The practice they created is great. The book is meh.

To be absolutely honest, I was not a fan of the voice in which this book was written It was unnecessarily wordy and convoluted, especially in the first few chapters.

That said, the practical chapters nearer the end of this book were invaluable - so much so that I truly believe that this book, and more specifically this process, should be taught to every adult in the modern world! Change is truly not as we naively believe until we dig deeper into what needs to change psychologically prior to being able to change our behaviours.

I also highly recommend the HarvardX (free) online course that walks thousands of people through this process of change over 15 weeks. https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-gse1x-unlocking-immunity-change-2726

Why is change so hard? Whether we’re trying to change a culture, a team, or ourselves, change is hard. The core answer from Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization is that change is hard precisely because it’s designed to be hard. We’ve developed a resistance or an immunity to change to protect ourselves from unnecessary, too frequent, or too extreme changes. The result is a natural immunity to change. While this serves us well in most circumstances, some of the most difficult challenges in our lives are changes we want to make, desperately need to make, and for which our immunity has activated to prevent our best efforts to change.

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Interesting information, I like the map style, however I wish the case studies were after the more general explanation. I felt a bit lost in this book and having to read it for school I didn’t feel as inspired as other books I’ve read. Disappointing.

Interesting structure for thinking about adult development.

Unfortunately it’s couched in this sort of infuriating sales-consulting language. There are maybe 20 pages in this book worth your time, but somehow it’s been stretched to 300+ pages.

The authors keep telling you how impactful this is going to be, how magical the end results are, and at the end of the day it’s simply a framing shift on why you get in your own way when trying to make changes.

With all the bullshit boiled alway, the authors propose that we get in our own way because at some point our behaviors were adaptive to the situations we found ourselves in. Unfortunately in order to grow and develop, we need to leave behind those same thought processes once they no longer are adaptive. “What got you here can’t get you there“ Saved you a couple hours.

Probably a really good single page handout and worksheet. Not a very good book.