Book Review - Reset

RESET: How to Change What's Not Working. Dan Heath. (2025, Kindle Edition)

When things aren’t working as desired, people in leadership roles may feel stuck, as if a boulder is blocking their path. The challenge in such situations is how to reset things and change what’s not working. As the title implies, this is the focus of Dan Heath’s recently published book: “Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working”.

Dan Heath is the widely acclaimed co-author, along with his brother Chip, of four New York Times bestsellers:  Decisive, Switch, Made to Stick, and The Power of Moments. He is also a Senior Fellow at Duke University’s CASE center, which supports social entrepreneurs. In his newest book, Reset, Heath offers a roadmap with real-world examples and actionable insights for leaders and teams to diagnose and fix the systems that hold them back. According to Heath, to move the boulder, you need to be smart and strategic. He asserts that while many things cannot be changed, it is possible to identify some well-chosen points of intervention⎯referred to as “Leverage Points”⎯where a little bit of effort yields disproportionate returns. In order to realize positive returns, Heath maintains that the key is to “Restack Resources on the Leverage Point,” by aligning all available assets to push in the same direction.

Fittingly, the book is organized into two sections. In the first section, Heath offers five different methods for finding Leverage Points, each of which is described in depth in a dedicated chapter. These include:

1. Go and see the work (chapter 1): Observe up close the reality of your work. 

2. Consider the goal of the goal (chapter 2): Identify alternate pathways to your ultimate destination. 

3. Study the bright spots (chapter 3): Analyze and replicate your own best work. 

4. Target the constraint (chapter 4): Assess the #1 force that is holding you back. 

5. Map the system (chapter 5): Rise above the silos to spot promising targets for action.

In the second section, Heath explores six different strategies for marshalling resources to push on the Leverage Points, while minimizing the sting of the trade-offs involved from reallocating resources. Similar to section one, each of the strategies is described in depth in a dedicated chapter and include:

1. Start with a burst (chapter 6): Begin with an intense and focused period of work. 

2. Recycle waste (chapter 7): Discontinue efforts that don’t serve the mission. 

3. Do less AND more (in chapter 8): Shift resources from lower-value work to higher-value. 

4. Tap motivation (chapter 9): Prioritize the work that’s required and desired. 

5. Let people drive (chapter 10): Give your team the autonomy to lead the change efforts. 

6. Accelerate learning (chapter 11): Get better, faster feedback to guide your work.

Each chapter ends with a summary of key takeaways, referred to as “Whirlwind review”, along with recommendations that offer tips about other resources and places to explore beyond what is included in the book. 

It should be noted that the core principles underlying the concepts and strategies advanced by Heath throughout the book are not new or particularly innovative. Indeed, he clarifies upfront in the Introduction that the core principles he promotes have been drawn from his own research involving hundreds of interviews with people from a diversity of industries, from findings drawn from relevant scholarly research, and from select methodologies that are considered by many to be effective practices for overcoming inertia and making progress within short timeframes such as (but not limited to): agile and scrum, solutions-focused therapy, the incident command system, kaizen events, design sprints, business turnarounds, rapid results projects, and more.

From this reviewer’s perspective, what Heath does provide in this book, is a master class on effective project management. Among the many notable takeaways, the following (mostly paraphrased) resonated in particular:

• Researchers have found that the single largest motivator for employees is making progress in meaningful work.  Yet, when managers were surveyed and asked to rank employee motivators in terms of importance, “progress” came in dead last. [ref: Introduction]

• Going and seeing the work is far preferable to the usual conference-room style of hatching improvements sometimes referred to as “guess-a-thons.”  To find real Leverage Points, you must get out of the medium of guesses and into the medium of reality. [ref: Chapter 1]

• Achieving clarity on where you’re really headed can be transformative. It can mean the difference between stuck and unstuck. [ref: Chapter 2]

• One of the ways to identify Leverage Points is to “Study the Bright Spots”⎯your most successful efforts. When you analyze what allowed you to succeed on those occasions, you can scale that success. But bright spots are typically buried in averages (i.e., data), so they are not self-evident. If you want to spot Leverage Points, you must untangle averages (i.e., delve into the data). [ref: Chapter 3]

• Constraints are contingent on a goal. When you know where you’re headed and understand what’s keeping you from getting there, you can overcome the constraint(s) and chart a better path forward. [ref: Chapter 4]

• “Every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” Sometimes, to find a Leverage Point, we need to zoom out and see the big picture by mapping the system to study how all the pieces that span the often siloed operations fit together, and by challenging system-related assumptions. [ref: Chapter 5]

• Motivation is at the heart of change. To Restack Resources on your Leverage Points, don’t think “How do I get buy-in for my idea?” Think, instead, “How could I harness the waterfall of available motivation to propel a new effort?” Heath presents a practical tool called the “Genius Swap” for identifying intrinsic motivators of team members. [ref: Chapter 9]

Overall, the book is well-organized and written in an engaging style that is sprinkled with humour (read the footnotes). Cartoon-style illustrations help in clarifying the concepts presented, and the case examples are relatable. As a seasoned higher education consultant with extensive experience in facilitating change management, this reviewer found Heath’s book to be an excellent resource that has utility for anyone who seeks a framework and practical strategies for getting unstuck and resetting work to make progress. A highly recommended read.