I bought the first version of the book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which was written by Chip and Dan Heath and published in 2007. I just read on the authors’ blog that the new version is available which essentially adds a chapter and some additional 30 pages of content.
Chip Heath is a professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Dan Heath is a consultant at Duke Corporate Education and is a co-founder of Thinkwell, an enterprise dedicated to figuring out how to build a textbook without text but with using videos and other technologies. Chip’s research led him to wonder why urban legends and conspiracy theories had a way of spreading around socially, “sticking” so to speak. Dan’s research at Thinkwell led him to conclude that the best professors and lecturers had a similar way of conveying the point to their students and classes. Being brothers with a keen interest in education, the two decided to write and publish this book.
The Heaths have developed six principles for sticky ideas. The principles are: Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories. They even created an acronym for remembering the six which is a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story (and that spells SUCCESs). The book is organized around the six principles through six chapters plus an epilogue. They even have a theory that proposes that too much knowledge can ruin the stickiness of an idea. That theory is called the Curse of Knowledge and is highlighted in the six chapters. An example they give of a SUCCESs concept is President John F. Kennedy’s goal to “put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.” The idea was simple, concrete, and an emotional story. It also didn’t allow the clutter of knowledge to distract from the goal. As we know, Kennedy’s goal was accomplished in July of 1969.
Dan and Chip provide great practical examples of how enterprises of all kinds manage to invoke some of these principles. One of my favorites is the example of the Army’s planning process called Commander’s Intent (CI). It’s a short statement that appears at the top of every order and is designed to make sure that everyone knows the basic intent of the mission. That concept is stated another way in their book, “no plan survives contact with the enemy.” I liked Made to Stick when I bought the first edition and I haven’t had a chance to read the latest which is available at Amazon. If you’re short on time, I recommend reading the introduction and the first chapter which is about the Simple principle. That’s about 60 pages of reading, but the foundation for keeping a valuable principle in mind for planning in any enterprise. When I find the time, I’ll read the new version and provide a short update on the additional chapter.
