Learn the 6 step SUCCESs model for effective communication as presented in Chip & Dan Heath's book titled Made to Stick.

1. Effective Communication:
Made to Stick

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3. The Curse of Knowledge
The person sharing an idea has all sorts of knowledge
and information that listeners don’t.
Let’s try an experiment…
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4. The SUCCESs Formula
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
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5. SUCCESs in Action
“Our goal is to become the international leader in advanced
space travel by maximizing team-centered innovation and
strategically targeting aerospace initiatives to achieve the first
effective lunar debarkation and subsequent terrestrial return
without casualty.”
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6. SUCCESs in Action
We will “put a man on the moon and return him safely by the
end of the decade.”
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7. Simple
Finding the Core
• The goal is to distill an idea down to its core
• This is essentially Prioritization
• A clear core is important to allow for proper decision making
• The military uses a concept called Commander’s Intent
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8. Simple
Finding the core
You are preparing an article for the school newspaper based on
the following set of facts. Write your best headline.
“Kenneth L. Peters, principal of Beverly Hills High School,
announced today that the faculty of the high school will travel to
Sacramento on Thursday for a colloquium on new teaching
methods. Speaking there will be anthropologist Margaret Mead,
educator Robert Maynard Hutchins, and several other leading
experts.”
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9. Simple
Finding the core
This was the first classroom lesson from author Nora Ephron's
college journalism class. She was a screenwriter known for many
films including When Harry Met Sally and Sleepless in Seattle.
Do you know what the right answer was?
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10. Simple
Finding the core
There will be no school on Thursday.
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11. Simple
Applying the core
Southwest says "We are the low cost airline."
Thus, every decision involves meeting this concrete and simple
goal. E.g., deciding whether to offer dinner on flights: Main
concern isn't great passenger comfort, but it is low-cost so no
chicken salad on the flight from Chicago to Albuquerque.
Contrast to Nordstrom's which emphasizes customer experience.
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12. Simple
Applying the core
Small town, local newspaper “Names, names, names.”
When you have to chose between publishing a photo of the
beautiful landscape at the town park or a family playing in the
town park, the answer is obvious.
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13. Unexpected
Enclave Minivan Ad
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14. Unexpected
Humans are designed to think in patterns
The key is to break those patterns.
Example – The first time you hear a Southwest flight attendant
give a pre-flight safety speech in a humorous way.
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15. Concrete
Human Brains do a much better job of remembering concrete
things than abstractions.
Let’s play a game to test my theory out.
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16. Concrete
Remember as many of the following words as you can:
• Beach
• Waves
• Shark
• Sunset
• Boats
• Palm Trees
• Parasailing
• Jetski
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17. Concrete
Remember as many of the following words as you can:
• Hope
• Justice
• Righteousness
• Freedom
• Truth
• Integrity
• Determination
Were going to come back to this in about 1 minute
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18. Concrete
Examples of making an idea concrete:
A large tub of movie popcorn is extremely fatty. It contains 60g
of saturated fat which is 300% of the Recommended Daily
Allowance (USRDA).
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19. Concrete
Examples of making an idea concrete:
A tub of movie theater popcorn contains more fat than a bacon-
and-eggs breakfast, a Big Mac, and fries for lunch, and a steak
will all the trimmings for dinner - combined.
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21. Credible
• What makes people believe ideas? We base it on authorities -
our parents, experts, leaders, etc.
• If one can bring in a true authority then the problem of
credibility is easily solved, but what if we cannot?
• Top Four Methods
– Use an Anti-Authority
– Use concrete details
– Use the Sinatra Test
– Use testable credentials
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22. Credible
Use an Anti-Authority
• You can use a dying smoker to make the point that smoking
isn't good for you.
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23. Credible
Use an Anti-Authority
• Consider the scientist that could not get anyone to believe
him that bacteria was causing ulcers: He swallowed the
bacteria himself and demonstrated his theory to be correct.
• Anon-profit that claimed to turn homeless people into useful
workers would send a car around to pick up prospective
donors and employers of their clients. The trick: Their driver,
unbeknown to the donors until later, was a former homeless
person.
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24. Credible
Use Concrete Details
• Details: We don't always have an external authority who can
vouch for our message; most of the time our messages have
to vouch for themselves. They must have "internal credibility."
• A person's knowledge of details is often a good proxy for
expertise. For example, a study revealed that potential jurors
where more likely to grant custody in a case where they had
lots of details - even though irrelevant like the type of
toothbrush a child used - than when they had scanty, but
essential details. A lesson from urban legends is that vivid
details boost credibility.
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25. Credible
Use the Sinatra Test
• The Sinatra Test: Frank Sinatra song New York, New York has a
line "if I can make it there, I can make it anywhere."
• For example, if you had the security contract for Fort Knox
then any security idea you put forward would be credible.
• Indian entrepreneur who build a delivery system like FedEx,
but for India. Even though he guaranteed on-time delivery -
the only company to do so - he could not get contracts
because this wasn't credible, until he tackled a major problem
in India: Piracy of films. He got the contract to deliver these,
which he did without fail. Note how much more powerful this
was then "98.84% of our deliveries arrive on time."
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26. Credible
Use Testable Credentials
Where’s the beef?
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27. Credible
Use Testable Credentials
• The ads suggested that the hamburgers at Wendy's were
larger that other chains, and that the other chains had more
bun than burger. This could be - and was! - verified by any fast
food consumer.
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28. Credible
Example – Nuclear Disarmament
The nonprofit Beyond War noted that people would stop a child
from the running with scissors, but would shrug their shoulders
when told there enough nuclear weapons to destroy millions of
children.
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29. Credible
Example - Nuclear Disarmament
To make the statistics about nuclear weapons concrete they did
the following: Beyond War would arrange "house parties" in
which a group of friends and neighbors would assemble to hear
about the dangers of nuclear weapons. The organizer from
Beyond War always brought a steel pail and BBs.
1 – The power of the bomb at Hiroshima.
10 – The fire power of one U.S. or Soviet nuclear submarine.
5,000 – (close your eyes and listen) Today's arsenal of nuclear
weapons.
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30. Credible
Examples – Soccer Teams
Stephen Covey emphasizes teamwork in his writings. He once
tried to give the dry statistics:
Only 37% of employees had a clear idea of their mission, only
one in five was engaged, etc.
He got more impact when he mapped this onto a soccer team:
"If a soccer team had this same make up only 4 out of 11 would
know where their goal was.”
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31. Credible
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32. Emotional
• It's not about pushing people's emotional buttons, like some
movie tearjerker.
• Rather, the goal of making message "emotional" is to make
people care.
• Feelings inspire people to act.
• For people to take action, they have to care.
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33. Emotional
To illustrate the effect of emotion versus reason a group studied
the effect of soliciting funds for starving children in Africa with
two appeals:
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34. Emotional
1) An appeal based on statistics and
2) An appeal focusing on a single named child.
Of course, message #2 won. The surprising part of the study was
that any time reason was evoked the amount of giving
decreased.
For example if they used both the statistics and the individual
child in the narrative, giving decreased. Once we put on our
analytical hat we react to emotional appeals differently.
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35. Emotional
Self-Interest: Another way to make people care about ideas is to
appeal to their self-interest.
A common error is to emphasize features over benefits, e.g., tell
people you have the "best grass seed", instead of that it will give
them the "best lawn", which is what they truly care about.
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36. Emotional
Why do I need to learn this stuff?
One teacher said this:
"Never. You will never need it. But then again why do you life
dumbbells? You do it for the future: if you are attacked you can
fight, or carry your groceries…
Same with algebra: You exercise your mental muscles, which you
will need your whole life - it is a means to an end, not an end in
itself."
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37. Emotional
Appealing to Identity Texas had a problem with roadside
garbage. Signs to "Please don't litter" or to "Pitch in" weren't
working:
To make them care the state developed a campaign that used
very "Texas" spokesmen - George Foreman, Stevie Ray Vaughan,
Willie Nelson - to record ads that said "Mama, tell you baby's,
don't mess with Texas", implying that tossing trash out the
window of a moving car violated the macho ethos of Texas.
Don’t mess with Texas
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38. Stories
Storytelling has been interwoven through examples in all of the
other categories.
The power is stories is tremendous and probably the single most
underutilized skill in the effective communicators toolkit.
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39. The SUCCESs Formula
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete
Credible
Emotional
Stories
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40. Now, how are you going
to use the SUCCESs model
to deliver more effective
communication?
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