Are you Sticky?

In our lunch, learn and LEAD workshop with our friends at VLK this week we are looking in great depth at how to generate sticky ideas for our presentations. I am hoping to get some feedback leading up to Friday that will help us to wrap our head around the concepts of sticky ideas. One of the most profound, yet simple ideas that comes out of Chip and Dan Heath's book "Made to Stick" is "The Curse of Knowledge" heretofore referred to as: CofK. Ok... The CofK concept is pretty elegant in it's description--Once we know something, it is hard to imagine what it was like to not know it. Done. Millie and I have to remember this when teaching presentation and slide design. We have years of experience doing this--most people don't. So we have to carefully construct our messages to fit the experiences of our audience.

Now, if you have ever had to suffer through the pains of helping your little person with multiplication you can understand CofK at work. As an adult, with years of experience multiplying numbers, we have all learned the little tricks that help us to multiple even the most difficult of numbers. Just the other night I was working with my daughter on 7, 8, and 9. I was hoping the pattern that emerges when multiplying with the number 9 would be obvious. You know it right?

9 18 27 36 45 54 63 72 81 90 99 108 117 126 135 144 153 162 171 180

Do you see the pattern?

You probably do.

The number in the ten's place is going up as we climb to 90 and it is going down in the one's place. When we get to 99, we start over again and the tens place goes up one while the one's place goes down one.

But my daughter did not see the pattern on her own.

And this made me frustrated. How could she not see it?

Because I am familiar with the CofK I was good to remember that I probably didn't figure out the pattern on my own either (I'm no rainman mind you) and it is more likley that an adult pointed it out to me. And with that realization I was able to then modify my instruction to her to accommodate for the fact that she does not have the same knowledge base as I do.

So, I am wondering--how does the CofK get in the way of your messages? Consider for example if you work in a highly specialized industry. Do you tend to take for granted that not everyone knows the same things you know? (Computer People can be among the worst! Sorry but it's true!)

Leave your replies below. And good luck conquering the mighty CofK (cue dun dun dun music).

Tomorrow's post will get you thinking about what messages and ideas are sticky to you. Start looking around and considering for example commercials, logos, advertising campaigns, packaging, etc. All of these are places where ideas should be sticky (and often are not!)

Until then, have a great (rainy) Monday