The key to effective communication: make it simple, make it concrete, and make it surprising.
Lenny T. Mendonca and Matt Miller
November 2007
The ability to craft and deliver messages that influence employees, markets, and other stakeholders may seem like a mysterious talent that some people have and some don’t. Jack Welch, for example, created ideas that inspired hundreds of thousands of GE employees. But many other leaders are frustrated to find that key messages sent one day are forgotten the next—or that stakeholders don’t know how to interpret them.
Why do some ideas succeed while others fail? Chip Heath, professor of organizational behavior in Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, has spent the past decade seeking answers to that question. His research has ranged from the problem of what makes beliefs—urban legends, for instance—survive in the social marketplace of competing ideas to experiments that show how winning ideas emerge in populations, businesses, and other organizations. Earlier this year Heath published his findings in Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die,1 written with his brother, Dan, who founded a business that specializes in this very subject.
In July 2007 Chip Heath spoke with Lenny Mendonca, a director in McKinsey’s San Francisco office; Matt Miller, an adviser to McKinsey; and Parth Tewari, who was then a Sloan fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, about the key principles for making an idea “stick” and how executives can use them to communicate more successfully. The conversation took place at Stanford.
The Quarterly: Let’s start by defining success. What is a sticky idea?
Chip Heath: A sticky idea is one that people understand when they hear it, that they remember later on, and that changes something about the way they think or act. That is a high standard. Think back to the last presentation you saw. How much do you remember? How did it change the decisions you make day to day?
Leaders will spend weeks or months coming up with the right idea but then spend only a few hours thinking about how to convey that message to everybody else. That’s a tragedy. It’s worth spending time making sure that the lightbulb that has gone on inside your head also goes on inside the heads of your employees or customers.
Vital statistics
Born July 19, 1963, in Huntsville, Alabama
Married with one child
Education
Graduated with BS in industrial engineering in 1986 from Texas A&M University
Received PhD in psychology in 1991 from Stanford University
Career highlights
Stanford Graduate School of Business (2000–present)
* Professor of organizational behavior
Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business (1997–2000)
* Associate professor
University of Chicago Graduate School of Business (1991–97)
* Assistant and associate professor
Fast facts
Has published research in such academic publications as Cognitive Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Quarterly Journal of Economics, and his research has been reviewed in publications including Scientific American, Financial Times, Washington Post, and Vanity Fair
Has appeared on NPR, The Today Show, and the National Geographic Channel
Serves on editorial board of Stanford Social Innovation Review; through programs at Stanford’s Center for Social Innovation has worked with more than 190 social-sector organizations on their mission and strategy
