Summary of Chip Health and Dan Health’s “Finding the Bright Spot”

In the chapter “Find the Bright Spots” taken from the book Switch: How to change thing when change is hard, the authors state that: when changing things, there’re bright spots in your field. You need to direct your followers- the Riders by following these bright spots and make the
Elephants’ expect that change is possible and the Path is clear.
In 1990, Jerry Sternin came to Vietnam to fight malnutrition with barely support from the government. Firstly, his team found that there were a lot of problems such as poor sanitization, poverty, out of clean water. However, in six months and almost no money, solving these problems became useless.
After weighting, Jerry found that there were healthy and well-nourished kids despite their poor families. There were his bright spots. Besides that, he directed the mother’s Riders to shadow the bright spots’ mothers. Uniquely, these kids ate four times instead of twice a day, parents fed kids by hands, or mixing rice with small shrimp, crab and sweet potato green provided vitamin and protein for the kids.
Because knowledge couldn’t guide the villagers, Jerry created cooking classes at the bright spots’ houses, provided detailed instructions to the mother’s Riders. Gradually, more mothers followed and this made the mothers’ Elephants believe in making their kids healthier.
Six months later, 65 percent of the kids became healthier.
Bright spots exist in every field that you deal with. In fact, in 1970s, Steve de Shazer and his wife invented solutions-focused brief therapy. While the traditional therapists explore the problems and dig around to find the reasons, solutions-focus therapists discover the potential solutions. Firstly, after listening to the patient, they ask the Miracle Question about the signs to tell the problem were gone. Next, as