Made To Stick

For my leadership/management assignment, I read the book "Made to Stick". The goal of the book is to help people convey their ideas so that listeners can easily remember those ideas later; the meaning of the message sticks in the listener's mind. Ideas can be made sticky if they incorporate several features of the acronym "SUCCESs": Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotion, and Stories.

• Simple: The message should be simple and focus on the core of the idea.
• Unexpected: A message that is not common sense or not predictable is memorable.
• Concrete: The idea isn't abstract; it uses concepts and analogies that people are familiar with.
• Credible: People can readily believe and accept the idea.
• Emotional: Sticky ideas can attach to people's emotions and make them care.
• Stories: Stories inspire people to act and allow people to simulate themselves in a situation.

The biggest culprit to a sticky idea is the Curse of Knowledge; when we assume the audience knows what we already know, we can easily lose them. We need to be able to communicate our messages to people of any knowledge level.

I believe the SUCCESs method is very useful for engineers to implement when expressing their ideas. It can enhance our messages, so people are more willing to listen to and understand their ideas. It can also help them communicate their ideas to both technical and non-technical audiences.


Proofed by: Dan Huju