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In human history have we been so bombarded with information incredible new ideas. Come out us every day from a thousand different directions. It can feel overwhelming looking to where to begin. A great place to start is with wonder. He's podcast the next big idea from business to science to health and culture the next big idea brings you fascinating conversations focused on a new world changing idea every week. These are Big Ideas that will change the way you live work and think past episodes have
Called topics like decision-making overcoming racial bias and the biological power of friendship this week. The next big idea team speaks with author Dan Heath about his book Upstream their conversation explores the importance of defining your problems realistically and approaching challenges by thinking bigger. You're about to hear a preview of the next big idea while you're listening subscribe to wonder he's next big idea on Apple podcast Spotify or wherever you're listening now and get ready to open your mind because
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From wondering I'm Rufus griscom and this is the next big idea. I founded the next big idea Club along with the authors Malcolm Gladwell Susan K and Daniel pink and Adam Grant to connect people to some of the boldest new thinking shaping our culture and our future each week on the podcast. We bring you one idea with the power to change the way you see the world.
this week how to think Upstream
The past few months have taught us anything. It's that ignoring long-simmering problems is a recipe for disaster.
We spend our energy responding to crises when we could be looking for the root causes and working on prevention. Of course, that's much easier said than done
tackling problems on a systemic level is slow and messy
work Dan Heath, welcome to the next big idea podcast. Thanks Rufus. You know, I think a logical place to start would be to share the story from which I think you get the term.
This is a parable that's often attributed to Irving Zola who was a sociologist and it goes like this you and a friend are having a picnic beside a river and you lay out your picnic blanket. You're just preparing to eat when you hear a shout from the direction of the river and you turn around and there's a child thrashing around in the water apparently drowning and so both of you instinctively dive in and you rescue the child you bring them to Shore and just as you're starting to catch your breath
a bit you hear a second shout and you look back. It's another child also apparently drowning and some back in you go and no sooner. Have you gotten that childish or you here to more shouts now, it's two kids in the river. And so you're back and forth. You're fishing out kids. You're right back in and you're starting to get exhausted and and after a while you see your friend swimming to Shore and stepping out and beginning to walk away as though to leave you by yourself. And you say hey where you going? I can't save all these kids by myself.
Self and your friend says I'm going Upstream to tackle the guy who's throwing all these kids in the river and that in a nutshell is what I'm chasing with this book that in so many parts of our life in our personal lives at work, and in even in society, we find ourselves in these never-ending cycles of reaction, you know, we're putting out fires. We're responding to emergencies were always reacting reacting reacting, but we never make the space we never have
Have the intentionality needed to get upstream and deal with these problems at the root level and that's what I'm trying to get out with this book. That story is so indelible than and I've repeated that story now to a few people and I also find in that opening Parable some of the challenges inherent in the decision to go Upstream because I mean I was a lifeguard briefly and as a teenager and you know the onus of saving somebody who's drowning, which I never actually did but I've been something that you think about
The decision to leave the children thrashing to go Upstream is such a painful and difficult decision to make even though one understands rationally that it's the right decision. Is that challenge part of why we're so bad at it it is it is and I think to be fair a lot of the areas of life where we're going Upstream. The steaks will be lower than you know, turning your back on a drowning child, which is hard to think of a choice. That's more difficult or abhorrent than that, but I think a more ordinary situation
It'd be times at work when we're constantly in firefighting mode. We're always dealing with urgent problems that demand our attention right now and it simply doesn't appear that there's the space to do anything more grandiose like systemic problem solving if we don't go Upstream we Doom ourselves to a life spent Downstream solving the same problems or rather working around the same problems again, and again, but to pull ourselves away from those emergencies is often very
Very painful and it can have cost of course for so many of us. This covid-19 pandemic is front of mind and it feels like both a cautionary tale when it comes to the cost of not properly engaging in Upstream thinking and maybe also a teachable moment and an experience that will cause us to move more Upstream in the future. How do you think about this epidemic and Upstream thinking I'm tempted to zoom out just a little bit.
I hate to be too academic because the cost of this are so visceral and so fresh when we're talking but I think it's fair to say that there are aspects of this that reflect huge victories. Mmm-hmm. I mean if you think about just the mere fact that we had a couple of months notice that this was coming and what a profound Public Health victory that represents. I mean a hundred years ago, there would have been no advance notice that coronavirus was coming to our Shores there would have been no opportunity to begin to train the public on
What was needed and that's a function of the surveillance systems, you know, not surveillance and like an orwellian since but surveillance in the sense of keeping an eye on what diseases are out there and how they're propagating that public health officials have built very intentionally over a period of decades and I think maybe the only Silver Lining here is one of the difficulties of working Upstream is it all seems so abstract, you know when you're preparing for something that hasn't happened.
Well, it's not abstract anymore. I mean, we all know people who have had covid-19 know someone who died as a result of covid and my hope is a few months down the road when the fire fighting stage of the epidemic is over and when the public health experts come back and say hey, here's the 10-point plan of how we need to get ready for the next epidemic My Hope Is that there is a massive public show of support because we've seen what happens when we don't prepare. That was just a preview of the next big idea. Be sure.
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