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Since the release of Made to Stick, weā€™ve had the chance to work with a lot of organizations, and weā€™ve been surprised to find that their external communications are usually far more sophisticated than their internal communications. Compare a typical customer with a typical employee. Companies spend millions trying to understand the Typical Customer. He is studied and analyzed. His whims are plotted and charted. Messages are laboriously tailored to his concerns and delivered to him via convenient media.

Meanwhile, the Typical Employee receives a bland (but cheerful) monthly e-mail newsletter, which an unlucky HR employee hacked together in ninety minutes.

We are being facetious, of course, but the trend is unmistakable: Customer communication is taken very seriously, and employee communication isnā€™t. And thatā€™s a tremendous opportunity for organizational leaders. Employees need to understand what your organization stands for, where itā€™s headed, and what will make it successful. In other words, they need to be able to ā€œtalk strategy.ā€ And if they can talk strategy back to you, youā€™ll benefit from insights that would otherwise be untapped and invisible.

Heath, HeathMade to Stick
p.253

Related Quotes

So, a good process for making your ideas stickier is: (1) Identify the central message you need to communicateā€”find the core; (2) Figure out what is counterintuitive about the messageā€”i.e., What are the unexpected implications of your core message? Why isnā€™t it already happening naturally? (3) Communicate your message in a way that breaks your audienceā€™s guessing machines along the critical, counterintuitive dimension. Then, once their guessing machines have failed, help them refine their machines.

Heath, HeathMade to Stick
p.72

Itā€™s uncommon sense in the service of a core message.

Heath, HeathMade to Stick
p.75

To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from ā€œWhat information do I need to convey?ā€ to ā€œWhat questions do I want my audience to ask?

Heath, HeathMade to Stick
p.88

Why canā€™t these smart, talented speakers make their ideas stick? A few of the villains discussed in this book are implicated. The first villain is the natural tendency to bury the leadā€”to get lost in a sea of information. One of the worst things about knowing a lot, or having access to a lot of information, is that weā€™re tempted to share it allā€¦

The second villain is the tendency to focus on the presentation rather than on the message. Public speakers naturally want to appear composed, charismatic, and motivational. And, certainly, charisma will help a properly designed message stick better. But all the charisma in the world wonā€™t save a dense, unfocused speech, as some Stanford students learn the hard way.

Heath, HeathMade to Stick
p.243-244

While the messages themselves were pivotal for embedding the strategic intent in the organization, so too was the language used to convey them. It was simple, evocative, and memorable. In any organization, the choices at the top must be precisely and evocatively stated, so that they are easily understood. Only when the choices are clear and simple can they be acted uponā€”only then can they effectively shape choices throughout the rest of the organization. These simple strategy messages can capture the very heart of the organizationā€™s intentā€”and to be effective should be repeated over and over againā€”to

different groups, in different contexts, creating a mantra for the organization.

Lafley, MartinPlaying to Win
p.143