believing it was “free fuel” for progress. When facing resistance (a common 20/60/20 split: 20% supporters, 60% swayable, 20% resisters), Heath advises: 1) pick a Leverage Point with more enthusiasts; 2) barter with lukewarm factions (address irritants); and 3) leverage the energy of supporters to score quick wins, as “progress is the spark that makes believers of skeptics.”

Chapter 10: Let People Drive

The fifth way to Restack Resources is to give your team the autonomy to own the change effort. This is motivating, instills accountability, taps higher-order skills, and reduces waste from micromanagement. Richard Gibney, a nephrologist, was inspired by Christian Farman, a Swedish patient who self-dialyzed. Gibney’s clinic, initially telling patients “to sit down, put out your arm, be quiet, and don’t touch anything,” began to “let the patients drive.” Nurses became coaches, teaching patients to manage their own treatments. This shift wasn’t just motivating (“I’m not letting my illness hold me back”), but also improved medical outcomes, with fewer hospitalizations for self-care patients. As nurse Merry Smith said, “If you believe in them and give them permission, they will rise.”

Guy Krueger, a former Olympic archer and now a coach, learned this lesson painfully. After failing to make the Olympic team, he coached his athletes with a direct, “Do this” approach, leading to them not selecting him for the next Olympics. A back injury and no contact from his athletes served as a “painful wake-up call.” He learned from sports scientist Gabriele Wulf to shift his coaching focus outward, allowing athletes to lead their own training. Instead of dictating muscle movements, he’d ask, “What do you want to focus on today?” and “What would it take for it to be an 8?” This “flipped” coaching approach rebuilt trust, leading to the US Women’s Archery team ranking second in the world.

Letting people drive reduces waste by minimizing micromanagement and allowing “nonutilized talent” to operate at their full potential. However, autonomy is not unlimited; employees still desire guidance and support. Spotify, the music streaming giant, conceptualizes this with a “aligned autonomy” 2×2 matrix. Leaders focus on what problems to solve (alignment), but let teams figure out how to solve them (autonomy). Low autonomy/low alignment leads to micromanagement; high autonomy/low alignment leads to a “Frankenstein” product. The sweet spot is high alignment and high autonomy.

T-Mobile’s transformation of its call centers to the “Team of Experts” (TEX) model exemplifies this shift. Previously, call centers were “cost centers” with reps minimizing call time and being micromanaged. Callie Field proposed a radical shift: 47-person TEX teams organized by geography, responsible for 120,000 customers. Their new goals were customer happiness, retention, and reducing overall calls by solving issues on the first try. This was a bold leap from low autonomy/low alignment to “aligned autonomy.” TEX teams, sitting together in “Motor City” themed areas, knew local news and events, making their service more personal. This led to a 13% reduction in cost to serve, a 21% reduction in calls per account, and a jump in Net Promoter Score from 43% to 67%. Employee absenteeism dropped 24% and turnover plunged from 42% to 22%, showcasing the profound benefits when people are given ownership and trust.

Chapter 11: Accelerate Learning

The sixth and final way to Restack Resources is to accelerate your learning by getting better, faster feedback to fuel improvements. This addresses two questions: “How quickly can you identify failure?” and “How quickly can you spot potential successes?”

Moon Javaid, chief strategy officer for the San Francisco 49ers, sought to improve fan experience. Traditional post-game surveys were too slow. Inspired by airport HappyOrNot terminals, he pushed the company to develop a real-time app for the stadium. With 150 terminals, the 49ers received 40,000 button pushes per game. When a threshold of negative feedback was reached (e.g., 15 frowns in 5 minutes), alerts were sent to managers. This allowed them to immediately identify and fix problems like clogged toilets or warm wine. This dramatically shrunk the “lag time” for identifying failure from days to minutes, akin to the Asheboro trash trucks that could now go straight to needed pickups. This immediate feedback also helped identify that fan satisfaction correlated with game outcome (78% when winning, 61% when losing), allowing for more accurate operational benchmarking. The 49ers saw improved satisfaction scores, increased concession sales, and cleaner bathrooms, proving that better information is the “ultimate navigational aid.”

Accelerating learning doesn’t always require new tech; it can mean seeking the right source of feedback. Tom Chi recounts a multi-billion dollar company, Schmidt, struggling with executive retention (70% turnover every three years). Leaders had developed five proposals for retention but hadn’t tested them. Chi staged a role-play where the CEO of Brazil pitched a proposed “executive exchange program” (a consolation prize for passed-over executives) to an executive who believed he was getting a promotion. Within minutes, the role-play revealed the “exchange program” was a terrible idea, as the executive “quit” on the spot. This saved the company years and millions of dollars building out a program that would have failed. Accelerating learning allows you to limit—and even prevent—wasteful efforts.

This transformation from slow, late feedback to rapid, iterative learning is seen in the software industry’s shift from “waterfall” (linear, cascading stages with late customer feedback) to “agile” (short “sprints” of weeks, building a little, testing, getting feedback, and iterating). Agile drastically speeds up failure identification and ensures the product evolves with customer needs.

Eric Nuzum at NPR applied agile principles to developing new radio shows. With zero budget for traditional, costly “pilots,” he created “paper pilots”—sketching out 3 episodes on paper to quickly detect underbaked ideas (e.g., a show that was only “one hour of good material”). This also revealed if a potential host was difficult to work with, preventing a “long, drawn-out debacle.” Nuzum’s analogy: don’t pick the “Most Promising Seed” and pour all resources into it. Instead, “plant a bunch of different seeds” (multiple ideas) and see which germinate and thrive. This rapid iteration and testing led to hits like TED Radio Hour and Hidden Brain, maximizing success by quickly spotting promising opportunities. When one person learns something important, everyone learns it, building a better “circulatory system for information.”

Conclusion

The book culminates with the story of Wania Regina Mollo Baia, a nurse and director at Hospital Sírio-Libanês in São Paulo, Brazil. Tasked with a “Joy at Work” project, Baia identified “participative management” as a key Leverage Point, as only 40% of critical care staff felt they participated in decisions affecting their work. She launched a project called “What matters to you?” where staff anonymously posted sticky notes detailing what made a good day, what made them proud, and critically, “what are the impediments to what matters?”

The board overflowed with complaints, from lack of team spirit to a broken coffee machine. Baia grouped these themes and empowered voluntary teams to address them, encouraging “quick wins.” Senior leaders committed to saying “yes” to reasonable requests, fostering an environment where staff could drive the change. The coffee machine was replaced, a “Recognition Tree” was added, and World Cup attire closets were created. The thorny issue of scheduling was tackled by testing a radical idea: three 12-hour shifts instead of six 6-hour days. This proved popular with nurses and even patients, leading to its widespread adoption.

Baia accelerated learning by creating a simple “Ping-Pong ball” system: after each shift, staff dropped an orange ball (negative) or white ball (positive) into a transparent bin. This made progress immediately visible. Within six months, agreement with “I participate in local decisions that affect my work” jumped from 40% to 69%, reaching 72% two years later. This success led to ripple effects: increased feelings of respect, camaraderie, and pride, improved retention, and even a decline in adverse patient events. This transformation spread throughout the hospital and to other institutions, demonstrating the full framework in action.

Baia’s story reinforces that “You can adopt a similar methodology with your own team.” While emergencies (like COVID or the I-95 bridge collapse) force rapid change, Heath emphasizes that people can choose to change. The book’s examples—the radiology clinic, Guy Krueger, Chick-fil-A, ExxonMobil’s TDC, Gartner, the 49ers, the Pottsboro Library—all illustrate chosen change, not emergency-driven ones. When we effectively “budge the boulder,” we not only make progress toward our goals but also reinforce our own capability, moving from stuck to “rolling forward.”

Key Takeaways

The core lessons of “Reset” revolve around intentional, strategic action to overcome inertia:

• Change is not “AND,” it’s “INSTEAD OF”: You rarely get new resources. Success comes from reallocating existing time, effort, and money away from lower-value activities and towards high-leverage ones.
• Don’t just work harder, work smarter: Brute force is inefficient. Identify the “Leverage Points”—small interventions that yield disproportionate returns—to make your efforts truly effective.
• Go where the energy is: Tap into existing motivation, interests, and passions within your team or community. Aligning “what’s required” with “what’s desired” creates a powerful fuel for change.
• Progress is the ultimate motivator: Make progress visible and celebrate small wins. This reinforces belief, overcomes skepticism, and generates momentum.
• Learn fast, fail cheap: Accelerate learning by quickly identifying failures and spotting opportunities. Test ideas with real people, in real situations, to avoid wasting time and resources on “guess-a-thons.”
• Trust and empower your people: Shift from micromanagement to “aligned autonomy.” Give your team the freedom to figure out how to solve problems, while ensuring they understand what problems need solving.
• Challenge your assumptions and map the whole system: Don’t get stuck in silos or outdated habits. Zoom out to see the big picture, question “the way we’ve always done things,” and identify the true bottlenecks.

Next Actions:

• Pick one “stuck” area: Identify a single problem or goal where you feel bogged down.
• “Go and see the work”: Spend time observing the actual process or talking to the front-line people involved, with fresh eyes and an open mind. Look for outdated habits or obvious inefficiencies.
• Ask “What’s the goal of the goal?”: For your chosen problem, clarify the ultimate aspiration. Are you chasing the right target?
• Look for a “bright spot”: When have you (or others) successfully tackled a similar challenge? What made it work?
• Identify the current “constraint”: What’s the single biggest thing holding you back right now?
• Brainstorm “less and more” options: What low-value activities can you reduce or eliminate to free up resources for high-leverage efforts?
• Plan a small “burst”: Can you dedicate a focused block of time (e.g., a day, a week) with a small team to tackle one immediate action related to your Leverage Point?
• Focus on making progress visible: How will you know if your chosen intervention is working, and how can you make that progress clear to everyone involved?

Reflection Prompts:

• What is one area in your work or life where you feel most “stuck,” and what might be the true “goal of the goal” for that situation?
• If a miracle happened overnight and this problem was solved, what are three specific, observable things you would notice first?
• Where might you be overcoddling the “worst customers” (or relationships, or projects) and undercoddling the best? What bold “less and more” choice could you make?