Made to Stick

Delivering an Engaging Presentation – The Six Principles Presented by Moe Abdou - Co-founder and Managing Partner, iEvolution http://ievolution.biz | [email_address]  1240 India Street, Suite 1900 San Diego, CA 92101 | T:(888) 352-2611 | F:(888) 870-1666  2 Wisconsin Circle, Suite 640 Chevy Chase, MD 20815 | T: (301) 652-4545, ext 101 | F:(301) 652-0303 Inspired by the brilliant work of Chip and Dan Heath in their book “Made to Stick”

The Six Principle Theory How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist.

Principle One How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist. Simplicity How do you find the essential core of your ideas? A successful defense lawyer says, “ If you argue ten points, even if each is a good point, when they get back to the jury room they won’t remember any .” To strip an idea to its core, you must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission – sound bites are not the idea. Proverbs are the ideal. We must create ideas that are both simple and profound . The golden Rule is the ultimate model of simplicity: A one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it.

Principle Two How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist. Unexpectedness How do you get your audience to pay attention to your ideas, and how do you maintain their interest to get your ideas across? You need to break people’s thinking patterns - Be counterintuitive. A bag of popcorn is as unhealthy as a whole day’s worth of fatty foods! In the short term, You can use surprise to grab people’s attention. To keep people engaged long term, you systematically, open gaps, in their knowledge – and then fill those gaps.

Principle Three How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist. Concreteness How do you make your ideas clear? Make it real. Provide concrete images. Explain your ideas in terms of human actions, and put people into the story. “ A bird in hand is worth two in the bush .” Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Talk about people, not data and set common goals in tangible terms: Our plane will land on Runway 4-22.

Principle Four How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist. Credibility How do you make people believe your ideas?

Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. You need ways to help people test your ideas for themselves – a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas.

We trust people we like and ones we want to be like.

Use statistics to illustrate a relationship In the sole U.S. presidential debate in 1980 between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, Reagan could have cited innumerable statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead he asked a simple question that allowed voters to test for themselves: “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.”

Principle Five How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist. EMotions How do you get people to care about your ideas? Mother Teresa once said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at one, I will” Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region . Appeal to self-Interest and make your client feel something. In the case of movie popcorn, we make them feel disgusted by its unhealthiness. The statistic “37 grams” doesn’t elicit any emotions. We are wired to feel things for people, not abstractions. Understand how people make decisions based on identity – Who am I? what kind of situation is this? And what do people like me do in this kind of situation?

Principle Six How do you get your ideas to stick? Focus on making your Ideas understandable, memorable, and effective in changing thought or behavior What stops you? The Curse of Knowledge How do you beat it? Use the Success following SUCCESS checklist. Stories How do you get people to act on your ideas? Stories are simulations-they tell people how to act. Firefighters naturally swap stories after every fire, and by doing so they multiply their experience; after years of hearing stories, they have a richer, more complete mental catalog of critical situations they might confront during a fire and the appropriate responses to those situations. Visualizing and mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Hearing stories acts like a flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. Stories provide inspiration and gives people the energy to act - Jared, the 425-pound fast-food dieter . Look for stories with three key plots: Challenge {to overcome obstacles}, Connections {to get along or reconnect}, Creativity {to inspire a new way of thinking}.

The Six Principles Simplicity Concreteness Stories Unexpectedness Emotions Credibility