Made to Stick

I really enjoyed this Book on CD (B+). I got it because Dale had talked about it, I was a little worried that it wouldn't be very concrete or actionable, but it was very insightful.

**From Wikipedia**
The basic outline of the book follows the acronym "SUCCES" (with the last s omitted), which is summarized on the back of the book. Each letter refers to a characteristic or tool that can make an idea "sticky":

* Simplicity—finding the core of any idea
* Unexpectedness—grabbing people's attention by surprising them
* Concreteness—making sure an idea can be grasped and remembered later
* Credibility—giving an idea believability
* Emotion—helping people see the importance of an idea
* Stories—empowering people to use an idea through narrative

Chip Heath is a professor at Stanford University. Dan Heath is a consultant and developer of innovative textbooks. They also write a regular feature for Fast Company magazine.
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Even the outline doesn't really sound great, but the examples are really really good. They talk about how Jared became a Subway commercial star, how Southwest has made their vision for low fares crystal clear for every employee.

But the best for me was the discussion on how people vote for president. It turns out people do not learn about the issues and then vote for the person who would benefit them the most. They tend to vote based on the group association they put on themselves. Most people think "I view myself as this type of person, and this type of person would vote for so and so" even if they do not personally benefit from that candidates plans.

They gave a great example of Firemen. This company made a public safety video and called around Firehouses to ask if they would be willing get a free copy to preview. They almost all agreed. Once they agreed the company asked what type of free gift they would want as a "thanks" for watching the video. The response was very bad to that free gift because firemen do not view themselves as people who need incentives to view safety videos. Whereas most of us at home would probably accept a free gift for a subscription to a magazine or anything we were already interested in.

Probably explains why when we took Karen's quiz on the election issues, it turned up presidential candidates we had never even considered.