Made to Stick

by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Introduction

Six Principles:  SUCCESs

Simplicity

Unexpectedness

Concreteness

Credibility

Emotions

Stories

The Villain: The Curse of Knowledge

Once we know something, it is difficult to imagine what it was like not to know it.

To overcome it, take your ideas and transform them.

Creativity: best when work within the confines of the rules

Chapter 1: Simple

1.       Finding the core of the idea – the most critical essence. Weed out the superfluous and tangential elements

2.       Lead Sentence in news story – the inverted pyramid is great for readers no matter what their attention span – tells the most important information right off the bat.

3.       Involves forced prioritization

4.       Decision Paralysis – how to prioritize goals that are ‘critical’ and ahead ‘beneficial’. 
“Sure thing principle” – make decisions based on evaluating outcomes.  But humans still tend to make decisions in uncertainty environment.

5.       After knowing the core, how do you share and achieve the message?
analogy
forced prioritization

Clear, tangible language – concrete
which allows others to follow and improvise

Simple = core + compact

6.       Compactness is crucial – less is more!

7.       Expects become more and more fascinated by the nuance and complexity

8.       Proverbs – simple sentence with big nugget of wisdom that is useful in many situations. The Golden Rule – ideas that are compact enough to be sticky and meaningful enough to make a difference

9.       Technology and product design face “Feature creep” – the tendency things incrementally become more complex they no longer do their original function.  Reminder to fight temptations

10.   Raw data vs concepts. Posting little flags at the terrain of our memory. Thus you need to make a profound idea compact into a little bit of messaging. Tap existing memory of your audience to help them remember.

11.   If simple ideas are staged and layered correctly, they can very quickly become complex.  Ex. Building on previous knowledge, information

12.   The use of schema sometimes involve a slower route to the real truth. Ex. Electrons orbit the nucleus as planetary does, but actually move in probability clouds… 1) accuracy first, at the expense of accessibility… or 2) accessibility first at the expense of accuracy

13.   If a message can’t be used to make predictions or decisions, it is without value, no matter how accurate or comprehensive it is

14.   Accuracy to the point of uselessness is a symptom of the Curse of Knowledge

15.   Analogy. High Concept Pitches. Good metaphors are generative, that generate new perceptions, explanations, and inventions.

16.   Analogy and Proverbs both substitute something easy to think about to something for difficult.

Chapter 2: Unexpected

1.       First problem in communication is to get attention of your audience

2.       The simplest way is to BREAK a pattern

3.       Surprise gets our attention.  Interest keeps our attention.

4.       “planned unexpectedness”

5.       Breaks or violates existing schema (a knowledge of something)

6.       Surprise makes us want to find an answer… seize  the power of big surprise

7.       Avoid gimmickry.  Must provide adequate answer.  After breaking a schema, fix it.  Make sure you target an audience’s guessing machines that related to core messages.

8.       1) identify the central message and 2) figure out what is counterintuitive about the message ie what are the unexpected implications of you core message and 3) communicate your message in a way that breaks your audience’s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension and 4) redefine new meaning

9.       Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages

10.   Not just about regurgitating the facts, but figuring out the POINT. It wasn’t enough to know the who, what, when, where; you had to understand what it meant and why it mattered

11.   Keeping attention by mystery. Lead the audience to follow a mystery.

12.   Turning point in movies – prompts audience to what to know the next thing. Curiosity is the intellectual need to answer questions and close open patterns. Story plays posing questions, and opening situations

13.   The Gap Theory of Curiosity. We need to open gaps before close them. Before tell them the facts. First tell them why they need the facts. The trick to convince people they need to know the fact is to trick that there’s a specific knowledge that they are missing.
- point out someone else knows something they don’t know

-          Present situation with unknown resolution
- predict an outcome

14.   To make communications more effective, shift from “what information do I need to convey “to “what questions do I want my audience to ask?”

15.   Battling Overconfidence – most people believe that they know everything. When you point out that they don’t know, they will want to fill in the knowledge gap

16.   Gaps starts with knowledge. Some topics naturally highlight gaps in our knowledge. If there isn’t pre-existing knowledge, then present the knowledge the audience needed before posing the question. “here’s what you know, here’s what’s missing.”

17.   Managerial theme: competition, quality, and innovation. But Sony decided to go with an unexpected idea – pocket able radio. Or JFK said we will walk on the moon. Both unexpected, and both create big knowledge gaps, but not so big that seemed insurmountable.

Chapter 3: Concrete

1.       Example of fable…Fox and grape… often language is very abstract and life is not abstract.

2.       Smaller, more concrete sub-goals

3.       Understanding concrete… has to be specific people doing specific things.

4.       Concrete language help novices understand new concepts

5.       Math- computing in context. Or Conceptual Knowledge questions.  Any reading would be beneficial to have an EXAMPLE

6.       Concrete is memorable in the brain… things you can imagine concretely

7.       Velcro Theory of Memory – our memory doesn’t behave like a single filing cabinet but more like a Velcro with more things connected to it

8.       The Path to Abstraction – the blueprint and the machine. The physical examination by the engineer instead of going back to the blueprint

9.       Memory is often easier to recall things within a context. Ex. White things vs white things in fridge

10.   Kaplan and Go Computers (tablets) from the filing folder

11.   Making Ideas Concrete – Hamburger Helper – thinking ideas in the shoes of the audience

12.   The greatest barrier is the forgetfulness… we forget that other people don’t know what we know and that we slipped into abstract speech

Chapter 4: Credible

1.       Ex of ulcer by Marshall and Warren identified a bacteria responsible for it (H. pylori) but nobody believed them until he drinks the bacteria himself

2.       Finding Credibility – authority, celebrities and aspirational figures, and friends and family being more influential

3.       Antiauthority – bad example of smoking also works well

4.       The power of details – “internal credibility” – with tangible and concrete details makes it seem more real and believable

5.       Ex. Darth vader toothbrush to judge mom’s responsibility – made judgement based on irrelevant but vivid details

6.       Statistics – tend to be eye-glazing. Example nuclear war US and Russia – emotional sound of BB hitting the bucket. Statistics are rarely meaningful in and of themselves. But they are almost always useful to illustrate a relationship. More important to remember the relationship than the number

7.       Contextualize statistics to more human, and more everyday like. Ex. Accuracy of a machine. Sun to earth with a pebble.  Ex. Soccer analogy for team players

8.       Statistics aren’t inherently helpful… it is the scale and context that make them so

9.       Use statistics as INPUTS not outputs. Use them to make up the mind. Not make up the mind and then look for numbers.

10.   Clinic – shark attacks very rare. Compared to deer. The juxtaposition of the cute deer to scary shark elicits an emotional response.  When we use statistics, the less we rely on numbers the better. Use the numbers to illustrate the underlying relationship.

11.   Sinatra Test – “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”.  That one example of possibility is enough to establish credibility.  I.e. I have tried this and it works. The rest just falls into place

12.   Testable Credentials – Wendy’s beef vs Snapple. Clinic Demonstrating an example on the audience. Or lead the audience to realize they are wrong. So they would like to know the answer. EX. The ulcer

13.   NBA vs NFL. Fooled yourself vs someone fooled someone else.

14.   External validation and statistics aren’t always the best. A few vivid details maybe more persuasive than a barrage of statistics.

Chapter 5: Emotional

1.       Mother Teresa – “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at one, I will.” – Donations based on statistics or a single story or both.  Statistics shifts people into more analytical frame of mind. Which less likely to think emotionally. The mere act of calculation reduced people’s charity. The Analytical Hat.

2.       Belief counts for a lot. But for people to take action, they need to care.

3.       Emotional feelings inspire people to act

4.       Anti-smoking ads. Body bags vs “think don’t smoke”. The think don’t smoke doesn’t work as well cuz it tapped the analytical hat. Body bags commercial is a bit more anti-authority resentment – rebel against the tobacco man by not smoking

5.       Semantic Stretch -  How do we make people care about our messages. Often there’s emotions associated with the message already.  Einstein’s theory of relativity – how the laws of physics are identical in every frame of reference and they are more orderly than though. Used to elicit a aura of emotional resonance – profundity and awe.  When overused, the power of the term and underlying concepts become diluted and not as special.  This overuse is semantic stretch.

6.       Most basic way is to form an association between something they don’t care about and something they do care about

7.       Fighting Semantic Stretch – If we want to make people care, we’ve got to tap into the things they care about - ASSOCIATIONS

8.       Appealing to Self-Interest – invokes self-interest. Headlines that induce promising huge benefits for trivial costs. Emphasize benefits instead of features. Spell out the benefit of benefit

9.       “WIIFY” – whats in it for you should be a central aspect of every speech

10.   The power of imagination – the act of imagining makes it so – ex. Cable TV allows people to visualize the benefits for themselves

11.   Maslow’s list of needs – physical, security, belonging, esteem, learning, aesthetic, self-actualization, transcendence.  The appeal to higher levels sometimes can appeal to people. Ex. Dining Hall in Iraq not just serving food but providing morale

12.   Group Interest is also important – ex. Firefighters and popcorn poppers, Don’t mess with Texas and political voting. What’s in it for my group of people

13.   Be aware of Curse of Knowledge – duo piano and hospital care.

14.   How can we get people care about our ideas? – we get them to take off their analytical hats. Create empathy for individuals. We show our ideas through associations. Appear to self-interest but also their identities (who they want to be).

Chapter 6: Stories

1.       The Power of Stories – provides two reasons – 1 stimulation (knowledge on how to act) and 2 inspiration (motivation to act). This generates action

2.       Previous examples that credible idea make people believe, emotional idea make people care, and stories make people act.

3.       Build in drama – part entertainment part instruction

4.       Un-passive audience – create a kind of geographical simulation of the stories we hear.

a.       Event simulation – retrace, step by step, the events that led to their problem, reviewing causation

b.      Outcome simulation – Picture how relief you feel after

5.       EVENT simulation did better on almost every dimension of the tests.

6.       Why does mental simulation work? We cannot imagine events or sequences without evoking the same modules or previous memories that are in physical activity

7.       Mental simulation help us manage emotions – standard treatment for phobias – and helps with problem solving, anticipate appropriate responses to future situations, and build skills

8.       Mental practice produced about 2/3 of benefits of actual physical practice