Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

Made To Stick

I just finished reading “Made to Stick” book by Chip Heath and Dan Heath. The book talks about why some ideas survive and others die. In short, it’s a great book which will transform how we communicate our ideas. It talks about the vital principles of winning ideas and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

Here is what I learned from the book:

The six principles can be summarized as: SUCCESs for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Story.

Principle #1 Simple:

We need to find the essential core of our idea. To strip an idea to its core, we need to be a master of exclusion and prioritize the important things relentlessly. It’s about determining the single most important thing about our idea. Once we find the core, we need to share the core – with our employees as well as customers. When we communicate the core, it also needs to be compact. Simplicity comes when message is core and compact.

Principle #2 Unexpected:

How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get our ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to surprise people and break the pattern of their guessing machines. But surprises don’t last long. For our ideas to endure, we must generate interest, curiosity and mystery. We can engage people’s curiosity systematically over long period of time by opening gaps in their knowledge and then filling those gaps.

Principle #3 Concrete:

We need to help people understand our ideas clearly and remember it. We must explain them our ideas in terms of human actions, objects or some sensory information. Often abstract statements make it harder to remember the idea. It makes harder to coordinate our activities with others. That’s why mission statements, strategies, visions are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Instead, if we talk in terms of individuals, or objects, then things become more concrete and easy to remember. And that’s why concrete and clear ideas become sticky.

Principle #4 Credibility:

How do we make people believe our ideas? There are different approaches to bring the credibility to our ideas. Some authority can talk about our idea, so that many people will trust it. But in most day-to-day situations, we don’t like such authority. So some ideas need to have their own internal credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves – a “try before buy” philosophy. We also need to provide them convincing details and some easily accessible statistics. Sometimes too much of statistics are also not much help. So another way to bring statistics to life is to contextualize them in terms that are more human.

Principle # 5 Emotions:

How do we get people to care about ideas? We make them feel something. Instead of giving statistical information about some group, if we talk about individual, the chances are more that people will remove their analytical hats and will think emotionally about idea we are trying to communicate. Another approach to make people care about ideas is to use piggybacking strategy. We can associate our ideas with the existing emotional ideas that appeal to many people.

Principle #6 Story:

How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell them stories. Hearing stories acts as a mental simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. The stories are told and retold when they contain wisdom. They are the most effective teaching tools. But we need to make sure our stories are strongly associated with entertainment, and not instructions. Another importance of telling stories is to provide inspiration. Inspiration drives action.

So these are the six principles that are explained in the book to great details. The book also talks about many examples illustrating how people have used these principles, making it easier for us to visualize, understand and learn how we can act upon these principles. The principles are short and simple, but what makes this book interesting is these examples.

My $0.02s: I won’t say it’s a must buy book for your short term goals. But you should read it once when time permits to develop your long-term thinking about how you generate and communicate the ideas and make them sticky.