Destination Postcards and Black-and-White Goals

Destination Postcards and Black-and-White Goals are complementary change-design tools. The postcard makes the desired future vivid enough to pull people forward; the black-and-white goal makes one essential behaviour unambiguous enough to prevent rationalisation.

When to use it

• Turn an abstract ambition into a concrete, memorable picture of success.
• Remove loopholes when people are likely to negotiate exceptions.
• Give leaders a simple description of what will be visibly different.
• Pair emotional meaning with a clear behavioural boundary.

Origins

Chip and Dan Heath presented Destination Postcards and Black-and-White Goals in Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. The tools sit within “Direct the Rider,” the rational side of their Rider, Elephant and Path framework. They combine goal-setting insights about vivid end states with behavioural rules that reduce ambiguity at the moment of choice.

What it is

A Destination Postcard is a compact description of the future after the change succeeds. It should be specific enough for people to picture what they will see, do or experience. A Black-and-White Goal is a binary rule: the critical behaviour either happened or it did not. The postcard answers “where are we going?” while the rule answers “what line will we stop crossing?”