Making your ideas stick

2. Making your ideas stick “By ‘stick,’ we mean that your ideas are understood and remembered, and have a lasting impact – they change your audience’s opinions or behaviors.” • Chip Heath and Dan Heath

3. A sticky idea It has to make the audience: • Pay attention • Understand and remember it • Agree/believe • Care • Be able to act on it

4. Beware! • The curse of knowledge • Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. • Getting lost in a sea of information

5. The Curse of Knowledge • Partner up • Tappers—you will tap out a song • Listeners—you will try to guess the song

6. Results How many of you thought you did a great job of tapping out the song? How many of you correctly guessed the song?

7. What Gets in the Way? The Curse of Knowledge • Experts understand things to the point of abstraction – conceptual knowledge • They tend to explain things that way • Novices don’t understand • Not Concrete • Not Simple • Not Sticky ? “Maximizing Return on Equity” ?

8. Simple Success

9. Simple is hard to do Find the most important idea—the core ONE idea State it in the most compact way Keep taking away what is not needed

10. Example of Simple: Core and Compact Or? “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives” Consider: Kennedy - “Put a man on the moon & return him safely by the end of the decade”

11. Simple = Core + Compact • A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very thick but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy-sweet to tangy and tart. Tell your neighbor if you think pomelo would taste good mixed half and half with orange juice. • A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.

12. Where’s the Lead? Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a symposium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropoligist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund “Pat” Brown.

13. The Lead? “There will be no school next Thursday”

14. Simple • Share the Core • Simple = “Core” + “Compact” • Proverbs – Sound bites that are profound • Bird in the hand (Aesop – 570 b.c.) • Golden Rule • “Names, Names, Names” – Small town paper • Visual proverbs: The Palm Pilot wood block • Existing Schemas: The Pomelo • Generative analogy: Disney’s “cast members.”

15. Simple • Find the core • Commander’s intent • Relentless prioritization • Southwest – “The low fare airline” • Inverted Pyramid – most important at the top • Force prioritization – If you say 3 things, you don’t say anything • “It’s the economy, stupid” • Share the core • Don’t bury the lead • Core + compact • Proverbs: sound bites that are profound • Schemas

16. Sharing the Core • Simple = Core + Compact • Using what’s already there • Use a generative analogy

17. Unexpected sUccess

18. Unexpectedness • Get Attention – Surprise • Hold Attention - Interest

19. Get attention: Surprise Or? “Our mission is to provide the best customer service in the industry” • Southwest flight safety announcement • Break a pattern – Enclave Minivan (Ad Council) • The Nordie who • wraps a package from Macy’s • warms a customer’s car • refunds money for tire chains not sold there

20. Avoid gimmickry Unrelated surprises just to catch attention—the surprise should be part of the simple, core message Unforeseeable endings (it was all a dream)—endings should unite clues that one has been exposed to all along

21. Hold attention: Interest • Create a GAP • Gaps between what we know and what we want to know create curiosity. • Open the gap by creating a mental itch.

22. Simple AND Unexpected • Identify the central message you need to communicate — find the core • Figure out what is counterintuitive about the message — i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Why isn’t it already happening naturally? • Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension • Once their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines

23. Concrete suCcess

24. Concrete • Help people understand and remember • Make abstraction concrete • Provide a concrete context • The more hooks in your idea, the better • Help people coordinate • Find common ground at a shared level of understanding • Make it real • Create a turf where people can bring their knowledge to bear

25. Concrete Write down as many things you can think of that are white in color. Write down as many white things in your refrigerator as you can think of.

26. Concrete Most people can list as many white things in their fridge, as they can list white things in general, despite the fact that our fridges do not normally encompass a large part of the universe.

27. Examples of concrete ideas

28. Concrete • Help people understand and remember • Write with the concreteness of a fable (Sour grapes) • Provide a concrete context: Asian teachers’ approach to teaching math (subtraction) • Put people into the story: Accounting class taught with a soap opera • Use the Velcro theory of memory: The more hooks in your idea, the better

29. Concrete • Help people coordinate • Drawings vs. Shop Floor: Find common ground at a shared level of understanding • Goals in tangible terms • Our new plane (727) will fly 131 pax, MIA-LGA and land on Runway 4-22 (<5,000’) Vs: “The best passenger plane in the world” • The “Pocketable Radio” • Create a common turf where people can bring their knowledge to bear • The maroon portfolio (tablet computing) • Talk about people, not data

30. Helping People Understand • Write with the concreteness of a fable • Make abstraction concrete • Put people into the story • Use the Velcro theory of memory

31. Helping People Coordinate • Find common ground • Set common goals in tangible terms • Make it real • Create a turf where people can bring their knowledge to bear

32. Remember… Simple is hard. Unexpected takes effort and creativity. Concrete is fairly easy, and incredibly effective. The villain for Concrete is easily overcome. It’s forgetfulness. We forget to be concrete and tend to slip back into abstract-speak.

33. Credible sucCess

34. Credibility • Help People Believe • External Credibility—someone you trust believes it • Internal Credibility—you can experience the truth for yourself

35. External credibility Anti-authority vs. authority Authority—someone with established credentials, the expert Anti-authority—Pam Laffin the smoker

36. Internal Credibility • Use convincing details • Make statistics accessible—human scale principle • Show that it’s true in one example that sets the standard • Have people test it themselves

37. The Power of Details • Jurors and the nurse who spilled Mercurochrome on herself • 73 year old dancer • Use details that are truthful and compelling • If possible, use details that symbolizes and support the core idea

38. Human Scale Principle • How to convince people that the nuclear weapons race was out of control? • Hiroshima—1 bomb • US nuclear sub—10 bombs • Worldwide in 1985—5,000 bombs

39. Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, describes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why. Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals. Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals. Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals. Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for.

40. Then Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, Only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent."

41. Key test case • trust Safexpress for on-time, safe deliveries in India because they • handled the release of the 5th Harry Potter book and • deliver examination papers

42. People testing themselves Read the label yourself A carefully constructed exercise Try it now and see

43. Emotional succEss

44. Emotional • Make People Care • Use the Power of Association • Appeal to Identity • Appeal to Self-Interest on a High Level

45. Make people care • The Mother Teresa principle • If I look at the one, I will act • People donate more to Rokia than to Africa • 7-year old girl in Mali

46. Look at the one—I will act Food shortages in Malawi are affecting more than 3 million children. In Zamibia, an estimated 3 million people face hunger. More than 11 million people in Ethiopia need immediate food assistance. Please help. Rokia is desperately poor and faces the threat of severe hunger or even starvation. Her life will be changed for the better as a result of your gift. $2.38 Donation $1.14 Donation

47. Association “Honoring the game” • but not “sportsmanship” because it’s become an overused cliché • overuse of “unique” Teenagers stacking body bags outside a tobacco company—connecting with anti-authority feeling

48. Identity

49. Appeal to self-interest • The “benefit of the benefit” that they can imagine themselves enjoying -- WIIFY • Maslow’s higher needs

50. WIFFY • What’s in it for me? • How are we ever going to use this? Imagine that a company offers its employees a $1,000 bonus if they meet certain targets. There are three ways of presenting the bonus to the employees: • Think of what the $1000 means—down payment on a new car, or home improvement you’ve been wanting. • Think of the increased security of having that $1000 in the bank for a rainy day. • Think of what the $1000 means—the company recognizes how important you are to its overall performance. It doesn’t spend money for nothing.