Made to Stick

We've already talked about Simple and Unexpected as 2 key principles for why ideas stick. Now we cover 2 more:

1. Concrete - use of simple, vivid language. The opposite of abstraction.
2. Credible - use of internal or external authority to make your message more believable.

Concrete

Easy visualized nouns ("bicycle" or "avocado") are easier to remember than abstract ones ("justice" or "personality").
Use personas to make your customer more concrete.

Credible

Have someone that knows the intended recipient spread your message for you. We believe our family and friends.
Use authorities--experts, aspirational figures, or "anti-authorities" (people who truly embody the essence of the message)
Internal credibility comes from relevant details, statistics (using the human-scale principle: "in other words, you would have to drink 200 glasses of OJ to get the same Vitamin C"), the Sinatra test (if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere).

The last point re: internal credibility--I've seen this at work in a few different situations. At McKinsey, I noticed that the most effective folks were the ones who had a phenomenal memory for details. They could surface extremely specific, relevant details at the right moment. Lars, one of my EMs, also told me that you should have the numbers in your model at the tip of your fingertips. This also goes to the point of statistics. People--especially analytical people in business--tend to be persuaded by numbers and quantification. Finally, regarding the Sinatra effect--we used this at Yodlee. We would say, "Our security has been audited by the top 10 banks, companies like Merrill Lynch, American Express, and Bank of America. Don't you think we could pass your security audit process?"

Made to Stick - Simplicity

The 1st chapter in "Made to Stick" by Chip Heath and Dan Heath talks about one of the key elements of making a message stick: simplicity.

Simplicity: find the core of the idea.

Some of the ideas mentioned in this chapter:

Commander's Intent (CI): In the military, it's "a crisp, plain-talk statement that appears at the top of every order, specifying the plan's goal, and the desired end-state of an operation."

Finding the core=stripping an idea down to its most critical essence. You not only have to weed out the superfluous and the tangential, but also the things that are really important, but just aren't the most important idea. The value of the CI is its singularity.

In journalism, reporters know not to bury the lead. The first sentence of the article, called the lead, contains the most essential elements of the story. After the lead, information is presented in decreasing order of importance. This is known as the "inverted pyramid" structure. This is great for readers. No matter what the reader's attention span--whether just reading the lead or the entire article--the inverted pyramid maximizes the information gleaned. Finding the core--writing the lead--creates forced prioritization. If you can only send one line before the line is cut, what do you send?

Great simple ideas have an elegance and a utility that makes them function a lot like proverbs. Short sentences (compact) drawn from long experiences (core).