Why Do Some Ideas Survive and Others Die?

Orginally published on Monday, February 19, 2007 at 9:55 AM
by Todd Rhoades

What makes an idea stick? Chip Heath and Dan Heath recently wrote a book entitled, “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die”. During their research, they took at close look at hundreds of ideas and came up with six principles that they said they saw over and over again that made ideas ‘sticky’. Let’s take a quick look at each of the six, and how they might relate to us in our church leadership settings. Here they are...

PRINCIPLE 1: SIMPLICITY
How do we find the essential core of our 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 down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize. Saying something short is not the mission — sound bites are not the ideal. 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.

[Interesting that the ‘simplistic’, ‘simple yet profound’ example they provide is from the Bible.  As a matter of fact, the book of Proverbs is full of simple, profound ideas that have hung on over time.  As you lead the vision and mission of your church, how do you communicate your ideas?  Are they simple, yet profound?  Or are they bureaucratic and cumbersome?  Could you explain them to your eight year old?  If not, your idea probably will not fly… it’s too complex.]

PRINCIPLE 2: UNEXPECTEDNESS
How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across? We need to violate people’s expectations. We need to be counterintuitive. We can use surprise — an emotion whose function is to increase alertness and cause focus — to grab people’s attention. But surprise doesn’t last. For our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity. How do you keep students engaged during the fortyeighth history class of the year? We can engage people’s curiosity over a long period of time by systematically “opening gaps” in their knowledge — and then filling those gaps.

[Again, I find it interesting that Jesus was a master of the unexpected.  He was constantly ‘violating people’s expectations’ and being ‘counterintuitive’.  As a church leader, do you propose your ideas in a way that generates interest and curiosity?  As a leader, you must constantly engage your church’s curiosity, and then, as Chip and Dan say, “Fill in the cracks”.]

PRINCIPLE 3: CONCRETENESS
How do we make our ideas clear? We must explain our ideas in terms of human actions, in terms of sensory information. This is where so much business communication goes awry. Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions — they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images because our brains are wired to remember concrete data. In proverbs, abstract truths are often encoded in concrete language: “A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.” Speaking concretely is the only way to ensure that our idea will mean the same thing to everyone in our audience.

[“Ambiguous to the point of being meaningless”.  I love it.  Is that not a picture of many churches today?  How are you doing in this area?  Is your idea succinct?  Does everyone understand your idea?  Is everyone on the same page?  If not, your communication will flounder.]

PRINCIPLE 4: CREDIBILITY
How do we make people believe our ideas? When the former surgeon general C. Everett Koop talks about a public-health issue, most people accept his ideas without skepticism. But in most day-to-day situations we don’t enjoy this authority. Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves — a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas. When we’re trying to build a case for something, most of us instinctively grasp for hard numbers. But in many cases this is exactly the wrong approach. 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.”

[Interesting thoughts here.  In order to prove our point and make our ideas concrete (see principle #3), we often resort to ‘just the facts’.  Motivating people in the church with your ideas and vision is something that requires authority; and that’s tough… How do you get people to ‘test your ideas for themselves’?  How do you get credibility as you communicate your vision and ideas?]

PRINCIPLE 5: EMOTIONS
How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. Research shows that people are more likely to make a charitable gift to a single needy individual than to an entire impoverished region. We are wired to feel things for people, not for abstractions. Sometimes the hard part is finding the right emotion to harness.

[Using emotion without manipulation… that’s a tough one for many church leaders.  How do you make people feel for something?]

PRINCIPLE 6: STORIES
How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. 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. Research shows that mentally rehearsing a situation helps us perform better when we encounter that situation in the physical environment. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.

[The art of storytelling is something that most of our churches need to do better.  Stories about vision; life change and more.  They help communicate ideas in very meaningful ways.]

You can read more on the book here...

FOR DISCUSSION: So… what do you think of these thoughts about making ideas stick?  What was one of your best ideas that had the most stickiness?  Why?  And what idea did you have that flopped?  Was it because of one of these six reasons?

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.

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