book: Made To Stick
Made To Stick
Authors: Chip & Dan Heath (to get the book: in USA – in Canada)
This is a book about how to make your ideas stick in the mind of people.
Sounds like a great book for advertisers doesn’t it? So why would I recommend this to engineers and managers? I’ll let the authors speak:
“A manager makes a speech unveiling a new strategy as the staffers nod their head enthusiastically, and the next day the front-line employees are observed cheerfully implementing the old one” (p. 5).
Do you want the project manager to get behind your solution? Do you need to stand out in the next system bid? Will management fund your project? Is your team embracing the new process? You need your ideas to stick in their mind, to get them excited about it.
Have no fear – it is not a talent you must be born with. It is a skill that can be learned. The authors, one of whom is a university professor in the field, state:
“almost no correlation emerges between “speaking talent” and the ability to make ideas stick” (p.243)
The review
The book introduces six principles of “Stickiness”, in the first chapter, and then proceeds to dig into each in details.
It works because of the many real life stories that illustrate the theory behind the principles. I found this useful for two reasons:
- When I did not understand how to apply what they said: the stories made it clear.
- When I did not agree with their viewpoint: the stories showed me why it works.
The six principles form the acronym: SUCCESs (p16-18)
- Simplicity: “a one sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it”
- Unexpectedness: “We must generate interest and curiosity” … “opening gaps in their knowledge”
- Concreteness: “explain our ideas in terms of human actions, … [and] sensory information” … “This is where business communication goes awry.”
- Credibility: “[present] ways to help people test our ideas for themselves”
- Emotions: “make them feel something” … “We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions”
- Stories: “Tell stories” [to] “get people to act on our ideas”
I can’t go through each chapter here – but the following resonated with me as an engineer and a manager.
The authors identify the “Curse of Knowledge” as a factor working against “stickiness”. In a nutshell, people who know a lot about a subject will naturally find it difficult to present their ideas so they stick – because they know too much. At best, they could be interesting, but their central ideas cannot stick if they dump this knowledge on their audience.
I now understand why so many “visions” rolled out to me by executives over the years, never connected. The vision was a result of months of analysis that yielded tremendous knowledge about the problem being solved and the new road ahead. And this knowledge was presented to us with such details and logic that it ensured it would not stick.
Here are some quotes, relating to the Curse of Knowledge affecting stickiness:
“[the] problem is [they] have been given knowledge that makes it impossible for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge” (p. 20)
“They had lost the ability to imagine what it was like to look at technical drawings from the perspective of the non-expert” (p. 115)
“The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important, but just aren’t the most important” (p. 27)
“If you say three things, you don’t say anything” (p. 33)
“Abstraction makes it harder to understand the idea” (p. 100) – “Abstraction is the luxury of the expert” (p.104) [where we learn that most knowledge is abstract]
“The world of business tends to emphasize the pattern over the particular. The intellectual aspect of the pattern prevent people from caring”. (p. 202)
“You’ve created this amazing presentation, summarizing years of your work, and your goal is to help people master a complex structure that you’ve spent years constructing. You’ve erected an amazing intellectual edifice!” … “The problem of course is that it is impossible to transfer an edifice in a 90 minutes presentation” (p.236)
I found the emotion chapter particularly interesting, because I had never thought about engineering as a particularly emotional field.
“this is not about pushing people’s emotional buttons” … “The goal of making messages emotional is to make people care. Feelings inspire people to act.” (p.168)
The book does a great job of showing how we can make people care. Most surprising (to me) was learning that people are moved by what affects their groups more then what affects them personally. I also learned that they will get behind and idea if it allows for self-actualization more then if it only answers “what’s in it for me”.
Finally, the chapter on stories demonstrates clearly how “Stories” move people into action. The book itself, following its own advice, makes this point by using many stories to make its principles stick. I particularly like the retired Marine cook in Iraq:
“I am not just in charge of the food service – I am in charge of morale (p. 186)”
In the end, it’s never about the power point, the number of bullets, or the color and animation. It’s not even about the monotone voice versus the elated enthusiasm. And it’s definitely not the amount of knowledge that impresses our audience.
If you want people to act, you must make your ideas sticky. This book is a great primer.
If you want the book:
