Dan Heath has written another terrific book called Upstream. He and his brother have co-written several excellent books, including Switch, Made to Stick, Decisive, and The Power of Moments.
His new book deals with a challenge I observe in most businesses. Companies are frequently in a mode of putting out fires with a cycle of response to symptoms, not root causes. It is as if we are downstream and never get upstream to see what we could do differently.
Dan gives a beautiful example to illustrate the challenges businesses face.
Imagine you and a friend are sitting along a river for a picnic. Suddenly you hear a child screaming for help because he is drowning. You run in and save the child. Twenty minutes later, you hear another child calling for help. The same thing happens – you and your friend jump in to save the child.
Not ten minutes later, you hear the screams of another child. You jump in and again help save the child.Your friend starts walking away, and you yell at him – “where are you going?” He says I’m going upstream to get the person who keeps throwing kids in the river.
Why are most people reactive instead of proactive?
Upstream provides several examples of companies that overcome significant challenges by adopting an upstream mindset. Instead of putting out fires, they search out the source of the fires.
- One online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls every year by making some simple tweaks to its booking system.
- A central urban school district cut its dropout rate in half after it figured out that it could predict which students would drop out—as early as the ninth grade.
- A European nation almost eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation’s culture.
- And one EMS system accelerated the emergency-response time of its ambulances by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge—and forward-deploying its ambulances to stand by in those areas.
Upstream delivers practical solutions for preventing problems rather than reacting to them. How many issues in our lives and society are we tolerating because we’ve forgotten that we can fix them?
Questions to Consider
- Does your company put our fires or look to fix root causes?
2. Who is empowered to look upstream and figure out why a problem keeps reoccurring
3. When was the last time someone took the responsibility without being asked, to collect the data to analyze patterns that reoccurred and took action to fix it?
4. Do you blame being too busy to look for root causes?
5. Is your culture a learning organization that wants to improve continuously, or do colleagues shirk being responsible or holding others accountable?
Maybe it is time to go upstream and stop putting our fires.
Need help wth upstream strategies?
I can help. You can set up a time chat with me about your marketing challenges using my calendar. Our initial conversation is free. You talk, I listen. Email me jeffslater@themarketingsage.com or call me. 919 720 0995. Visit my website at www.themarketingsage.com. Let’s explore working together today.
Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash
