Meetings that stick

ILLUSTRATION BY DAVID JOHNSON Meet ings Made To S t ick ✱ Co-authors and brothers, Chip and Dan Heath have spent more than a decade figuring out what makes certain ideas burn bright while others go dim. Convene asked them to apply what they’ve learned to meetings. ➻ BY ANDREA DOYLE 28 pcma convene October 2007 The Heath brothers grew up near Austin and Houston. Dan (on the left) wanted to be a zookeeper; Chip (the Stanford University professor), a trash collector. “I just thought it was so cool the way they would lift those metal cans up on their shoulders,” he said. “It’s never too late,” his brother joked. PHOTOGRAPH BY JONATHAN SUANDERS I 30 T SEEMED LIKE AN EASY TASK. Research psychologist Gary Klein was asked by a meeting planner to write a synopsis after attending an upcoming conference. It should be more succinct than a transcript and more coherent than a compilation of the presenters’ PowerPoint slides, he was told. Klein, famous for his work on how people make decisions, assembled a team and assigned one person to monitor each of the conference’s five parallel tracks. Each time someone told a story during a panel discussion, the monitors jotted it down. At the end of the conference, the monitors compared notes, and found they had compiled a set of stories that were “funny, tragic, and exciting,” according to Klein. They structured and organized the stories and sent the packet to the conference organizer. She was ecstatic with what they uncovered, finding the compilation much more useful and “vivid” than the typical conference takeaway (a set of dry abstracts). She planned to convert the notes into a book. As a courtesy, she sent the compilation to the conference presenters. They, on the other hand, were furious. “They said, ‘I came in with these grand conclusions in my PowerPoint documents, conclusions built on years of experience, and these schmos plucked out a handful of stories they are representing as my session,’” Chip Heath relates. The project — which could have helped shape the way content is delivered pcma convene October 2007 at that organization’s future meetings — was abandoned. The story, which appears in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, is retold by Chip because it’s among the brothers’ favorites in the book. It also illustrates what’s wrong with most meetings. What stays in people’s collective memories after attending a meeting? Not the slogans or the bullet-point slides, not the generic and abstract advice. It’s the concrete, rich stories, they said. Stories have an amazing power to inspire. Effective stories get passed along, they last, they “stick.” That term has, well, stuck with the two brothers since they read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, which explores what he called “sticky” ideas and behaviors that catch on in society. Gladwell is one of their favorite authors, they say, but he never fully fleshed out what makes an idea sticky. That's where the Heaths come in. Finding insight in fields as disparate as psychology, politics, screenwriting, economics, folklore, and epidemiology, they deconstruct sticky ideas. Their book, continued on page 33 Chip Heath, professor of organizational behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, says speakers should make their stories the entrée, not the garnish. Simplicity, Unexpectedness, Concreteness, Credibility, Emotions, Stories SUCCESs From urban legends to high school history lessons, memorable concepts have certain traits in common. According to the Heath brothers, the ideas that stick share six principles that they have organized with the acronym SUCCESs. Credibility Sticky ideas have to carry their own credentials. We need ways to help people test our ideas for themselves. Take Ronald Reagan in the 1980 U.S. presidential debate. He could have cited innumerable statistics demonstrating the sluggishness of the economy. Instead he asked a simple question: “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.” Simplicity Say one thing, not 10. The ultimate model of simplicity is a one-sentence statement so profound that an individual could spend a lifetime learning to follow it. Emotions How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something. Unexpectedness For an idea to endure, it must generate interest and curiosity. Concepts that have an element of surprise stick in our minds. Stories How do we get people to act on our ideas? We tell stories. Similarly, hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively. To read a Soundview Speed Review of Made to Stick, go to www.pcma.org/resources/convene/archives and click on the June 2007 issue. Concreteness Mission statements, synergies, strategies, visions — they are often ambiguous to the point of being meaningless. Naturally sticky ideas are full of concrete images — ice-filled bathtubs, obese college students — because our brains are wired to remember mental pictures. STICKY BOOTHS Made to Stick co-author Dan Heath is a consultant at Duke Corporate Education, a provider of custom executive education. Previously, he had a fellowship at Harvard Business School, and before that he co-founded Thinkwell, a company that produces innovative college textbooks in multimedia rather than print. While representing Thinkwell at many trade shows, Dan found that letting people interact with and experience Thinkwell’s product themselves was the best approach. “We would go to conferences where professors were the attendees. We were trying to get them interested in this wacky new textbook concept. At first, we were basically just people and pamphlets. But we realized no one in their right mind craves being hit by a sales pitch,” he explained. “Eventually, we figured out, well, duh, what people do like is playing with stuff. So we set up some computer terminals where they could click around and see our product. We also put the terminals far away from the people staffing our booth so they could conceivably play around without having us bother them. There was a radical difference in the responses we got.” 32 pcma convene October 2007 The Heath brothers are on a mission to make the world a stickier place. From getting your point across more effectively in a casual conversation, to saving your attendees from a meeting that quickly fades from memory, you only need to apply Chip and Dan Heath’s provocative, eye-opening, and surprisingly common-sense principles. continued from page 30 published this year, has quickly become a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and BusinessWeek best-seller. They now write a regular column for Fast Company exploring how and why ideas succeed or fail. Stories: Building Blocks and Flight Simulators Forty-four-year-old Chip’s ideas about effective presentations have been honed by years of experience as a professor of organizational behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Presentations should be carefully crafted — using stories as the building blocks, he said. “I think so many presenters try to go straight to the conclusion, bypassing the building blocks … and you can’t effectively teach that way. The best abstract conclusions and principles emerge from stories. You can’t just pass along these principles without giving the audience the building blocks,” Chip said. Dan, 10 years his junior, explains further, using a different analogy. “Stories are like flight simulators for the brain. If you’re going to be a pilot, obviously the best way to learn is to fly a plane. When you can’t fly a plane, the next best thing is a flight simulator which still puts you as close as you can get to the pilot’s chair without you actually being there. Essentially, this is the role stories play in the learning process. What you do is follow along in your head with someone else’s story. Research has shown that the process of simulating someone’s else experience in your head is quite an effective learning process.” In their book, the Heaths propose the following scenario. Suppose you are a manager at Nordstrom speaking at a meeting of your peers (“Nordies”). The final slide in your presentation reads, “Lessons from Nordstrom: In retail, outstanding customer service is a key source of competitive advantage.” While discussing your fourth slide, you happen to mention, as a humorous aside, the Nordie who gift- wrapped a present for a customer who had bought the item at Macy’s. Klein’s group (based on the work they had done with the conference organizer) would have you keep the giftwrapping story but drop the lessons statement. And the Heaths would concur. Stories as the Entrée, Not the Garnish Remember Jared, the guy in the Subway commercials who lost 100 pounds in three months by eating two subs a day? This successful ad campaign was built on a statistic: seven subs; under six grams of fat. As far as statistics go, that’s pretty good, but it still wouldn’t have stuck like this guy’s remarkable story. You could empathize with Jared; his story created a tangible, sensory connection. (Bet you can still picture him in his “after” photos, stretching the 60-inch waist of his “before” pants.) “Unfortunately, people use stories and anecdotes as garnish. They use stories just to entertain and then get back to the real work. What they don’t understand is that the stories are the real work. They are the entrée, not just the gar- As a consultant at Duke Corporate Education, Dan Heath develops programs, teaches, and manages client relationships with companies including Microsoft and Wal-Mart. Meeting planners should see themselves as “conversation producers,” he says. pcma convene October 2007 33 nish,” said Chip. “Most of today’s day of the conference was a complete speeches are 90 percent concept and letdown, he said. “I was really 10 percent stories. A better ratio is the depressed because I had been there all complete opposite.” day and listened to all these grand preThey use one of Aesop’s fables, The sentations derived from the lessons Fox and the Grapes, as another examthey had learned from their decades ple. “One hot summer day, a fox was of experience in marketing. Every prestrolling through an orchard. He saw senter sounded the same. They all had these very abstract bullet-point a bunch of grapes ripening high on a descriptions. I thought to myself, ‘I’ve grapevine. ‘Just the thing to quench my What makes this New York Times wasted my time coming halfway thirst,’ he said. Backing up a few paces, best-seller a compelling read? across the country to attend this conhe took a run and jumped at the It is filled with stories that capture the imagination and drive home ference,’” he said. grapes, just missing. Turning around the authors’ points. But things turned around on Day again, he ran faster and jumped again. 2, which was devoted to actual case Still a miss. Again and again he studies. “All of a sudden, the discusjumped, until at last he gave up out of sions at the end of the sessions came alive. It was like, wow, exhaustion. Walking away with his nose in the air, he said, ‘I this isn’t just generic abstract advice. These are concrete, rich am sure they are sour.’ It is easy to despise what you can’t get.” stories illustrating success.” Aesop authored some of the stickiest stories in world hisThe most successful meetings do just that, according to the tory, according to the Heath brothers. This fable has survived Heath brothers: They stimulate conversation. The best meetfor more than 2,500 years because of the concrete images ing planners are “conversation producers.” They pay strict evoked by it: the grapes, the fox, the dismissive comment attention to how conversation is cultivated. “People attend about sour grapes. conferences to have conversations and to build a network Chip recently attended a marketing conference. The first ✱ of people to have future conversations with. Wouldn’t it be nice if conventions included sessions with facilitators who work to catalyze conversation between the people in the room?” asked Dan. “I don’t know why I’m suggesting this,” he said with a laugh. “It can result in me and Chip losing some work.” Both brothers have been sharing their ideas on stickiness through speaking engagements across the country. More attention should be paid to how people network. The only opportunities shouldn’t be at the hotel bar, Dan said. “If the entire conference consists of the audience sitting in chairs watching someone talk, there is not going to be much creativity in the way networking takes place.” The Velcro Theory of Memory Made to Stick starts off with the story of a frequent business traveler who had some time to kill before his flight. He went to a local bar for a drink. He’d just finished one drink when an attractive woman approached and offered to buy him another. That’s the last thing he remembered until he woke up, disoriented, lying in a hotel bathtub, covered in ice. He spots a note that reads, “Don’t move. Call 911.” The operator, oddly familiar with the scenario, asks him if there is a tube protruding from his lower back. Sure enough, there is. “Don’t panic,” she tells him, “but one of your kidneys has been removed. There’s a ring of organ thieves we’ve been trying to catch and it seems they got to you. Don’t move until the paramedics arrive.” It’s one of the most successful urban legends of the past 15 years, and it has continued to circulate because of the way our brains work. Our memories are like Velcro. The brain has lots of hooks for ideas. There are visual hooks, auditory hooks, physical hooks, tactical hooks. This urban legend grabs all these hooks, “conjuring up such strong visual images that you just want to shiver when you hear about the ice-filled bathtub,” said Chip. “That hooks it into your brain. If you think about the hooks you have in the average lecture or presentation, you’ll realize they are limited. The visuals usually aren’t particularly interesting unless there is a clever PowerPoint. The auditory hooks aren’t that interesting as you typically have one voice talking.” The more hooks in an idea, the more powerful it will be. The Curse of Knowledge As every conference organizer — and attendee — knows, PowerPoint presentations have become a crutch for many presenters. They share data but not stories. The Heaths refer to the “Curse of Knowledge.” This is when a subject matter expert understands a concept so well that s/he has a hard Key Takeaways for Meetings Presenters should tell stories. Most presentations are 90 percent concept and 10 percent stories. That ratio should be reversed. Case studies bring abstract conclusions to life. ✱ Subject matter experts often suffer from “The Curse of Knowledge.” They know so much about a particular topic that it is hard for them to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. Analogies are a good tool for them to use to communicate their knowledge. ✱ Meeting themes should be specific. Go out on a limb to theme your conference around a specific, concrete issue or challenge your industry is facing. ✱ The most effective conventions are interactive and experiential. They give attendees a chance to better understand and remember your offering. ✱ The most successful meetings stimulate conversation. time explaining it to those who don’t. The more we know about something and the more expertise we have, the harder it is for us to imagine what it’s like to lack that knowledge. Upper management will refer to “maximizing shareholder value” but their employees may have no idea how this applies to them. The solution is to simplify — without oversimplifying — your message. It’s not easy to get a thought out of our own heads and into the heads of others. The Heath brothers’ advice: Create a plain-speech statement specifying a plan’s ultimate goal. In the Army, it’s called Commander’s Intent (CI). This is a crisp, plain-talk statement that appears on the top of every order, specifying the plan’s goal, the desired end-state of an operation. The CI never specifies so much detail that it risks being rendered obsolete by unpredictable events. Sticky Themes Successful meetings and conventions start with successful marketing campaigns built around a sticky theme. According to the Heath brothers, a good way to test whether your theme is sticky or not is to go to the Web sites of other associations and see if your theme will work for their conferences. If it does, your theme is not sticky. “I do understand that it is easy for meetings to become disconnected. For that reason, it is important that they have an underlying theme. In some meetings, the theme is the most abstract umbrella you can possibly come up with to fit all these individual pieces together,” Chip added. But an abstract umbrella does not make for a powerful theme. “Meeting planners are in a great position to understand the dynamics of their industry. They should be industry leaders who can easily pick one simple theme and then focus in on that theme,” explained Dan. 36 pcma convene October 2007 “If you’re able to capture a very specific issue that everyone is struggling with, that is going to be one step toward making the meeting sticky and making sure people get on the plane, pay their hotel bill, and actually show up at your conference,” said Chip. Chip and Dan agreed that conference themes tend to be so abstract that they are meaningless. “Leading for the Future,” suggested Dan. “Putting People First,” said Chip. In unison, the brothers said, “Yawn.” Dan recently attended a conference about health care for the aging. He said, “The conference had a relatively generic name — it’s blurring together in my mind with other themes — but one of the primary themes of the conference was fascinating. It was about the fact that we are entering an era which will be the end of the nursing home. Aging Boomers have had it their way their whole lives and it turns out they do not want to live in nursing homes,” explained Dan. “That’s it,” his brother chimed in. “The theme of the conference should have been, ‘The End of the Nursing Home.’” It’s fear that prevents many planners from taking a risk like that, Dan said. But on the other hand, such a theme can garner a great deal of publicity. “Think of the conversation you have created during the whole next year. People will say, ‘Remember that conference about the end of the nursing home?’ You’ve got a year’s worth of advertising based on that theme. Right now, most themes are so meaningless that they are not accomplishing anything for the organization. “Despite that, people are still attending, speakers are still coming, and conversations are happening. Think of the opportunities if you got it right.” ■ ➻ Andrea Doyle is Convene’s senior writer.