“How do you design an idea that sticks?” – Made to Stick

Think about a moment when you were trying to get an idea across to someone. Think about how you approached the situation, what skills you used, what words you said, and the techniques you used. Were you successful? Was the person responsive to your message? Did your idea ‘stick’ with them?

If your idea didn’t ‘stick’ with your audience then you’ll need to change your technique. You don’t need expensive training or to attend a seminar to learn it either. Your aid can be found in one of the best business books to be released this year – “Made to Stick”.

You face the situation above more than you probably imagine. Every person deals with trying to get a message or idea across to others. If you are a teacher you face the situation weekly. Any time you present new information to students your end goal is to get the idea(s) to resonate with them and not just through rote memorization. You want your information to ‘stick’. You want your students to have “aha!” moments. Moments that change student’s perspectives. In business it’s the same scenario. There are circumstances when you need to ‘sell’ ideas. Bosses, customers, fellow co-workers – there are no boundaries to communicating your message. You need an effective method to craft your ideas. Ministers with gospels to share, historians with facts, cab drivers with advice, the list is endless who can benefit from getting their message to ‘stick’.

“Our interest is how effective ideas are constructed – what makes some ideas to stick and others disappear.” – Made to Stick

After reading the ‘Tipping Point‘ by Malcolm Gladwell two brothers Chip Heath (a Stanford Business school professor) and Dan Heath (a corporate education consultant at Duke) were inspired by Gladwell’s top selling book. Gladwell spoke of the innovations that cause the ‘tipping point’ are due to their ‘stickiness’. The Heath brothers take the extra step to find out what exactly causes ideas to be ‘sticky’. How are they constructed? After extensive research they found that the ideas that ‘stick’ (i.e. Jared from Subway, Urban Legends, JFK’s call to put a man on the moon) all share the following six principles (with a chapter dedicated to each principle):

Simple – Find the core of your idea. This isn’t done by ‘dumbing it down’; this is done by finding what is essential to your message. Strip your idea down to the bare essential.

Unexpected – Get peoples attention. Attract it. Hold it. How? Through surprise. Break people’s ‘guessing machine’ and then repair it.

Concrete – Concrete is memorable. Abstract is not. Make your idea like Velcro. Hook them through concreteness.

Credible – Help people believe. Honesty and trustworthiness should be glorified. Use authorities and anti-authorities. Vivid details boost credibility. If possible, use statistics that generate a human context. Use the “Sinatra Test”.

Emotional – Make people care. Associate ideas with emotions that already exist in others. Bridge the emotional gap between your idea (that they don’t care about – yet) with something they already are emotional or care about. Place emphasis on benefits!

Story – Get people to act. Use stories as stimulation (tell people how to act). Use stories as inspiration (give people energy to act).

There are villains in the whole scheme of creating “sticky” ideas – one of them being The Curse of Knowledge. Once we know something, we find it difficult to recall what it was like not to know. The authors put you in the situation of experiencing the Curse of Knowledge perfectly. Try it yourself. Go get a friend. Think of a song and tap it out with your finger. Ask them to guess the song. To you it seems utterly ridiculous that they can’t guess it. But that’s because you have the song playing in your head. You don’t know what it’s like to be in that situation unless you switch roles. This is the exact situation you face when trying to express your ideas and messages to fresh minds. It’s the Curse of Knowledge. Don’t worry though, the Heath brothers will play superhero and show you how to navigate around this villian.

Each chapter contains ‘clinics’ or helpful case studies to show the principle in use. They are the icing on the cake because examples are bountifully placed throughout the text.

You will find “Made to Stick”in the business section of your local bookstore but don’t let its store location fool you. If you find yourself needing to communicate important ideas and messages – no matter what you do in life - this book will no doubt be a benefit to you. The Heath brothers claim that “Made to Stick” is no silver bullet for getting ideas to stick, but it’s pretty damn close!

Some more goodies:

• Made to Stick Blog
• Today Show Interview
• Are you Sticky? - Time article highlighting Made to Stick
• Marketing Made Sticky - Inc. feature

Fortune named this book “One of the smartest books of all time..”. It also has received praise from Financial Times as previously being named one of the Best Business Books of the Year. Praise is one thing this book isn’t lacking and I don’t think any review would do this book justice. Flatly put, this book is a must read.



When you think of terms such as randomness, probability, and induction you may get shivers up your spine. Don’t worry, it’s not back pain. These shivers are caused by memories of dry, monotonous writing that usually fill the text books on these subjects. Nassim Taleb has managed to do the impossible and it’s in the form of a book called “Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets”. Nassim has written a thought provoking book on randomness and has accomplished this through text which reads like a novel. As he explains in the preface, his aim when writing this book was to ‘avoid discussing…anything that I have not distilled well enough to be able to write on the subject with only the slightest effort’. Nassim is a fascinating individual who has a vast amount of knowledge on the numerous subjects which intersect with randomness such as: finance (Does the successful track record of a trader or money manager predict future success?), communication theory (Noise vs. Signal - Reading the Wall Street Journal is futile), and social aspects (gambling, superstitions). Nassim is also the originator of the ‘black swan’ theory - our inability to take into account of ‘unforseeable events’. I can attest that after reading this you’ll have a different outlook on life’s outcomes.

Check out the following links for more on Nassim:

• “Blowing Up” an article by Malcolm Gladwell
• “What Do We Know - The Scandel of Prediction” (direct MP3 download link) - Podcast featuring Nassim

If you frequent the business section of your local Barnes and Noble or Borders you will notice the constant flow of new titles on the shelves. Within each book you will find the authors advice backed up by case studies on successful companies or opinions from industry leaders. How do you know what to accept as useful information and what to pass off as platitudes?



This is where Jeffery Pfeffer and Robert Sutton come into play. The Stanford professors have written “Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense“. Their advice: Don’t accept what you read in these books as infallible. Much of what is accepted as truths or conventional wisdom within business is wrong. The reason: You need to practice evidence based management to steer away from making this mistake. What is evidence based management?

“Evidence-based management is based on the belief that facing the hard facts about what works and what doesn’t, understanding the dangerous half-truths that constitute so much conventional wisdom about management, and rejecting the total nonsense that too often passes for sound advice will help perform better.”

In the first part of the book Pfeffer and Sutton lay out where companies fail in the decision making process. Too many companies fail to back up their decisions with facts and evidence. They are too quick to act on new ideas and theories without judging whether it will benefit their particular situation. This is where things can go wrong. Instead, by following the evidence based management technique you are less likely to fall into this trap.

The second part of the book, where the meat of the information is, picks apart 6 common half truths in detail:

• Is Work Fundamentally Different from the Rest of Life and Should it Be?
• Do the Best Organizations Have the Best People?
• Do Financial Incentives Drive Company Performance?
• Strategy is Destiny?
• Change or Die?
• Are Great Leaders in Control of Their Companies?

The authors provide examples where conventional business wisdom will help answer each question and examples where it will lead you down the wrong path.

After reading through these chapters you will begin to understand Pfeffer and Sutton’s fundamentals for using evidence based management. Not all decisions are clear cut – you will need to back your decisions up with evidence to support them.

This book is an excellent read for anyone in their career – from CEO’s to those starting off their career. Pfeffer and Sutton have written a book that is easy, interesting and insightful.

*** Check out Robert’s blog - Work Matters for daily insights, recommended books and information on his other publications. ***

After an encounter with a coworker or family member have you ever resorted to silence while thinking, “That person WANTED to hurt my feelings!” Or maybe someone has made a comment that made your blood boil and set you fuming with rage. How did you handle difficult situations? Want to know an efficient way to resolve these conflicts?



The group of Patterson, Grenny, McMilan, and Switzler spells out an amazing method for handling such Crucial Confrontations. Patterson et al argue that poor confrontations happen all the time – but they do not have to be that way. And in case you’re pessimistic, their methodologies are based on over twenty years of research and first-hand experience with the world’s best confrontation and conversation holders.

Their methods boil down to a few key steps:

Work on Me First:
Figure out if the conversation is worth having, and if so, ask yourself, “Why would a reasonable person have said or done what he did?” You may start to understand the other person’s point of view a little better.

Confront with Safety:
The most CRUCIAL part of the process. People can’t be honest and open to change unless they feel safe – maintain a feeling of comfort throughout the confrontation and you’ll be halfway to success.

Stay Focused and Flexible:
Throughout a confrontation, the other person may bring up other issues or concerns. Be ready to field these, and, if necessary, to table current issues to discuss the new one. However, don’t forget the original problem.

Move to Action
Finally, there can be no change without a plan to monitor accountability. Provide clear and concise ways to follow up.

Learn to successfully handle crucial confrontations and you’ll be on your way to better relationships and business success! (For more info, check out the group’s website for some informative materials, including video demonstrations! — CrucialConfrontations.com)

Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Five Dysfunction of a Team” is excellent on many levels. Not only does he write an excellent story to showcase where teams fail, but he wraps important lessons within the characters interactions. It takes great skill to be able to be a storyteller, and Patrick has mastered it. In Five Dysfunctions, we get introduced to a self-destructing management team. The team and the company is on the brink of failure, when Kathryn Peterson, the new CEO enters the scene. Throughout the rest of the book we learn the pyramid model for why teams fail. The include (in order from top to bottom of the pyramid):



• Inattention to Results
• Avoidance of Accountability
• Lack of Commitment
• Fear of Conflict
• Absence of Trust

Each dysfunction, starting with Absence of Trust, will build up and lead to the others if not handled properly. The good news is Patrick included tips and advice on how to handle this. At the conclusion of the story, Patrick goes through some exercises to break down the problems dysfunctional teams face and advice on how to eradicate these problems. If you are on a dysfunctional team and want to build a successful one this book is a must read.

Patrick runs his own management consultant company The Table Group. Check out the company site for resources such as videos, audio, and articles of Patrick discussing topics covered in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Enough with the left brain thinking!



That is what Daniel Pink would say to you if he could. Ok, maybe not completely stop thinking with the left hemisphere of our brains (because we wouldn’t be able to function), but instead condition our right brain to make more contributions in our daily work. Daniel Pink’s new book, A Whole New Mind makes the argument that traditional ‘left-brain’ dominant jobs are moving overseas quicker than you can say ‘India’. With the combination of these three factors:

1. Abundance (of products and choices)
2. Asia (providers of cheap labor)
3. Automation (computers being able to replace humans)

we are facing changing times. With this fact in hand, those who can adapt to a larger ‘right-brain’ contribution to society will sprint ahead in the years ahead. What are some ways to ‘right-brain’ think? Good question. Pink provides six senses we need to develop: design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning. By mastering these senses you will be able to provide value which can’t be outsourced. If you can answer ‘yes’ to any of the question below, this book should be in your queue to read:

1. Can someone overseas do it cheaper?
2. Can a computer do it faster?
3. Is what I’m offering in demand in the age of abundance?

“A Whole New Mind is for anyone who wants to survive and thrive in this emerging world - people uneasy with their own careers or dissatisfied with their lives, entrepreneurs and business leaders eager to stay ahead of the next wave, parents who want to quip their children for the future…” - Daniel Pink, A Whole New Mind

Charge prices which reflect your value.

The sentence above is simple to understand, right? Why then do so many people face difficult decisions when choosing how to price their product/service? Well, for one, pricing isn’t easy. It’s the one decision that determines whether or not you make money. Organizations like the Professional Pricing Society can help, but you can still feel overwhelmed when making the decisions. Don’t be pigeonholed into thinking there is one ‘perfect’ price out there. If you do, Rafi Mohammed, author of The Art of Pricing: How To Find Hidden Profits To Grow Your Business believes you are leaving profits on the table.

Those who are placed with the responsibility to set prices of a product typically do so in the following basic equation:

(Cost of Supplies + Labor) * Markup % = Selling Price

This equation above has been the truism to pricing. Now let’s plug in some figures. Let’s say for instance we are selling a pitcher (of) lemonade (bear with me). Using the equation above:

Let’s assume we get 10 cups per pitcher:

($4.50 + $1.00) * 40% = $7.70 / 10 cups = $0.77 cents a cup

Our supplies cost us $4.50 per pitcher of lemonade, we are charging a fee of $1 for labor (cheap, I know!) and a markup of 40%. This leaves us selling the pitcher at $7.70, or $0.77 cents a cup. You could go ahead and sell all cups at $0.77 cents, and make your profit. But the key to this is there are hidden profits waiting to be discovered!

Implementing one of his pricing strategies, versioning, we could sell the same pitcher in the following fashion:

Have 3 different size cups. Large, medium, small. In one pitcher you can sell

2 Large @ $2.50 a cup
3 Medium @ $1.50 a cup
5 Small @ $0.77 a cup



With a total profit of: $13.35. That’s a 57% increase! Now this is a remedial problem. Think about if you were selling a more expensive item in higher volume. Rafi will help you discover all the possibilities in your pricing. He touches on subjects such as:

The Value Decoder – Finding the true value of your product and pricing it effectively to maximize your profits

Establishing A Culture of Profit – Empowering employees with information. If employees know which products offer the highest margin, you’re more apt to reap the benefits through profits

Strategies to Optimize Prices – When to rein in prices when you might not feel inclined

What’s important is that the methods discussed in this book can be implemented on Monday morning. It’s time you discover your hidden profits!