Made to Stick - a book review

The urban legends of the kidney thieves, the gang members who cruise with no headlights, and the flesh-eating bacteria have something in common with age-old fables, nursery rhymes, and modern-day ad campaigns. What could it be? That these ideas seem to have a life of their own, a "Sticky" factor that makes people remember them, and pass them on. But where does that come from?And can it be duplicated intentionally?

Using a word coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, Chip and Dan Heath have done exhaustive research and come up with a theory that explains why some ideas catch on, and some just wither away. They use anecdotes and stories, some familiar, some new, to describe the phenomenon of stickiness and its ancient roots in every culture.

Made to Stick unpacks the essence of very effective communication, messages that stand the test of time and pass from one person to another like the flu. One of the core ideas of the book is that effective communication is based on "Gap Theory" - pointing out things that people may be unaware that they do not know. Exploiting this gap with six very specific conditions can make your communication sticky, therefore effective. Rather than asking yourself,"What information do I need to convey?", you must shift your thinking to the viewpoint of your audience, "What questions do I want my audience to ask?" Once you know that, then you can work on getting your audience to care by providing context and appealing to their emotions. An emotional idea makes people care, and when they care, they remember.

What makes ideas sticky, and just how do you get people to care? Even more, how do you get people to take action? The Heaths use an acronym for describing the components of a sticky idea: SUCCESs.

1. Simplicity - it contains only the most rudimentary, core idea
2. Unexpectedness - what you don't know gets and keeps your interest
3. Concreteness - an example that the audience can relate to, nothing abstract
4. Credibility - vivid details that enhance the image
5. Emotions - as opposed to analytical or statistical information
6. Stories - instead of lists

These components, used in combination, can take an idea and make it viral. A sticky concept does not have to use all of the components, but stickiness increases and communication is enhanced by using more.

This book will teach you how to transform your ideas to beat the Curse of Knowledge. The six principles presented earlier are your best weapons. They can be used as a kind of checklist. Let's take the CEO who announces to her staff that they must strive to "maximize shareholder value."

Is this idea simple? Yes, in the sense that it's short, but it lacks the useful simplicity of a proverb. Is it unexpected? No. Concrete? Not at all. Credible? Only in the sense that it's coming from the mouth of the CEO. Emotional? Um, no. A story? No.

Contrast the "maximize shareholder value" idea with John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 call to "put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade." Simple? Yes. Unexpected? Yes. Concrete? Amazingly so. Credible? The goal seemed like science fiction, but the source was credible. Emotional? Yes. Story? In miniature.

The Heaths write with wit and humor, explaining the power of some of today's urban legends and successful ad campaigns, dissecting them to expose the stickiness components that made them successful. Much of the research turned up some very counter-intuitive results (see pages 211-212 on Positive Mental Attitude!), but the lesson is that a simple message with some very specific qualities can make your audience do the things that you need them to do, in order to make your message successful:

• Pay attention,
• understand and remember,
• agree or believe,
• care,
• and be able to act on it.

Whether you are chairing a meeting to explain the new TPS reports, or creating a new corporate culture, creating a message with basic, core information that appeals to emotions and can be conveyed in a credible story will be remembered, long after the last PowerPoint slide has faded from memory.

We will give you suggestions for tailoring your ideas in a way that makes them more creative and more effective with your audience. We've created our checklist of six principles for precisely this purpose.

But isn't the use of a template or a checklist confining? Surely we're not arguing that a "color by numbers" approach will yield more creative work than a blank-canvas approach?

Actually, yes, that's exactly what we're saying. If you want to spread your ideas to other people, you should work within the confines of the rules that have allowed other ideas to succeed over time. You want to invent new ideas, not new rules.

This book can't offer a foolproof recipe. We'll admit it up front: We won't be able to show you how to get twelve-year-olds to gossip about mitosis around the campfire. And in all likelihood your process-improvement memo will not circulate decades from now as a proverb in another culture.

But we can promise you this: Regardless of your level of "natural creativity," we will show you how a little focused effort can make almost any idea stickier, and a sticky idea is an idea that is more likely to make a difference. All you need to do is understand the six principles of powerful ideas.

Rating: (of 5)


Related:
Time Magazine Article
Malcolm Gladwell's Blog
And just for fun,
The Secret of Stickiness