Made to Stick

Made to Stick is a book that will transform the way you communicate ideas. It’s a fast-paced tour of success stories (and failures): the Nobel Prize-winning scientist who drank a glass of bacteria to prove a point about stomach ulcers; the charities who make use of the “Mother Teresa Effect”; the elementary-school teacher whose simulation actually prevented racial prejudice. Provocative, eye-opening, and often surprisingly funny, Made to Stick shows us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick.

Principle 1: Simplicity

How do we find the essential core of our ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, “If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any.” To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound. The Golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it. Finding the core” means stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea. The Army Commander’s Intent forces its officers to highlight the most important goal of an operation. The value of the Intent comes from its singularity. You can’t have five North Stars, you can’t have five “most important goals,” and you can’t have five Commander’s Intents. Finding the core is analogous to writing the Commander’s Intent – it’s about discarding a lot of great insights in order to let the most important insight shine.

Principle 2: Unexpectedness

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 the ideas across? We can use surprise – an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus – to grab people’s attention. And for our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. Nordstrom is a department store known for outstanding customer service. That extra service comes at a price: Nordstrom can be an expensive place to shop. Yet many people are willing to pay higher prices precisely because Nordstrom makes shopping so much more pleasant.

Principle 3: Concreteness

Jane Elliot, an elementary-school teacher in Iowa ,USA found herself trying to explain Martin Luther King, Jr.’s death to her classroom of third-graders. She aimed to make prejudice tangible to her students. At the start of class, she divided the students into two groups: brown-eyed kids and blue-eyed kids. The groups were separated. She made a shocking announcement that the brown-eyed kids were superior to blue-eyed kids. Elliot was shocked at how quickly the class was transformed. She watched those kids turn into nasty, vicious, discriminating third-graders. Even their performance on academic tasks changed. Elliot’s simulation made prejudice concrete – brutally concrete. It also had an enduring impact on the students’ lives. She turned prejudice into an experience. How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes wrong. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions – they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images, because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.

Principle 4: Credibility

How do we get people to believe our ideas? We’ve got to find a source of credibility to draw on. Sometimes the wellsprings are dry, Barry Marshall discovered in his quest to cure the ulcer. Drawing on external credibility didn’t work. The endorsement of his supervisors and his institution in Perth didn’t seem to be enough. Drawing on internal credibility didn’t work either – his careful marshalling of data and detail still didn’t help him clear the bar. In the end, what he did was draw on the audience’s credibility – he essentially “modelled” a testable credential by gulping a glass of bacteria. The implicit challenge was: See for yourself – if you drink this gunk, you’ll get an ulcer, just like I did. It’s not always obvious which wellspring of credibility we should draw from. What Marshall showed so brilliantly was perseverance – knowing when it was time to draw on a different well? Regardless of your level of “natural creativity,” this book 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. This is a must have book in your library.