What differentiates the best from the rest in all walks of life? What one single action provides a giant ‘wow’ factor not just to the mighty, but to people at any level?

Communications.

That’s right; no matter how they choose to do it, communicating is the hallmark of every great leader/manager/artist/parent/et al.

Communications need to be clear, concise and sticky.

Never minimize the importance of sticky, no matter the clarity and brevity if your message isn’t sticky it won’t be remembered when it’s needed.

I read a fascinating McKinsey interview (requires free registration) with Stanford Chip Heath, Professor of Organizational Behavior, an expert on sticky communications who has written several books on the subject.

Three comments really stood out for me, the first because it strikes to the heart of much of the poor communications I see:

The Quarterly: What’s the hardest thing for leaders to learn about making their messages stick?

Chip Heath: I think simplicity is the hardest. Leaders know lots of things about their organization and business and want to share them all. But effective leaders are masters of simplicity. I’m not talking about dumbing down a message or turning it into a sound bite; I’m talking about identifying the most central, core elements of strategies and highlighting them…

The second because it’s important for people to understand and believe that these skills are learnable and that even people revered for their sticky communications still work at it.

The Quarterly: Is the ability to design sticky messages learnable?

Chip Heath: Yes, it is. Steve Jobs looks like a natural, but he’s known in Silicon Valley for the obsessive amounts of time he spends working on his new-product introductions. He thinks systematically about his messages and most of them work. But few other leaders are as deliberate.

And the third because it really strikes home considering all the talk about how Web 2.0 affects communication is the solution to most, if not all, business and social woes.

The Quarterly: What does Marshall McLuhan’s famous phrase “the medium is the message” mean today? How important is the medium in all this?

Chip Heath: I admire McLuhan for coming up with a sticky slogan, but with all due respect his slogan is wrong. In truth, the message is the message. People who think too much about the medium—opt-in newsletters, the Internet, Web 2.0—are making the same mistake that people have made for years in education. Remember how the 8-millimeter film was going to revolutionize education? Then the VCR? Then the personal computer? The medium can certainly help, but an 8-millimeter film didn’t salvage a bad math lesson.

There are the six basic traits that sticky ideas share, based on Heath’s research.

1. Simplicity. Messages are most memorable if they are short and deep. Glib sound bites are short, but they don’t last. Proverbs such as the golden rule are short but also deep enough to guide the behavior of people over generations.
2. Unexpectedness. Something that sounds like common sense won’t stick. Look for the parts of your message that are uncommon sense. Such messages generate interest and curiosity.
3. Concreteness. Abstract language and ideas don’t leave sensory impressions; concrete images do. Compare “get an American on the moon in this decade” with “seize leadership in the space race through targeted technology initiatives and enhanced team-based routines.”
4. Credibility. Will the audience buy the message? Can a case be made for the message or is it a confabulation of spin? Very often, a person trying to convey a message cites outside experts when the most credible source is the person listening to the message. Questions—“Have you experienced this?”—are often more credible than outside experts.
5. Emotions. Case studies that involve people also move them. “We are wired,” Heath writes, “to feel things for people, not abstractions.”
6. Stories. We all tell stories every day. Why? “Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation,” Heath writes. “Stories act as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.”

Many leaders, from Fortune 50 corporations to pastors and parents may incorporate some, if not all, of these in what they say, but seeing them defined and then consciously making sure that all six are present will take anybody’s communications to a higher level.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 2:51 pm and is filed under About Leadership, Communication, management, Reviews & Recommendations, What Leaders DO. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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