October 8 - Made to Stick - Ch. 3 & 4

Chapter 1 of Made to Stick discusses the necessity of simplicity in getting ideas to stick.  A story itself doesn't need to be simple in order to stick; rather, Heath & Heath explain that simplicity is part of what makes up an effective schema, which in turn helps us to grasp concepts faster and more easily.  A great example we've dealt with in our class recently has been in writing executive summaries for our formal recommendation reports.  Rather than bogging the reader down with a complex slew of information that would otherwise detract from his or her comprehension, the executive summary quickly details the main points of the entire report; it's basically the brass tax or the gist of whoever the report was made for needs to know.  Heath & Heath call these facts the core ideas.  For a concept to be easily understood it must be simple, and it must access the core ideas of whatever is being expressed.  Going along the same military analogy the writers use in the beginning of the chapter, military commanders everywhere discuss battle plans on two levels, strategy and tactics, and Heath & Heath explain that an idea which sticks should be expressed on a strategic level rather than a tactical one.  In hostile situations as well as those outside of battlefield, a given strategy is the large-scale plan for what a commander wants to happen.  For instance, a commander's strategy could be to capture a given bunker - that's all there is to it.  Where tactics come in, however, is the nitty-gritty details of how that strategy must be carried out.  A sticky idea is one that is strategic, and does not waste time with tactical information.

Chapter 2 discusses two important questions that must be asked in getting ideas to stick: How do I get people's attention, and how do I keep it?  One answer that Heath & Heath offer for addressing both of those questions is making those ideas unexpected.  As they rightly point out, "The first problem with communication is getting people's attention" (64).  So what's one of the best ways to do that?  Well, catching them off guard is one great way.  One of my favorite high school teachers got our attention on the first day of class.  None of us had ever seen or heard of her before, and when she walked into the classroom, she immediately seemed like she was in a horrible mood.  The first thing she did was give us a pop quiz, and got more and more noticeably upset as the class went on.  She made such a show of her supposedly evil demeanor that it was all we talked about for the rest of the day.  The next day, we showed up to class and she was an entirely different person.  She was all smiles, friendly as could be, and had even tossed out our pop quizzes from the previous day.  It was all a rouse to just to catch us off guard, and to be sure, she has always stuck in my mind, even to this day.