Dan Heath didn’t know he was literally writing a book for our time. Here’s the first sentence I highlighted in the book: “Downstream actions react to problems once they’ve occurred. Upstream efforts aim to prevent those problems from happening.”

How many ways can we apply that prescient piece of advice during the Covid-19 pandemic?

In his informative and captivating book, Dan Heath explores the tendency people have in life and in business to get stuck in a cycle of response. We put out fires. We deal with the emergencies. Upstream probes the forces that tend to push us downstream and introduces us to thinkers who have overcome these obstacles by switching to an “upstream mind-set.”

Heath is a fascinating researcher and storyteller, and we would do well to think about how to stop problems before they become insurmountable.