Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

HR writer Sarah McAdams reviews the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heat. Review shows how HR can use the book’s advice on how to effectively communicate ideas.

Some ideas just stick with us. And one of them from Malcolm Gladwell’s bestseller The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference stuck with brothers Chip and Dan Heath — so much so that they stole the concept. Their book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die is a blatant tip (so to speak) to Gladwell’s idea of “stickiness.”
“We’re unabashed because Gladwell is one of our heroes; he’s a great observer and a wonderful writer,” Chip Heath, a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University, told me recently. “We stole the ‘sticky’ terminology from him because he coined the perfect word to describe the concept that we were studying in communication.”

But Gladwell’s interest was in what makes certain trends likely to “tip.” In his writing about stickiness, he talks a lot about the value of experimentation in educational shows such as “Blue’s Clues.” And although the Heath brothers (Dan is a consultant at Duke Corporate Education) agree that it’s useful to experiment and play around to see what works, they also think it’s possible to know, up front, which ideas are more likely to succeed and fail based on their traits.
Imagine how much time (and headache) you could save yourself if you knew beforehand whether an idea would stick with employees — in everything from training to recruiting to layoffs to benefits communication. Well, the Heaths’ heavily researched book makes the possibility hard to dispute.

The authors refer extensively not only to psychosocial studies on memory, emotion, and motivation but also to their analysis of commonalities between hundreds of memorable stories and concepts throughout history. In sharing dozens of the stories, the Heaths follow their own advice; the anecdotes make for entertaining, educational and memorable reading. But the entertainment is weighted by solid, practical tips that readers can use immediately.

For instance, the authors boil down their research to six traits that ensure a message sticks — that people understand it, remember it and change how they think or act because of it: simplicity, unexpectedness, concreteness, credibility, emotions, and stories.
As an example, they offer John F. Kennedy’s 1961 idea to “put a man on the moon within the decade.” It was:
Simple: A single, clear mission.
Unexpected: A man on the moon? It sounded like science fiction.
Concrete: Success was defined so clearly—no one could be confused about “man,” “moon,” or decade.”
Credible: This was the President of the U.S. talking.
Emotional: It appealed to the aspirations and pioneering instincts of a nation.
Story: An astronaut overcoming great obstacles to walk into history.

Although this idea had all six traits, the authors explain that you don’t need every one to have a successful idea: three of them will make a better message than one.

As far as HR pros are concerned, their biggest challenge in creating sticky ideas, the authors suggest, is something researchers have called the “curse of knowledge.” In other words, when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it. As a result, we become lousy communicators.

“The Curse of Knowledge is hard to avoid,” they write. “A top manager might have 20 years of daily immersion in business. So when she says, ‘unlocking shareholder value,’ it means something vivid to her. But the frontline employee doesn’t understand. What does ‘unlocking shareholder value’ mean for how I treat this particular customer? What does being the ‘highest-quality producer’ mean for my negotiation with this difficult vendor?”

The only way of avoiding the curse, they say, is to go back to basics: Give concrete examples. Highlight what’s unexpected about your message. Incorporate the six traits.

That’s how JFK dodged the curse. “If he’d been a manager,” Chip muses, “he’d probably have said, ‘Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry, using our capacity for technological innovation to build a bridge toward humanity’s future.’ That might have set a moon walk back 15 years.”
Made to Stick won’t set you back much time; it’s a fast and enjoyable read. It’s also highly useful — aided by both the dozens of sidebars transforming bland messages into intriguing ones and by a valuable five-page reference guide at the end.

I give this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Sarah McAdams writes the popular “Balancing Act” and “Office Watch” columns for HR Insight. Sarah has reported on human resources for a variety of publications, including the Journal of Employee Communication Management, Corporate Legal Times and The Ragan Report. She has written about many other subjects for publications like the Chicago Tribune, Montreal Gazette, Orlando Sentinel, Self magazine and Daily Variety. McAdams also helped ghostwrite the book Portfolio Life: The New Path to Work, Purpose, and Passion After 50 by David D. Corbett (Jossey-Bass, 2007).