Upstream

with your friends, you’re likely to drink just as much (or more) than another teenager who doesn’t. But if you play in a basketball league, it’s different. You’ve made a commitment. You’re on a team. Your social network orbits a healthy activity.

If you play pickup basketball down the block with your friends, you’re likely to drink just as much (or more) than another teenager who doesn’t. But if you play in a basketball league, it’s different. You’ve made a commitment. You’re on a team. Your social network orbits a healthy activity.

you need to attract people who can address all the key dimensions of the issue. In Iceland, the campaign leaders engaged the

you need to attract people who can address all the key dimensions of the issue.

To react to a customer’s call required the effort of just one call-center representative. But to prevent that customer from calling at all required integration among multiple teams of people.

do it,” said Jaeger. “It’s hard. It’s a big mind shift. It’s no longer just taking care of the problem, which is what we were doing historically, but ending the problem.” I met with Jaeger in the fall

do it,” said Jaeger. “It’s hard. It’s a big mind shift. It’s no longer just taking care of the problem, which is what we were doing historically, but ending the problem.”

A month or two of rent payments was far more cost-effective than re-housing people if they became homeless.

Rather than acting quickly to serve people who are homeless, they’re trying to keep people in their homes to begin with.

sense of a lack of control over what’s happening to them,” he said in a radio interview. “They’re literally

what causes people to get sick and feel sick is a sense of a lack of control over what’s happening to them,” he said in a radio interview. “They’re literally

Upstream work is about reducing the probability that problems will happen,

parenting is a rare exception where upstream thinking comes naturally. Almost everything we do as parents is with

parenting is a rare exception where upstream thinking comes naturally. Almost everything we do as parents is with an eye toward our kids’ future happiness and health:

Maybe we should train our leaders how to conduct better interviews, so that the conversations don’t degenerate into small talk. (Small talk leads us to favor “likable” candidates—in other words, candidates who are just like us.)

“The law is just a set of rules based on inputs from power sources,” said Iton. “If you want to change the rules, you’ve got to change the power inputs so that the outcome will be different.”

Anger could be a destructive force or a constructive one, he stressed, and we’re free to choose.

For teenage alcohol abuse, a protective factor is being involved in formal sports—it eats up a teen’s time and provides a source of natural highs.

Nothing is easy. The world is complex and there are no quick fixes. But if I can learn to uncross my arms and extend my hands, I can be someone who eases suffering rather than ignores it.

When we can foresee a problem, we have more maneuvering room to fix it. That’s why a key question bearing on upstream efforts is: How can you get early warning of the problem you’re trying to solve?