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

Read The Book!

For me, one of the primary ways I stay smart is through reading books.  I thought I would start off Oh Nine! with some recommendations of books I read and throughly enjoyed in 2008 as well as share my list of books to read in the first ninety days of the new year.  

This year I read some GREAT books.  Here are a few recommendations for your bookshelf.

Brain Rules is a fascinating read about how our brains work and why we do the things we do.  For us, it has informed us in our workshops when we talk 

about what audiences pay attention to, what they remember and how that   impacts presentation design.  

For me, this was the best book I read in 2008.  The information is relevant, interesting and applicable to what we do everyday--teaching people to communicate their ideas in a way that it sticks to people.  The writers are two brothers and the sense of humor they bring to each and every page of the book is what held my interest.  There are a number of memorable anecdotes which is a good thing--their book "Made to Stick" is sticky indeed.

 What does it mean for a book to revolutionize a field?  Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds has done just that by changing the way people think about slide design.  For years we have gotten closer and closer to the principles that Reynolds teaches in this bible of slide design but this book was what really sent us into a  new league.  If you want your slides to stand out from

the rest, use this as your starting point.  

Earlier this year Millie and I found a company called

Duarte Design on the Internet and loved the site.  Later in the year, company co-founder, Nancy Duarte published her first book on slide and presentation design, Slide:ology, that has been a great add on to Presentation Zen.  We like it so much that we are traveling to California in March for a dynamic duo workshop with her and Garr Reynolds to learn first                          hand how they approach slide design.  We will be sure and follow up on our                          trip with you about what we learn.  

The Next Ninety Days of Reading:

So in my quest to get smarter at what I do, I have made my list for the next ninety days.  Here is what I am going to be reading:   

 

This book has been on my list for quite a while now.  I am

going to embrace my inner artist-doodler-sketcher person and embrace the principles in this book.

Why do people act irrationally?  Good question.  Sway examines this very question and poses some interesting ways of thinking about this idea.  Using

modern day examples of people who have acted well... irrationally we learn the deep psychological influences that drive these very behaviors.

My final read for the next 90 days is going to be Outliers. By---Yep! 

Malcolm Gladwell.  I have had a lot of fun watching him show up on my favorite shows like The Colbert Report and reading articles about his new book Outliers.  In Outliers Galdwell examines the question why is that some people have exceptional success?  Are they themselves exceptional? Or is it simply right place, right time?  

What are you reading in the next ninety days?  Let us know and we will add it to our list!