Upstream
How to solve problems before they happen
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
'Informs, engages and, above all, entertains' Charles Duhigg, bestselling author of The Power of Habit
New York Times bestselling author Dan Heath asks what happens when we take our thinking upstream and try to prevent problems before they happen.
What happens when we take our thinking upstream and try to prevent problems before they happen?
Most of us are pretty good at dealing with problems – we’re used to being resourceful and improvising solutions. But we also tend to focus on reacting rather than preventing, which costs us unnecessary time and money.
Across business, politics, and society, bestselling author Dan Heath shows us that we have the capacity to solve some of our thorniest issues – we just need to start to think about the system rather than the symptoms. Drawing on hundreds of new interviews with unconventional problem solvers, Heath shows the huge gains to be made when we stop dealing with symptoms and start to deliver practical solutions.
'Packed with vivid stories and practical examples, Upstream is the rare book that can both revitalize your business and make our world a better place.' Daniel H. Pink, No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of When, Drive and To Sell Is Human
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
