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6 Principles for Making Ideas Stick

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In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath point out that bad ideas often keep circulating, while good ideas often have a hard time succeeding.

Why is that?

That’s the question their book — which most have probably heard of by now — answers.

To make an impact, your idea has to stick. A “sticky” idea is one that is understood and remembered, and has lasting impact. A sticky idea changes the audience’s opinions or behavior.

How do you make your ideas sticky? They give six points. Here they are, from my notes on the book:

  1. Simple. This gets people to understand.
  2. Unexpected. This gets people to pay attention and maintain interest.
  3. Concrete. This gets people to understand so they remember.
  4. Credible. This helps show that your idea is true.
  5. Emotions. This gets people to care.
  6. Stories. This gets people to act.

The rest of the book unpacks each of those ideas. It is well worth a read if you haven’t already.

5 Points on Sustaining Interest in Your Presentations

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Also from my notes on Chip and Dan Heath’s article:

  1. Before the audience will value the info you’re giving, they have to want it. Demand has to come before supply.
  2. Therefore tease, don’t simply tell, by opening knowledge gaps and filling them.
  3. “Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedic entries.”
  4. “Curiosity must come before content.”
  5. Don’t structure your presentation by asking “what’s the next point I should make” but “what’s the next question I want them to wrestle with.”

And, here are a few great points on using data well:

  1. Don’t lead with the data — that leaves it abstract, and doesn’t move people emotionally. Tell a story about an individual first, and then say “our research suggests that there are 900,000 stories like this, in Mumbai alone.”
  2. “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories — tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.”

5 Principles for Starting a Presentation Well

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These are from the notes I took from an article by Chip and Dan Heath (authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die):

  1. Don’t preamble—parachute in.
  2. “The first mission of a presentation is to grab attention.”
  3. A preamble is a laborious overview of what’s going to be covered. Don’t start with this. Don’t follow the “tell them what you’re gonna tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” Steve Jobs doesn’t present this way. Ronald Reagan didn’t present this way.
  4. Example: Rebecca Fuller presenting on tactile museum exhibits. She parachuted in by shutting off the lights and saying “this is what it’s like for a blind person in most museums.” It wouldn’t have improved here presentation to say “today I’m going to give you an overview of the challenges faced by the visually impaired in most museums.”
  5. “If you bring us face to face with the problem, we don’t need a lot of upfront hand-holding.”

The most important point: parachute it. “Telling them what you’re going to tell them” usually reduces interest.

If You Wait for Favorable Conditions, You Will Never Act

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Lewis:

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come (from “Learning in Wartime,” in The Weight of Glory, 50).

Ecclesiastes 11:4:

He who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.

4 Steps to Good Decision Making

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I would like to address decision-making in my book, as that is a key part of getting things done, but there isn’t space.

So, I’m posting here the four steps to making effective decisions that I would have developed a bit in the book. They are:

  1. Understand the objectives
  2. Consider the alternatives
  3. Consider risk
  4. Decide

Very basic, to be sure. But it is surprising how often we go into important decisions haphazardly, without taking an intentional (albeit simple) approach.

What is Encouragement?

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Here is a good summary from an article I came across again recently in my files:

Encouragement includes the giving of courage, hope, confidence, support and help.

The apostle Paul ties the act of encouragement to the process of building up one another: “Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing” (1 Thess. 5:11).

We can aid our understanding of the word encourage by looking at the gift of encouragement (or exhortation) as stated in Romans 12:8. Students of the Greek language indicate the word comes from the same family of words used to describe the Holy Spirit as our paraclete, “one who comes alongside us to help.” Leslie B. Flynn wrote of encouragement as helping to strengthen the weak, steady the faltering and console the troubled. . . .

In Scripture encouragement is often closely aligned with restoration and renewal of Spirit. For example, Psalm 3 is David’s reflection on the horrible experience of having his son turn against him, causing such a rift that all David’s relationships were broken. Psalm 3 indicates, among other things, that God replenished David’s courage (encouragement), restored his confidence (depleted by his experience) and revived his hope. Some of the same of the same results will accrue from our involvement in encouraging others.

A study of 42 NT references to the word encourage quickly reveals this is a ministry for all believers, though some have special ability because of God’s gifting. Encouragement is coming alongside another to offer help and hope.

How to Get Creative: Stop Trying

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Jason Fried, co-founder of 37 Signals, has a good article on productivity and creativity with some counterintuitive points. Here’s the beginning:

A few weeks ago, I was on fire. I was working on some designs for a prototype of a new software product, and the ideas were flowing as they hadn’t in months. Every day, I felt as if I were accomplishing two or three days’ worth of work. I was in the zone, and it felt fantastic.

It lasted about three weeks. And then I found myself back at my old pace. Instead of being superproductive, I was sort-of productive. Some days, I felt as if I barely accomplished anything.

So what was wrong? Nothing at all.

I believe it’s perfectly fine to spend some of your time, maybe even a lot of your time, not firing on all cylinders. Just like full employment isn’t necessarily good for an economy, full capacity isn’t always great for your mind.

Coughing is Heckling

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A good post from Seth Godin the other day.

I would add also — as Seth does — that silence can be heckling, too.

For example, with our 16-month-old, we know that if there are certain behaviors that he shouldn’t be doing, one strategy to root them out is to ignore them. The things that you ignore tend to go away. The things that you reinforce you tend to get more of.

The problem is that if you are silent about good things, you can end up (inadvertently) stamping them out as well. And not just with toddlers. Here’s how Godin puts it:

. . . Just like it’s heckling when someone is tweeting during a meeting you’re running, or refusing to make eye contact during a sales call. Your work is an act of co-creation, and if the other party isn’t egging you on, engaging with you and doing their part, then it’s as if they’re actively tearing you down.

This is one reason, I think, that the Bible is replete with passages to encourage one another and build one another up. We are to “consider how to stir up one another to love and good works” and “encourage one another” (Hebrews 10:24-25) and “speak only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear” (Ephesians 4:29) and “encourage one another and build one another up” (1 Thessalonians 5:12).

If you aren’t actively building people up, there is a sense in which you may be inadvertently tearing them down. I don’t want to say that that is always the case, of course. But we should definitely be alert to the possibility that, sometimes at least, failure to encourage is to discourage. Our general bent toward one another should be to take every opportunity that we can (and makes sense) to build people up.

Here’s Godin’s whole post:

The other night I heard Keith Jarrett stop a concert mid-note. While the hall had been surprisingly silent during the performance, the song he was playing was quiet and downbeat and we (and especially he) could hear an increasing chorus of coughs.

“Coughs?,” you might wonder… “No one coughs on purpose. Anyway, there are thousands of people in the hall, of course there are going to be coughs.”

But how come no one was coughing during the introductions or the upbeat songs or during the awkward moments when Keith stopped playing?

No, a cough is not as overt or aggressive as shouting down the performer. Nevertheless, it’s heckling.

Just like it’s heckling when someone is tweeting during a meeting you’re running, or refusing to make eye contact during a sales call. Your work is an act of co-creation, and if the other party isn’t egging you on, engaging with you and doing their part, then it’s as if they’re actively tearing you down.

Yes, you’re a professional. So is Jarrett. A professional at Carnegie Hall has no business stopping a concert over some coughing. But in many ways, I’m glad he did. He made it clear that for him, it’s personal. It’s a useful message for all of us, a message about understanding that our responsibility goes beyond buying a ticket for the concert or warming a chair in the meeting. If we’re going to demand that our partners push to new levels, we have to go for the ride, all the way, or not at all.

In Order to Truly Encourage Someone, You Also Have to Pay Attention and Listen

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CJ Mahaney, from his book Humility: True Greatness:

Paul teaches us that encouragement is the effect of appropriate words — “as fits the occasion” (Eph 4:29) — appropriate to the person I’m seeking to serve.

To effectively encourage or edify a person I must know something about that individual, which comes through studying the person, asking questions, and carefully listening.

That’s what we’ll do if we’re trying to truly serve others with our words and not simply impress them. From what we learn about others, we’re able to answer this question: What do they need now? Is it counsel? Exhortation? Warning? Comfort? Forgiveness? All of the above?

And here’s a helpful expansion on what that looks like:

In 1 Thessalonians 5:14, Paul urges us, “Admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all.”

So we have to walk carefully here. Are they weak? Because it would be unwise for us to admonish the weak, and just as unwise to help those who are idle.

So what is their present circumstance? Are they experiencing a test of adversity or a test of prosperity? What season of life are they in? No matter what their situation, there’s something we can say to bring them encouragement.

How to Increase the Emotional Intelligence of Your Email Messages

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A good article on the emotional intelligence of email at the 99% by Scott McDowell. Here’s the first part:

Earlier this year I attended a presentation with Daniel Goleman, author of Social Intelligence and godfather of the field of Emotional Intelligence. According to Goleman, there’s a negativity bias to email – at the neural level.

In other words, if an email’s content is neutral, we assume the tone is negative.  In face-to-face conversation, the subject matter and its emotional content is enhanced by tone of voice, facial expressions, and nonverbal cues.  Not so with digital communication.

Technology creates a vacuum that we humans fill with negative emotions by default, and digital emotions can escalate quickly (see: flame wars). The barrage of email can certainly fan the flames. In an effort to be productive and succinct, our communication may be perceived as clipped, sarcastic, or rude. Imagine the repercussions for creative collaboration.

He goes on to give six tips for making sure your email messages communicate the right tone.