Book Review: Made to Stick

Without trying to oversell, this is a MUST READ for product management.

An ‘idea‘ is a funny concept. It can be concrete or it can be abstract and for a lot people the vagueness of an idea may be translated into many different things including ideas as new products or ideas as new features for existing products. The relevancy of this book for product managers is that they live in a world of ideas and they need some to stick and some to slip away. (Note: The principles will help make sure the right ones stick and the wrong ones slip away.) They also need to communicate a variety of messages including problem statements, vision statements and strategies all of which can be parsed through the principles of this book. This book provided an excellent framework to help you successfully disseminate those ideas.

The authors explain the six qualities of an idea that will stick:

• Simplicity: This is perhaps my favourite quality because too often I see too much content and part way through the description people’s eyes start to glaze over. Every idea has a core message and it important for your idea to draw attention to that core message. Focus on the core and keep it simple.
• Unexpectedness: The concept here is that people remember what they weren’t expecting to hear, something out of the ordinary. I think the key for product management is being able to articulate your idea in such a way that makes the impact stand out. You will want people to walk away remembering the impact and feeling compassion for people who are dealing with the impact of the idea every day.
• Concreteness: How do you make it real? The book gave a classic product management example (read: customer visits) of an employee of General Mills who poured through reams of data only to try a novel approach of going into the homes of actual customers and observing them. Imagine that?!?! Needless to say the observations were not only concrete but some were even unexpected.
• Credibility: To be honest, I think this is one that most product managers will suffer from the most (easily correctable, read concreteness again). A lot of your credibility will come from the supporting data you have collected, but also your leadership skills will play here. Be mindful of how you play the credibility card in this situation as just throwing out names or titles can instantly kill credibility.
• Emotional: The interesting line from this section was: “For people to take action, they have to care.” As you start to champion your idea, think about the factors that will encourage people to take action.
• Stories: Great section on how to complement your idea with stories. Again, I direct you to refer to the concreteness section for inspiration in developing stories. The right story will also draw on the emotional and credible aspect of your idea.

The overarching concept through the book that plagues the stickiness of ideas is what the authors call the “Curse of Knowledge.” They define this as a common tendency people have that reduces their ability to create ideas that stick. People tend to communicate ideas in a way that is constrained by the fact that they already know what they are talking about and find it hard to imagine what it was like to not know. The authors offer that the best way to beat the curse is to apply the six principles and transform your ideas. The other tip for beating the Curse of Knowledge is to ask why as many times as necessary for a truer understanding of the problem (and therefore idea).

This is book is officially going my “must-read” list for product managers. It’ll shape the way you write and communicate your ideas in way that will hopefully make them stick.

P.S. I found this, the The Stickiness Aptitude Test, for you to validate whether your idea is sticky. Enjoy!

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