Made to Stick is a book that will help you communicate ideas. And the traits or principles that help us do that include Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Credibility, Concreteness, Emotions, and Stories. In this post, we will begin to look at Simplicity.
Communicating with simplicity is finding the core of the idea. This means we need to strip the idea down to its most crucial essence, weeding out the superfluous. The key is finding the most important idea and not getting bogged down with good ideas,.
The authors offer a quote from the French aviator and author Antoine de Saint-Exupery: “A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.†We need a keen insight to know how much can be wrung out of an idea before it begins to loose its essence.
Writing the Lead
News reporters are taught to begin their report with the most important information. This is called the lead. After the lead, information is presented in a decreasing order of importance, sort of an inverted pyramid. When reporters bury the lead, they let the most important piece of the story slip down too far into the story.
As communicators, we need to think of the lead in a story as a metaphor for finding the core of the message. They both require forced prioritization.
The importance of prioritization is found when we consider that uncertainty can paralyze us. Prioritization frees us from the clutches of decision angst. That is why the core is so valuable. People who listen to us will constantly be trying to make decisions in the midst of uncertainty. They will struggle from the need to make a decision and need the essence of an idea to make the choice.
Simple = Core + Compact
Simple ideas have an elegance and utility that make them function like a proverb, which are “short sentences (compact) drawn from long experiences (core).
Compact help people learn and remember the core message. The impact may come more greatly when it comes a time to help people ACT properly, especially when they have a need to make a lot of choices. We can only learn and remember so much information at once.
Only ideas with profound compactness are valuable. To accomplish this, we need to pack a lot of meaning into a little bit of messaging. This is done by using flags, tapping into the memory of your audience, using what is already there.
For instance, consider these two definitions of a pomelo:
1. A pomelo is the largest citrus fruit. The rind is very think but soft and easy to peel away. The resulting fruit has a light yellow to coral pink flesh and can vary from juicy to slightly dry and from seductively spicy-sweet to tangy and tart.
Question: If you mixed pomelo juice half and half with orange juice, would it taste good?
2. A pomelo is basically a supersized grapefruit with a very thick and soft rind.
Which one sticks better? For most people, the answer is definition two because most of us already know what a grapefruit is.
By tying the pomelo to the grapefruit, we are able to learn a new concept much easier. Grapefruit is a schema we already have. Schemas enable profound simplicity and help create complex messages from simple materials.
Metaphors
Good metaphors are “generativeâ€. They generate “new perceptions, explanations, and inventions.†Many sticky ideas are actually generative metaphors. These types of metaphors get their power by substituting something easy to think about for something difficult.
Application
I very much like what the Heath’s have to say here with one exception. I have to wonder if verbal communication creates the need for putting the lead at the end and building up to it. I know that if I get the most important information at the beginning, I’ll zone out – especially if I know that I am getting the most important information at the beginning.
I very much appreciate the great need for verbal imagery the must be practiced though the mastery of metaphor. I am trying to figure out how I can incorporate this into my communication style. Imagery and metaphor development are being hailed by those in the cognitive sciences. It turns out we think in this matter.
We need to work hard at communicating. We most often don’t.
