Made to Stick Review

Have you ever needed to make a memorable point? If you answered no then you must live by yourself, work in a job with no interaction with people, don’t have kids and aren’t married. For the rest of us every day we’re faced with making a point, asking for someone to do something, convincing someone of your position and so on. Some people do it better than others. A lot better. Why? What makes some people so effective while the rest of us struggle?

Chip and Dan Heath have studied this question and concluded that all of us can craft messages that “stick” by applying several principles which are explained in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.) Being true to their own advice even their book cover is catchy: it has what appears to be duct tape across the front.)

Their formula for success is SUCCES.

S: Simple. Find your core idea and make it compact.

U: Unexpected. Find something unexpected about your core idea and communicate it in a way that keeps your audience guessing. You do this by focusing on what questions you want your audience to ask.

C: Concrete. Make it easy to understand by translating jargon into laymen’s terms. Too many times we slip into using our profession’s jargon and think everyone else understands our lingo.

E: Emotional. Your audience is constantly asking, “What’s in it for me?” Keep this in mind or you’ll lose them!

S: Stories. When possible wrap your message in a story.

This last feature - how to tell stories - has become a cottage industry. But this approach recognizes that we become more involved and receptive when listening to a story as opposed to a dry lecture or a litany of facts. (See The Secret Language of Leadership by Stephen Denning.)

The Heaths provide many examples and stories to support their principles. In the interest of keeping this entry short I have only reported the key points (in a fashion typical for an engineer).

Coming from an engineering background where the currency of the field is facts, facts and even more facts, I’ve come to appreciate the effectiveness of appropriately packaging and presenting these facts to improve how they’re received. The Heath’s advice is sticking with me.

Review of The World is Flat 3.0

Do you ever debate buying a book? You know what I mean. Something about the cover or title catches your eye. You pick up the book, skim it a bit then put it back onto the shelf. The next time you go back to the store you go through the routine again. And again. Finally you break down and buy the book. After reading it you wonder why you didn’t buy the book the first time. That’s the story of The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. I must have picked up the book five times before buying it. I wish I had bought it sooner.

Not that this book is perfect. A 100 or more pages could easily be trimmed with tighter editing and removing repetitive passages and Friedman’s name-dropping stories. But his premise is interesting and particularly applicable to individualists. By “flat” Friedman “means equalizing, because the flattening forces are empowering more and more individuals today to reach farther, faster, deeper, and cheaper than ever before, and that is equalizing power.”

Friedman contends we are in the third version of globalization. In Globalization 1.0 countries were the key agents in the world. Globalization 2.0 shifts from countries to international companies; Globalization 3.0 shifts again with individuals becoming the focal point.

The World is Flat identifies ten flatteners behind this evolution. While I won’t discuss each one they fall into three categories: political, business practices and individual empowerment. The key political flattener was literal: the flattening of the Berlin Wall in 1989 which enhanced the free movement of best practices. Most of the other nine flatteners deal with corporate practices such as work flow software, outsourcing and off shoring which drew formerly isolated countries such as India, China, Mexico and others into the world market. As the corporate practices lowered barriers between countries other developments occurred to enhance the ability of individuals to obtain information and, more important, to express their ideas that normally would have no outlet. Of course, we’re talking about the Internet, search engines and blogging. Traditional media outlets like TV and radio (except call-in talk shows) are just that: outlets in which the participants passively receive media output with limited ability to have their voices heard.

Blogging, personal web pages, etc. allow individuals to express themselves and to form collaborative virtual communities. In addition, as Friedman notes, small and medium size companies hire the most people, not the mega-corporations. Flattening allows these small businesses to compete better with the big boys. All of these developments provide tools to empower individuals like no other time in history.

These developments also could bode well for preventing wars. While some conservative thinkers fear (appropriately) the growth of Islamic terrorism and the rebirth of totalitarianism, Friedman shares something both interesting and hopeful: the Dell theory of conflict prevention. “No two countries that are both part of a major global supply chain, like Dell’s, will ever fight a war against each other as long as they are both part of the same global supply chain.” In other words, economic interdependence can trump political agendas. One can only hope that this theory is true! Of course there are no guarantees. Political leaders can force their agenda onto an unwilling citizenry. However the ease of being able to do this is getting more difficult as the world flattens.

Returning back to the individual, Friedman offers some advice to succeed. “The most important competition is now with oneself – making sure that you are always striving to get the most out of your imagination and then acting on it.”