In
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
, Chip and Dan Heath discuss a template for formulating ideas in such a manner that it is memorable and even spreads spontaneously. The template is SUCCESS - Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Story.
At the heart of the book is this concept of
Curse of Knowledge and how to avoid it. Simply stated, the concept is that one's deep understanding of an idea is also the reason why it is not effectively communicated. The analogy provided is a person hearing a tune in their head who taps to the tune so others can guess the song, then wonders why they struggle to guess (you can try this experiment at home).
Simplicity - find the core of an idea. Weed out not only superfluous and tangential elements but also ideas that are not the most important. However, don't dumb down the idea. Make/find the core mission, then find a compact way to communicate it.
On the battlefield, a
commander's intent is a crisp statement that conveys a plan's goal and the desired end state of an operation. It does not specify so much detail that it risks being rendered obsolete by unpredictable events.
Use analogies to communicate instead of defining something in its entirety. "Generative analogies" are those that generate new perceptions, explanations and inventions. The founder of
slideshare pitched his company to our Entrepreneurship class at
Haas and started off by very succinctly saying that "slideshare is the YouTube of PowerPoint".
Unexpectedness - when we encounter the unexpected, surprise jolts us to attention, generates interest and curiosity. Use an element of surprise to convey insight
relevant to the core message. Figure out what is counter-intuitive about the message and communicate it to break audience's guessing machines. To be most effective, surprise must be post-predictable - tying together all the clues to which you've been exposed all along.
"People are tempted to tell you everything, right up front, with perfect accuracy, when they should be giving you just enough info to be useful, then a little more, then a little more".
Gap theory is that people are anxious to fill a gap in their knowledge. Our tendency is to tell people the facts. Instead, open a gap in their knowledge, then close them with details.
Concrete ideas are memorable. Concrete messages can be examined with your senses and creates an imagery that can be visualized.
Credible - conveying an idea using real people, particularly authorities, is the most compelling and credible way. Honesty and trustworthiness of our sources, not their status, makes them authorities. Sometimes anti-authorities can be more powerful than authorities. For example, a chain smoker with terminal lung cancer is a more effective anti-authority figure to discuss the harmful effects of smoking, then the surgeon general's statutory warning.
Vivid, concrete details lend credibility to an idea. Statistics should almost always be used to illustrate a relationship. People should remember the relationship more than the number itself. Generate a "human scale" for the statistic that people can relate to and experience.
Emotional - the most basic way to make people care is to draw an association between something they don't yet care about with something they do care about. Incorporate self-interest into the message. Emphasize benefits, not features - "what is in it for me?"
Stories - a credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care. Right stories make people act.
Fight the temptation to skip directly to the "tips" and leave out the story. You can re-construct a moral from a story but you can't re-construct a story from a moral.
Stories with a
challenge plot inspire us to act by describing a protagonist who overcomes formidable challenge to succeed.
Connection plots inspire us through relationships with other people.
Creativity plots make us want to do something different and experiment with new approaches.
