A few friends and coworkers over at Huckberry recommended this one to me emphatically and I'm so glad that I took them up on it. I found Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath extremely thoughtful and instructive regarding the art of communication. I'd recommend it to any business person, entrepreneur, marketer and even fiction writer (especially Chapters 3 - Concreteness and 6 - Stories).
The authors explore — and ruthlessly clarify — what they view are the 6 most essential characteristics of making ideas 'stick,' (understood and remembered by an audience). Those 6 characteristics are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories — easily remembered by the acronym, SUCCES. Each of the 6 characteristics have a dedicated chapter loaded with examples from psychological studies and real-world business situations.
I want to mentioned though one underlying premise, that lies beneath all 6 characteristics, and that the authors think is really important to understand: 'The Curse of Knowledge'. This is the idea that when a person has more information than another person, that knowledge can actually be a handicap when trying to communicate with them.
To illustrate the 'Curse of Knowledge,' they describe a psych experiment in which subjects are divided into two groups, 'tappers' and 'listeners'. The tappers are told to tap the melody of commonly known songs (Happy Birthday, The Star Spangled Banner, Hey Jude, etc). The listeners are asked to identify the song based upon the rhythm of the taps. Not surprisingly, the listeners all struggled to do so. But what's more interesting was the reaction of the tappers; many of them were dumbfounded that the listeners couldn't identify the song. This is 'The Curse of Knowledge' at work.
We've all dealt with this issue — probably multiple times a day. 'How could they not understand my directions in that email?' Or from the other side — 'That was the most confusing powerpoint slide I've ever seen.'
Most of us are aware on some level of the importance of understanding a person's context — what they know and don't know. But often times we stop there, or get frustrated, or waste a lot of time struggling to 'get on the same page.' I think though that anyone who studies Made to Stick and the exercises and principles inside can improve their communication tenfold — and pretty quickly.
For example, this week I was tasked at work with encouraging a group of customers to leave reviews — good or bad — on their recent shopping experiences. It was my job to craft the perfect email that A. would get opened B. Get read and C. Get customers to review. Spending 10 minutes or so with my notes on Made to Stick in front of me, I got to work on drafting THE subject line that would definitely get peopled to open it. (Simple, Unexpected, and Concrete chapters in particular helped). I came up with this:
$10 For 45 Seconds
+ Simple: Trade $10 for 45 seconds
+ Unexpected: We're basically giving them free money
+ Concrete: $10 and 45 seconds > 'We want to know your thoughts' (or something vague like that)
I'm not saying that this is THE best subject line ever, but it was damn strong based upon open rates — over 65%. No doubt, there's a lot of improvements I can be making to my communication, but Made to Stick is already helping.
The authors explore — and ruthlessly clarify — what they view are the 6 most essential characteristics of making ideas 'stick,' (understood and remembered by an audience). Those 6 characteristics are: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Stories — easily remembered by the acronym, SUCCES. Each of the 6 characteristics have a dedicated chapter loaded with examples from psychological studies and real-world business situations.
I want to mentioned though one underlying premise, that lies beneath all 6 characteristics, and that the authors think is really important to understand: 'The Curse of Knowledge'. This is the idea that when a person has more information than another person, that knowledge can actually be a handicap when trying to communicate with them.
To illustrate the 'Curse of Knowledge,' they describe a psych experiment in which subjects are divided into two groups, 'tappers' and 'listeners'. The tappers are told to tap the melody of commonly known songs (Happy Birthday, The Star Spangled Banner, Hey Jude, etc). The listeners are asked to identify the song based upon the rhythm of the taps. Not surprisingly, the listeners all struggled to do so. But what's more interesting was the reaction of the tappers; many of them were dumbfounded that the listeners couldn't identify the song. This is 'The Curse of Knowledge' at work.
We've all dealt with this issue — probably multiple times a day. 'How could they not understand my directions in that email?' Or from the other side — 'That was the most confusing powerpoint slide I've ever seen.'
Most of us are aware on some level of the importance of understanding a person's context — what they know and don't know. But often times we stop there, or get frustrated, or waste a lot of time struggling to 'get on the same page.' I think though that anyone who studies Made to Stick and the exercises and principles inside can improve their communication tenfold — and pretty quickly.
For example, this week I was tasked at work with encouraging a group of customers to leave reviews — good or bad — on their recent shopping experiences. It was my job to craft the perfect email that A. would get opened B. Get read and C. Get customers to review. Spending 10 minutes or so with my notes on Made to Stick in front of me, I got to work on drafting THE subject line that would definitely get peopled to open it. (Simple, Unexpected, and Concrete chapters in particular helped). I came up with this:
$10 For 45 Seconds
+ Simple: Trade $10 for 45 seconds
+ Unexpected: We're basically giving them free money
+ Concrete: $10 and 45 seconds > 'We want to know your thoughts' (or something vague like that)
I'm not saying that this is THE best subject line ever, but it was damn strong based upon open rates — over 65%. No doubt, there's a lot of improvements I can be making to my communication, but Made to Stick is already helping.
