Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working – Book Summary

By / March 11, 2025
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There comes a point when frustration turns into resignation. A moment when you realize you’ve been pushing forward, working harder, trying everything—yet nothing seems to change. Your business is stagnant. Your career feels directionless. Your personal goals? Stuck in the same loop.

Dan Heath’s Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working is for those moments. It’s for anyone who has ever felt trapped in a broken system—whether at work, in relationships, or in the routines that quietly shape everyday life. The book doesn’t promise sweeping, overnight transformations. Instead, it offers something more practical: a way to break free by making small, strategic shifts that create massive impact.

At the heart of Reset lies a simple but profound truth: every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. If your workplace is chaotic, if your team is drowning in inefficiencies, if your personal goals keep slipping through the cracks—there’s a reason. The system is built that way. And unless you change it, the cycle will continue.

Why Do We Get Stuck?

Heath explains that feeling stuck isn’t about a lack of effort. It’s about inertia—the silent force that keeps things moving in the same direction, even when that direction no longer serves us. We stay in unproductive meetings because they’ve always been on the calendar. We follow outdated processes at work because no one has stopped to question them. We hold onto personal habits that no longer fit who we are, simply because they feel familiar.

The problem isn’t that we’re lazy or unmotivated. The problem is that we’ve accepted dysfunction as normal. And Reset challenges that.

The Two-Part Framework for Change

To break free from stagnation, Heath introduces a two-part framework:

  1. Find Leverage Points – Identify small but powerful changes that unlock momentum. These are the hidden inefficiencies, outdated habits, or overlooked strengths that, once adjusted, can reshape an entire system.
  2. Restack Resources – Instead of adding more effort or money, reallocate what you already have. Move time, energy, or focus from low-impact tasks to high-leverage actions that drive real progress.

This isn’t about working harder. It’s about working smarter—choosing the right battles, making the right moves, and using existing resources more effectively.

A New Way to Approach Change

Traditional advice tells us to try harder. Push through. Stay the course. But Heath’s approach is different. Instead of brute force, Reset teaches agility—how to step back, rethink the way things are designed, and make precise adjustments that create exponential results.

Through real-world examples—from hospitals to corporate turnarounds, from government policies to personal productivity—Heath proves that lasting change doesn’t require an overhaul. It starts with a reset.

And that reset begins here.

1-Minute Summary

Stagnation isn’t broken by force—it’s broken by precision. Look closely. The answers are in the details. Small leverage points, hidden in plain sight. Observe. Identify what truly moves the needle. Shift resources where they matter. Cut what doesn’t. Progress isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing what counts.

Finding Leverage Points: The Key to Unlocking Progress

Change doesn’t happen because we wish for it. It happens when we find the right place to push—when we identify the small shifts that trigger a wave of improvement. In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath calls these leverage points—small but powerful changes that create a disproportionate impact.

Think of a boulder blocking your path. Pushing it head-on won’t work. But if you find the right spot to place a lever, even the heaviest obstacle can be moved with minimal force. That’s the power of leverage points: they allow you to reset a system without overhauling everything.

But how do you find them? Heath outlines five methods. Each one offers a different way to spot the hidden inefficiencies, outdated habits, or untapped strengths that—once adjusted—can unlock progress.

1. Go and See the Work

Most inefficiencies don’t announce themselves. They hide in plain sight, buried in daily routines. To find them, you have to step outside the conference room and observe the work firsthand.

Example: The Factory That Stopped for No Reason

At a paper plant in Panama, the main corrugating machine shut down every day at lunchtime. The reason? Years ago, unstable electricity had caused issues, so the plant developed a habit of stopping operations midday. The problem? The power grid had been fixed long ago—but the shutdown remained, costing time and money.

No one questioned it until a new plant manager walked the floor, saw the inefficiency, and asked, “Why do we do this?”The answer—“Because we always have”—wasn’t good enough. Within weeks, the shutdown was eliminated, and productivity skyrocketed.

Practical Application:

  • Spend a day observing a process at work or in your personal routine.
  • Ask: What feels frustrating but has been accepted as “just the way it is”?
  • Challenge it. Could a small tweak eliminate wasted effort?

2. Consider the Goal of the Goal

Sometimes, we chase numbers that look good on paper but miss the bigger picture. The real question isn’t Are we hitting our targets? It’s Are we hitting the right targets?

Example: The Car Dealership That Cared More About Surveys Than Service

A car dealership aggressively pursued high customer satisfaction scores. Employees bombarded buyers with texts, emails, and personal pleas to rate them a perfect 10. The result? Stellar survey results. But customers weren’t happier. They were annoyed, manipulated—and once the sale was final, their service requests were ignored.

The dealership had achieved its goal, but at the cost of its actual mission: creating a great customer experience.

Practical Application:

  • Look at a key goal in your work or personal life.
  • Ask: “Is this leading to the real outcome I want, or just an illusion of success?”
  • If the goal isn’t serving its true purpose, redefine it.
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3. Study the Bright Spots

Not all change comes from fixing what’s broken. Sometimes, the fastest way to improve is to find what’s already working and do more of it.

Example: The Military’s Cockpit Dilemma

In 1926, the U.S. military designed airplane cockpits using the “average” pilot’s measurements. The result? A cockpit that fit no one perfectly. When accidents spiked, the solution wasn’t to create more variations—it was to study what worked best.

The fix? Adjustable seating and controls. By replicating the bright spots—the best-performing designs—cockpits became safer for all pilots, regardless of height or body type.

Practical Application:

  • Identify something in your work or personal life that consistently works well.
  • Ask: How can I replicate this success elsewhere?
  • Instead of reinventing the wheel, scale what already drives results.

4. Target the Constraint

Every system has a bottleneck—a single point where everything slows down. Fix that, and the entire system flows faster.

Example: Chick-fil-A’s Drive-Thru Breakthrough

Chick-fil-A had a problem: its drive-thru lines were too long. Customers loved the food but hated the wait. Instead of adding more kitchen staff or building bigger drive-thru lanes, the company identified its biggest constraint: order-taking speed.

Their solution? Instead of waiting for cars to reach the menu board, employees with tablets walked the line, taking orders in advance. The result? Faster service, shorter wait times, and higher customer satisfaction—all by fixing a single chokepoint.

Practical Application:

  • Identify the #1 thing that slows you down—whether at work, in business, or in personal productivity.
  • Focus on fixing that one constraint before trying to improve everything else.

5. Map the System

Sometimes, the problem isn’t one broken part—it’s how all the parts connect. Systems thinking helps reveal hidden inefficiencies and missed opportunities.

Example: Government Loan Forgiveness

The U.S. government wanted to help disabled veterans get student loan forgiveness. The problem? Veterans had to apply, and many didn’t even know they were eligible.

A simple fix changed everything: Instead of waiting for applications, agencies matched databases—automatically identifying eligible veterans and forgiving loans without requiring paperwork. By mapping the system, they eliminated an unnecessary step and helped thousands faster.

Practical Application:

  • Draw a simple flowchart of a broken system—whether it’s a team process, a personal workflow, or a business operation.
  • Ask: Where does work get stuck? Where are the unnecessary steps?
  • Redesign the flow to make it more efficient.

Small Changes, Big Impact

In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath shows that progress isn’t about brute force—it’s about precision. The key to unlocking change isn’t in doing more, but in finding the right place to push.

By using these five methods to identify leverage points, you can:
✅ Break free from outdated habits.
✅ Fix inefficiencies hidden in plain sight.
✅ Improve systems without overhauling everything.

Change doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It just has to be smart.

Restacking Resources: Making Change Happen with What You Have

Sometimes, the biggest obstacle to progress isn’t a lack of resources. It’s how those resources are being used. In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath argues that most teams, businesses, and even individuals aren’t stuck because they don’t have enough time, money, or talent. They’re stuck because their resources are scattered—spread thin across tasks and priorities that don’t truly drive results.

Restacking resources means redirecting what you already have toward high-impact actions. Instead of trying to do more, it’s about shifting focus: from low-value tasks to meaningful progress, from wasted effort to strategic execution. Change doesn’t require a bigger budget or longer hours. It requires better allocation of what’s already available.

Here are six strategies to make that happen.

1. Start with a Burst

Momentum fuels change. And sometimes, the best way to break through inertia is with an intense, focused effort—a short burst of energy that reshapes the system before resistance sets in.

Example: The Hospital’s 12-Day Overhaul

At Northwestern Memorial Hospital, package deliveries were a nightmare. A simple shipment could take up to five days to reach its destination, creating chaos for staff. Instead of attempting slow, incremental improvements, a supply chain manager led a 12-day deep dive, where the team walked through every step of the process, spotted inefficiencies, and made immediate changes.

Within weeks, the hospital slashed its delivery time from multiple days to under 24 hours.

Practical Application:

  • Choose a lingering problem in your work or personal life.
  • Block out a two-week reset period to tackle it head-on.
  • Make fast, visible changes—momentum creates motivation.

2. Recycle Waste

Not all effort is productive. In every system, there are actions that add no real value—tasks done out of habit, unnecessary approvals, redundant meetings. The key is identifying these wasteful efforts and reclaiming that time and energy for work that matters.

Example: The Red Phone That Stole Hours

At the hospital, a red phone rang non-stop. Nurses constantly called the receiving area, asking about missing packages. Every call represented wasted time—interruptions that slowed down real work.

By fixing the delivery system, the calls disappeared entirely. The staff reclaimed countless hours, simply by eliminating the need for them.

Practical Application:

  • Identify one repetitive task in your workday that doesn’t add value.
  • Ask: Can it be automated, eliminated, or handled differently?
  • Free up that wasted time for high-impact work.

3. Do Less AND More

Working harder isn’t the solution. Working on the right things is. The most effective people and businesses don’t try to do everything—they focus on what delivers the greatest returns.

Example: The Turnaround Consultant’s Playbook

A struggling company had spread itself thin, chasing side projects and acquisitions instead of strengthening its core business. A turnaround consultant stepped in and cut everything non-essential. By focusing only on what truly mattered, the company rebounded—fast.

Practical Application:

  • List everything you spend time on.
  • Cut the least valuable 10%—freeing up energy for what truly moves the needle.

4. Tap Motivation

Progress fuels motivation. Nothing energizes a team—or an individual—like seeing real results unfold. This is the Progress Principle: when people see that their efforts are making a difference, they become more engaged, more driven, and more willing to push forward.

Example: How Quick Wins Transformed a Team

At the hospital, employees were skeptical of change. But once they saw small victories—packages moving faster, fewer complaints, a cleaner workspace—their enthusiasm soared. The transformation accelerated, simply because they saw proof that their efforts mattered.

Practical Application:

  • Set up a visible progress tracker—a whiteboard, a spreadsheet, anything that shows real-time improvement.
  • Celebrate small wins. They build momentum for bigger changes.

5. Let People Drive

People don’t resist change—they resist change that’s forced on them. The best way to make improvements last is to give ownership to the people closest to the problem. When they feel like active participants instead of passive followers, engagement skyrockets.

Example: The Hospital Staff That Took Control

Instead of handing down orders, the supply chain manager invited his team to identify their own frustrations and suggest solutions. When they saw that their ideas were being implemented, their mindset shifted: they weren’t just workers following instructions—they were leaders of the change itself.

Practical Application:

  • Instead of dictating solutions, ask your team:
    What’s slowing you down? How would you fix it?
  • Hand over ownership—let them design the solution.

6. Accelerate Learning

Most change efforts stall because feedback loops are too slow. If you only check progress once a month, mistakes compound. But if you shorten the cycle—testing, adjusting, and learning quickly—improvement accelerates.

Example: Chick-fil-A’s Drive-Thru Innovation

Chick-fil-A’s secret to fast service wasn’t just better equipment—it was real-time learning. Instead of waiting for data reports, employees tested improvements on the fly. When they experimented with mobile ordering, they didn’t launch a full system overhaul. They started small, observed what worked, and iterated in real time.

Practical Application:

  • Shorten your feedback loops. Instead of reviewing work weekly, check progress daily.
  • Make adjustments as you go, rather than waiting for a perfect solution.

Change Isn’t About More Effort—It’s About Smarter Effort

In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath makes one thing clear: progress isn’t about working harder. It’s about working differently.

By restacking resources—focusing on leverage points, not just effort—you can create powerful momentum with what you already have.

✅ Start with a burst—momentum matters.
✅ Eliminate waste—stop doing things that don’t add value.
✅ Prioritize what truly matters—cut distractions, focus on impact.
✅ Make progress visible—small wins fuel motivation.
✅ Let people lead the change—autonomy drives engagement.
✅ Learn fast—shorten feedback loops, adjust quickly.

The biggest breakthroughs rarely come from more resources. They come from better strategy.

The Power of Progress in Overcoming Stagnation

Stagnation is subtle. It creeps in quietly—disguised as routine, masked by busyness. You work, you plan, you check off tasks. But real movement? That’s harder to see. Days blend into weeks, and progress feels like a distant dream.

In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath argues that one of the biggest barriers to progress isn’t a lack of effort. It’s the illusion that we understand our systems better than we actually do. We assume we know how things work—until we’re forced to explain them. And that’s where the cracks begin to show.

Why Seeing Movement Is Essential

We believe we understand the world around us. The tools we use, the processes we follow, the systems we trust. But often, that confidence is misplaced.

Psychologists call this the illusion of explanatory depth—the belief that we grasp how things work, when in reality, our knowledge is far more shallow than we realize.

Example: The Bicycle Test

In a fascinating study, researchers asked people a simple question: Do you know how a bicycle works? Most participants confidently said yes.

Then, they were given a blank sheet of paper and asked to draw a functional bicycle—from memory.

The results? A disaster. Many sketches lacked a working chain. Some had wheels disconnected from the frame. Others placed the pedals in bizarre, impossible positions.

People who had ridden bikes for years—who used them daily, who could describe their experience in detail—could not explain how a bicycle actually worked.

That’s the illusion. We think we understand. Until we try to prove it.

What This Means for Progress

The same illusion affects businesses, projects, and personal growth. We assume we know why a process is slow, why a team is struggling, why personal habits aren’t leading to results. But when we try to break it down—step by step—gaps emerge.

We see missing links. Unexamined assumptions. Inefficiencies we never questioned. And only then can we start fixing them.

Progress begins not with effort, but with clarity.

Practical Application: Test Your Own Understanding

  • Pick a system you use daily—a tool at work, a personal habit, a workflow.
  • Without looking it up, explain exactly how it functions. Step by step.
  • Where do you get stuck? What assumptions feel shaky?

This exercise isn’t about proving what you don’t know—it’s about revealing where clarity is missing. And once you see the gaps, you can start closing them.

Because real progress? It starts when you stop assuming—and start truly understanding.

Reset Your Work and Life with These Strategies

Change is rarely about working harder. It’s about working smarter—seeing the invisible patterns that hold you back and making small, powerful adjustments that unlock real progress.

In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath lays out a simple but transformative approach:

✅ Find Leverage Points – Identify the small shifts that create the biggest impact. Look for inefficiencies, question old habits, and focus on what truly matters.
✅ Restack Resources – Instead of adding more effort, redirect what you already have toward high-value actions. Eliminate waste, prioritize progress, and let momentum build.

This isn’t about sweeping overhauls or exhausting yourself with endless to-do lists. It’s about choosing the right place to push—where a single change can create a ripple effect.

Start Small, Reset Big

If you take one thing from this Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working book summary, let it be this: progress begins with a single shift.

  • Pick one area in your life or work that feels stuck.
  • Identify one leverage point that, if adjusted, could create meaningful change.
  • Apply one resource-stacking strategy to focus your efforts where they matter most.

Small resets lead to big transformations. The biggest breakthroughs come not from more effort, but from better strategy.

Actionable Summary

Reset Roadmap: How to Change What’s Not Working

Goal: Break free from stagnation by strategically identifying leverage points and reallocating existing resources for maximum impact.

Identify Leverage Points: Uncover hidden inefficiencies or untapped strengths by observing work firsthand, questioning the true purpose of goals, replicating successful “bright spots,” targeting the biggest constraint slowing progress, and mapping out system workflows to identify bottlenecks.

Restack Resources: Redirect existing time, energy, and focus from low-impact activities to high-leverage actions by initiating short, focused bursts of activity to tackle persistent problems, eliminating wasteful or repetitive tasks, prioritizing high-impact work and reducing distractions, visibly tracking progress and celebrating small wins, empowering team members to drive change, and accelerating learning through rapid feedback loops.

Implement Strategic Shifts: Apply the insights gained to initiate small, targeted changes that optimize workflows, eliminate bottlenecks, and amplify high-impact activities. This involves focusing on precision and strategically redirecting existing resources rather than simply adding more effort.

By following this framework, you will identify and address key points of leverage within existing systems, enabling you to achieve significant progress by working smarter instead of harder and strategically reallocating resources.

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