An Excerpt from Reset: How to Change What's Not Working
An excerpt from Reset by Dan Heath, published by Avid Reader Press and longlisted for the 2025 Porchlight Business Book Awards in the Leadership & Management category.
Changing how we work can feel overwhelming. Like trying to budge an enormous boulder. We’re stifled by the gravity of the way we’ve always done things. And we spend so much time fighting fires—and fighting colleagues—that we lack the energy to shift direction.
But with the right strategy, we can move the boulder. In Reset, Dan Heath explores a framework for getting unstuck and making the changes that matter. The secret is to find “leverage points”: places where a little bit of effort can yield a disproportionate return. Then, we can thoughtfully rearrange our resources to push on those points.
Heath weaves together fascinating examples, ranging from a freakishly effective fast-food drive-thru to a simple trick from couples therapy to an inspirational campaign that saved a million cats.
In Reset, you’ll learn:
- Why the feeling of progress can be your secret weapon in accelerating change
- How leaders can uncover and stop wasteful activities
- Why your team’s motivation is often squandered—and how to avoid that mistake
- How you can jumpstart your change efforts by beginning with a “burst”
The book investigates mysteries: Why the middle is the roughest part of a change effort. Why inefficiency can sometimes accelerate progress. Why getting “buy-in” is the wrong way to think about change.
What if we could unlock forward movement—achieving progress on what matters most—without the need for more resources? The same people, the same assets…but dramatically better results. Yesterday, we were stuck. Today, we reset.
Reset has been longlisted in the Leadership & Management category of Porchlight Book Company's 2025 Business Books Awards. Dan Heath recently allowed us to share the entire first chapter with our readers for a limited time.
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GO AND SEE THE WORK
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In 2016, Karen Ritter, an assistant principal at East Leyden High School (near Chicago), wanted to understand how the school could better serve its students. So she chose to do something unorthodox. As part of a program called “Shadow a Student Challenge,” created by the Stanford d.school and the design firm IDEO, she followed around a ninth-grader, Alan, for an entire school day.
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About the Author
Dan Heath is the #1 New York Times bestselling coauthor/author of six books, including Made to Stick, Switch, and The Power of Moments. His books have sold over four million copies worldwide and been translated into thirty-five languages. Dan also hosts the award-winning podcast What It’s Like to Be…, which explores what it’s like to walk in the shoes of people from different professions (a mystery novelist, a cattle rancher, a forensic accountant, and more). A graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Harvard Business School, he lives in Durham, North Carolina.
