Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen

Dan Heath explores how to prevent problems before they happen, drawing on insights from hundreds of interviews with unconventional problem solvers. He shows how leaders, teams, and organizations can shift from reaction to prevention. Often we get stuck in a cycle of response, putting out fires and handling emergencies downstream rather than fixing the systems that caused the problems. Many crimes, chronic illnesses, and customer complaints are preventable, yet efforts skew heavily toward reaction rather than prevention. Upstream examines psychological forces that push us downstream, including "problem blindness," which can leave us oblivious to serious problems. Heath introduces thinkers who have overcome these obstacles by switching to an upstream mindset. An online travel website prevented twenty million customer service calls yearly through simple booking system tweaks. A major urban school district cut its dropout rate in half by predicting which ninth-grade students would drop out. A European nation nearly eliminated teenage alcohol and drug abuse by deliberately changing the nation's culture. One EMS system accelerated emergency-response times by using data to predict where 911 calls would emerge and forward-deploying ambulances to those areas. The book delivers practical solutions for problem prevention, systems change, and better decision-making.