All posts tagged Made to Stick

Made to Stick & Switch Giveaway

by Tim Schraeder on 11/06/2009 in Just For Fun with 24 Comments

As a communicator, two of the top challenges you often face are…

  1. Getting your message to “stick” with people.
  2. Communicating/coaching/helping people through change.

One book that has been on my “must read” list for awhile that addresses some of these issues is the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by brothers Chip and Dan Heath. They spoke at the Willow Creek Arts Conference and Leadership Summit this year, you can read my notes here and here.

Made to Stick is a phenomenal resource for any leader or communicator. It challenges the way we communicate and gives some really practical suggestions on how to create and communicate messages that stick with people.

Chip & Dan are a couple of months away from releasing a new book called Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. I was able to get my hands on a pre-release copy of the book at the Leadership Summit and can say it’s a must-read as well. The book focuses on change and the challenges we have in communicating and leading people towards change.

Well, I happened to get my hands on a copy of Made to Stick, a pre-release copy of Switch, and a DVD of them speaking on Made to Stick to give away to one of you today! Just comment below and I’ll select one of you to get this great resource. [ Courtesy of the Willow Creek Association. ] And, when Switch is released in February, you’ll get your own copy of the published book!

So if you need to figure out how to get sticky or make a switch, comment away! I’ll pick one of you at the end of the day!

Congrats to @GeraldNC for winning [ thanks to the random number generator ]… everyone else, if I could, I would give you all a copy of both of these books! Made to Stick is available in bookstores now and you can pre-order your copy of Switch today!

Switch

by Tim Schraeder on 08/07/2009 in Leadership Summit 2009, Notes with No comments

Dan Heath is an insightful and engaging communicator, widely recognized business consultant, researcher, and entrepreneur. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and is co-founder of Thinkwell, a publisher of innovative textbooks.

Chip Heath is an author, consultant, speaker, and popular professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Management. His unique research on what makes ideas succeed has been featured in a wide range of popular media programs and publications.

  • Switch is all about how to change when change is tough.
  • Think about something about you or your organization that needs to change.
  • People’s first knee-jerk reaction to change is the idea that people don’t like change.
  • If your goal in life is to minimize the amount of change you experience, you’ve made a terrible mistake!
  • There’s certain kind of changes that are big (marriage, children, etc) that come effortlessly; but there’s other changes that are excruciating.
  • Sometimes the smallest things are the most difficult to change.

An Elephant and A Rider

  • Change is filled with conflict.
  • Part of wants to save for retirement; the other part wants to spend.
  • There’s a battle in any circumstance of change.
  • Part of us sees the need for change, the other part of us resists change.
  • There’s two parts to our brain: the thinking side and the side that actually does the work.
  • The rider can think of where we need to go, but the elephant doesn’t want to move.
  • Part of change is aligning the goal of the rider with the will of the elephant.
  • Emotional appeal triggers change.
  • Reach past intellectual arguments and tap into something that motivates for the long-haul.

From a ministry-perspective… you have 9 major ministries… 2 are working well, 5 are marginal, and 2 are failing miserably… what would you do?

  • Ignore the bottom 2; brush past the working 5 and focus on the main 2.
  • In a time of change, there’s a lot that’s not working… you’ve got to find what’s working, find the bright spots.
  • Bright spots prove success is possible.
  • You’ve got to study and clone bright spots.
  • There’s a new type of therapy that is focused on bright spots instead of negative memories or issues from the past.
  • Bright spots prove we are capable of solving our problems.
  • We tend to focus on areas that are weakest, but we need to focus on where God is really working, the bright spots.
  • When dealing with problems, ignore the True But Useless info (TBUs) and focus on learning from what is working and replicating it.

Big problem, small solution.

  • Big problems are rarely solved with big solutions.
  • Big problems are typically solved by a sequence of small solutions.
  • To accomplish meaningful change, you must be convinced that there is a goal worthy of the pain of changing.

Shrink the change.

  • By breaking big problems into a series of small solutions, those small success provide motivation.
  • If you find yourself demoralized, it’s a sign you haven’t shrunk the change enough.
  • Small victory is impetus for great change.
  • We often get frustrated and depressed because we ourselves can’t change and we can’t get people to move.

The Valley of Insight

  • When IDEO starts a new project, the team leader goes to a whiteboard and draws a “U-shaped” curve… you’ll start on a “high” called hope and you’ll end on a “high” called confidence. In between there will be a “dip” of insight.
  • Insight won’t come as quickly as we want it to come.
  • We have to struggle through it, because struggle leads to confidence.
  • We can equate the valley of insight to hell.
  • How to people interpret hard times?

A Growth Mindset + Failure

  • People with a “growth mindset” view life through the lens that they can get better, with work.
  • A “growth mindset” has a tolerance for failure.
  • Built-in to the “growth mindset” is a tolerance for failure.
  • We often equate failing to missing God.
  • Failure is a necessity in a time of change.
  • If you are going to have a growth mindset, you have to pursue to the point of failure.
  • Failure is an early warning sign of success.
  • Some people need to be empowered to fail!

We might not have a person problem, but a situation problem

  • When we make assumptions about people, we attribute things to them without questioning their situations.
  • The Fundamental Attribution Error – we look at people but we don’t look at their situations.
  • We need to think broadly about people’s situations.
  • Good leaders have the gift of seeing people’s situations.
  • Sculpting the path is part of creating change.

When change occurs, there’s usually a predictable pattern.

  • What’s effective is a deep emotional appeal.
  • The reason we get married and have children is because there’s something deep and emotional we experience.
  • Think of all the things society does to shape the path.
  • We need reverse engineer successful changes when facing new ones in front of us.

If there’s something you’re facing, God will help you overcome what you see as a challenge.

The “dip” is a place to gain insight.

Made to Stick :: Chip & Dan Heath

by Tim Schraeder on 06/12/2009 in Notes, Willow Creek Arts Conference 2009 with No comments

Brothers Chip Heath and Dan Heath are the co-authors ofMade to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and are regular columnists in Fast Company magazine.

Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. He is the co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which has been a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, andBusinessWeek bestseller. Chip has spoken and consulted on the topic of “making ideas stick” with organizations such as Nike, the Nature Conservancy, Microsoft, Ideo, and the American Heart Association.

Dan is a Consultant to the Policy Programs for the Aspen Institute. He is the co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, which has been a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek bestseller. Dan has spoken and consulted on the topic of “making ideas stick” with organizations such as Microsoft, Nestle, the American Heart Association, Nissan, and Macy’s.Thinkwell in Austin, TX. Dan has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a BA in the Plan II Honors Program from the University of Texas at Austin.

  • Sticky ideas are understood, are remembered and change something.
  • Every culture has its own proverbs.
  • Sticky ideas have things in common…
    • Simple – easy to understand, remember (i.e. “Just Do It”)
    • Unexpected – something about it that surprises.
    • Concrete – you can visualize what’s happening.
    • Credible – convinces us to believe it.
    • Emotional
    • Stories – often told as stories… Aesop’s Fables, parables in the Bible, etc.
  • We all spend tons of time and energy making art because we want to change minds and hearts.
  • We have ideas that our precious to us and we take time to make them matter and make them last.
  • SIMPLE – Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “A designer knows he’s achieved perfection not what there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”
    • Simplicity is not about dumbing-down. It’s about finding the core of an idea and stripping everything else away so the core can shine through.
    • Journalism is about finding the real heart of the story… not regurgitating facts.
    • Our role is to find the core of our idea.
  • UNEXPECTED – A sticky idea breaks a pattern.
    • Voodoo Doughnut, Portland … gets press attention because they broke the pattern. They made remarkable doughnuts!
    • The Sermon on the Mount … broke patterns… blessed are the meek, don’t store up treasures on earth, don’t do your good works in front of men, love your enemies, sex is not required on the 3rd date (haha!).
    • If you want to get people’s attention, our role is to find what’s unexpected.
    • Don’t let the profound truth fade into the background.
  • CONCRETE/STORIES – Concrete ideas form a picture and stories make the ideas come alive.
    • Too often we tell stories in the language of expertise. 
    • Too often we use abstraction in communicating messages.
    • Subway’s previous marketing campaign was “7 under 6″… because people didn’t get what they met. Then came Jared.
    • When you talk in abstraction, you haven’t told your story yet.
    • Our role is to find a story and find a visual.
  • EMOTION – How do we get people to care about our message?
    • Our role is to find something to make people care.
  • The Curse of Knowledge – as we become experts in our fields, it’s hard for us to imagine what it is like not to have our expertise.
    • Experts talk in complex jargon.
    • Even when experts are trying to connect with others, they will speak a different language.
    • The things we’re most passionate about can cripple us.
    • Experts talk in complex language… we need to use simple language.
    • Experts tell lists and facts… we need to give a concrete idea.
  • In the context of church, there is an abundance of information about the Gospel, God, etc and we get anxious to tell everyone everything… we have to learn to strip things away… and make it simple.
    • We need to  go after exclusion without sacrificing depth.
    • We need to get realistic about how much people can really retain.
    • What’s the one simple idea or truth we want people to remember about God?
    • Stories make ideas tangible.
    • 5 out of 100 people will remember a statistic, 60 will remember a story.
    • Be collectors of stories to unveil the truth you are trying to communicate.
    • What do you want people to know? (Truth) what do you want people to feel? (Emotion) What them to do? (Application)
    • The unexpected… Do people know what’s going to happen in our church services before they get there?Is there a pattern?
      • There is room for tradition… but if we get into a tireless, relentless routine, people are no longer engaging.
      • Curiosity is a great tool to use. We need to create space between what people know and what they want to know.
        • There’s got to be a gap between what people know… not a chasm.
    • “A credible idea makes people believe. An emotional idea makes people care.”