Make your presentations stickier: these 3 books can help
(3) Made
to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath is my favorite book of the summer. I
can’t believe I didn't read it sooner. (My pal Nancy Duarte gave me
a copy; she said she knew I would love it. She was right!) In this book the
Heath brothers are interested in the question of what makes some ideas
effective and memorable and other ideas utterly forgettable? Some ideas stick
and others fade away. Why? What the authors found — and explain simply and
brilliantly in their book — is that “sticky ideas” share just a few principles
in common. Sticky ideas have elements of these six key attributes: Simplicity,
Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, and Stories. And yes,
these six compress nicely into the acronym SUCCESs. (Made to Stick website.)
Think in terms of SUCCESs
The six principles are relatively easy to incorporate into messages — including
presentations and keynote addresses — but most people fail to use them. Why?
The authors say that the biggest reason why most people fail to craft effective
or “sticky” messages is because of what they call the “Curse of Knowledge.” The
Curse of Knowledge is essentially the condition whereby the deliverer of the
message can not imagine what it’s like not to posses his level of
background knowledge on the topic. When he speaks in abstractions to the
audience, it makes perfect sense him, but often to him alone. In his mind it
seems simple and obvious. The six principles — SUCCESs — are your weapons,
then, to fight your own Curse of Knowledge (we all have it) so that you
can make messages that stick.
Here’s an example that the authors used early in the book to explain the difference between a good and “sticky” message and a weak (yet all too common) message. Look at these two messages that address the same idea. One of them should seem very familiar to you.
(a) “Our mission is to become the international leader in the space industry through maximum team-centered innovation and strategically targeted aerospace initiatives.”
Or…
(b) “…put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade.”
The first message sounds similar
to CEO-speak of today and is barely comprehensible, let alone memorable. The
second message — which is actually from a 1961 speech by JFK — has every
element of SUCCESs and it motivated a nation toward a specific goal that
changed the world. JFK, or at least his speech writers, knew that abstractions
are not memorable, nor do they motivate. Yet how many speeches today by CEOs
and other leaders contain phrases like “maximize shareholder value…yada, yada,
yada”? Here’s a quick summary of the six principles you should keep in mind when
crystallizing your ideas and crafting your messages for speeches,
presentations, or any other form of communication. (I’ve included large thumbs
of the slides I’ll use in future when I talk about these ideas from Made to
Stick).
•
Simple. If everything is important then nothing is important. If
everything is priority then nothing is priority. You must be ruthless in your
efforts to simplify — not dumb down — your message to its absolute core. We’re
not talking about shallow sound bites here. Every idea — if you work hard enough
— can be reduced to it bare essential meaning. For your presentation, what’s
the key point? What’s the core? Why does (should) it matter? For your visuals
the mantra is: Maximum effect, minimum means.
•
Unexpectedness. You can get people’s interest by violating their
expectations. Surprise people. Surprise will get their interest. But to sustain
their interest you have to stimulate their curiosity. The best way to do that
is to pose questions or open up holes in people’s knowledge and then fill those
holes, say the authors. Make the audience aware that they have a gap in their
knowledge and then fill that gap with the answers to the puzzle (or guide them
to the answers). Take people on a journey of discovery. (The Discovery
Channel’s MythBusters
is about the only thing I can watch on the virtually unwatchable boob-tube
these days as the TV program does a wonderful job of posing questions and then
answering them, often in quite unexpected ways.)
•
Concrete. Use natural speech and give real examples with real
things, not abstractions. Speak of concrete images not of vague notions.
Proverbs are good, say the authors, at reducing abstract concepts to concrete,
simple, but powerful (and memorable) language. For example, here in
•
Credible. If you are famous in your field you may have built-in
credibility (but even that doesn’t go as far as it used to). Most of us,
however, do not have that kind of credibility so we reach for numbers and cold
hard data to support our claims as market leaders and so on. Statistics, say
the Heath brothers, are not inherently helpful. What’s important is the context
and the meaning of those statistics. Put it in terms people can visualize. “66
grams of fat” or “the equivalent of three Big Macs”? And if you showed a photo
of the burgers, wouldn’t that stick? There are many ways to establish
credibility, a quote from a client or the press may help, for example. But a
long-winded account of your company’s history won’t help. In
•
Emotional. People are emotional beings. It is not enough to take
people through a laundry list of talking points and information on your slides,
you must make them feel something. There are a million ways to help
people feel something about your content. Images, of course, are one way to
have audiences not only understand your point better but also to feel and to
have a more visceral and emotional connection to your idea. Explaining the
devastation of the Katrina hurricane and flood in the US, for example, could be
done with bulletpoints, data, and talking points, but images of the aftermath
and the pictures of the human suffering that occurred told the story in ways
words alone never could. Just the words “Hurricane Katrina” conjure up vivid
images in your mind today no doubt. We make emotional connections with people
not abstractions. When possible put your ideas in human terms. “90 grams of
fat” may seem concrete to you, but for others it's an abstraction. A picture
(or verbal description) of an enormous plate of greasy French fries stacked
high, a double cheese burger (extra cheese), and a large chocolate shake (extra
whip cream) is visceral and sticky.
•
Stories. We tell stories all day long. It’s how humans have
always communicated. We tell stories with our words and even with our art. We
express ourselves through the stories we share. We teach, we learn, and we grow
through stories. Why is it that when the majority of smart, talented people
have the chance to present we usually get streams of information rather than
story from them? Great ideas and great presentations have an element of story
to them. But you see storytelling everywhere in the workplace. In
(Yes, this post is too long for a blog; if I had more time I would’ve made shorter. Sticky ideas, like presentations and blog posts, are also concise).
Digg this • Add to del.icio.us
http://www.presentationzen.com/presentationzen/2007/07/make.html
July, 28, 2007