I’m reading Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath at the moment, on a strong recommendation from Michael O’Brien who heads up our R&D teams in Dublin. The premise of the book is to define an idea’s “stickiness” and explain why some ideas survive while others drift into obscurity like the Irish soccer team.

The book is written by two brothers: Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Dan Heath is a co-founder of Thinkwell — so it’s no surprise that the book presents a nice combination of academic and business savvy. It’s also plastered across every Bay Area bookstore’s business section in an attention-seeking industrial orange hue, so I’ll give the publishers credit for knowing how to make this book stick!

The Heath brothers have employed a relentless anecdotal style, which works to good effect by making the book compelling to read almost immediately. In fact, my wife was so intrigued by the cover leaf description that the book disappeared on a business trip with her for an entire week! Now that the book has been returned to its rightful owner (ahem), I’ve reached the half way point and need to stop for a breather as the brain requires more time for reflection these days.

The subject of what makes an idea stick is interesting enough, but this is no theoretical exercise in pondering the intellectual qualities of certain ideas. In fact, the authors take great delight in discussing earthy examples of ideas that have thrived as urban legends (the classic kidney heist) or political one-liners (”it’s the economy, stupid” from Bill Clinton’s campaign).

They go even further by creating a checklist of six qualities that comprise a “sticky” idea — qualities that anyone can apply to their most precious or preposterous ideas:

1. Simplicity
2. Unexpectedness
3. Concreteness
4. Credibility
5. Emotional
6. Stories

I’m only about half-way through the book, but already it has got me thinking about why some of the most successful ideas in the past decade have really thrived beyond all expectations. The authors reference Southwest Airlines, whose determination to be “THE low fare airline” kept the company profitable for over 30 years. It’s a “core” idea that fits well into all 6 categories and has helped to guide the actions of Southwest employees for many years. 

Compare that with Google’s carefully crafted mission statement ”to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”. I’d give Google high marks for simplicity, concreteness, and credibility but I don’t find it particularly unexpected, emotional, or storied. Certainly Google has been spectacularly successful on the strength of that core idea, nonetheless.

What characteristics distinguish Amazon’s online store, eBay’s web marketplace, or Facebook’s social network – do these giant web companies share a common creative bond? Each of these ideas was disruptive in its own right and it has transformed how people act, but how many of the Heath brothers’ six qualities can you apply to these innovations?

I don’t know the answers to be honest, but I do find it fascinating to explore what makes an idea really stick. Maybe I should just finish the book!

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I have really enjoyed doing some public speaking this year. I’m just back from the DDD Community Event in Galway and, once again, the feedback on my talk has been very positive. I always feel the responsibility of fulfilling people’s expectations, so hopefully I didn’t disappoint anybody. I must be doing something right though: 2 weeks ago I’ve been invited to present at Øredev, a ~1000 attendees conference in Sweden in November!

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As promised, I put my slides on Slideshare. If you haven’t had a chance to attend, at least you could get a fair idea of what the session was all about. Let me know what you think! Don’t be fooled however, the slides are just a tiny part of the whole story.

In my exploration of how to design a better presentation, I used key books such as Presentation Zen and Beyond Bullet Points. I loved the ideas and approach of the first, the Hollywood-style methodology of the latter.
In my quest, I also came across Made to Stick, an eye-opener book which gives amazing examples of how simple, unexpected, concrete, credible and emotional stories can make ideas memorable.

So, what is this new presentation style about? While PowerPoint has been fundamentally the same for almost 20 years, our use of it is beginning to change. Slides are finally becoming more visual and essential, with a renewed appreciation of how people learn. I am particularly interested in the focus on stories and movie structures to make our messages more compelling.

It’s a fascinating idea isn’t it? In fact, I want to develop it further. Content matters more than ever. Pretty pictures that don’t carry a compelling story are just (annoying) pretty pictures.

In preparation for my next presentation, I just received 7 books on screen writing and more are on the way (speed-reading is handy, isn’t it?). No, I won’t be the next Stephen Spielberg and I don’t see myself walking down a red-carpet event any time soon. But I want to learn as much as I can from that industry to be better at mine. My challenge will be to present a potentially dense technical topic in a dramatic and captivating fashion. Who said it is going to be easy? It will be my pet project for my next few months, 48 minutes at a time.

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