The epilogue was the end of the original version of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die; later additions had extra material added. I am reading from the 26th printing. We will cover the extra material titled, Sticky Advice, next week. Today we’ll discuss the Epilogue, without wrapping the book up. It feels wrong 🙂
I read this chapter more deeply knowing that there was more to come. It felt like less of a recap and more of how to use the book. Three items caught my attention during this read.
The first idea was that the audience gets a vote when you’re trying to craft a sticky idea. Audiences interpret ideas based on their own views and experiences. Ideas interact and compete (the authors use the phrase marketplace of ideas). In that completion, the meaning of an idea may change as well as the message itself. When sticky ideas are in the wild, others try to take them and make them their own. This gives more people the opportunity to make a change.
The second was the discussion of defining success. The authors stated, “Ultimately, the test of our success, as idea creators isn’t whether people mimic our exact words, it’s whether we achieve our goals“. We work to create sticky ideas to achieve a purpose. If our ideas and words morph but we achieve that goal, we have succeeded. To succeed in personal branding or aggrandizement, using the right words is essential. The typical influencer of the ‘20s expects linkage to their brand and action. In agile, every user story needs to have solid acceptance criteria, or risk ending up with the wrong result.
Third, humans process anecdotes differently than abstractions. Abstractions are common when setting and communicating goals in organizations. A team lead recently told me that they had a goal to improve team performance by 10%. The goal was a general expression of the changes that they would have to make to meet a goal. Common agile abstractions include self-organizing, self-managing teams, and transparency. They are interesting but not sticky. An anecdote is a story that illustrates an idea or point. Stories engage the mind making the concept stickier. For example, the idea of self-organizing teams is a sticking point in workshops. To drive the point home, I use a storytelling exercise to drive the point home. I provide a small group of people with a starting context and have them create a story. Each person adds a sentence in rotation until they exhaust the story. Participants create a story as if they were a team embracing self-organization. The exercise makes the idea less abstract by adding a story that makes it easier to understand. The concept becomes sticky.
The Epilogue of Made to Stick is more than a wrap-up or the authors hitting the publisher’s page goal for the book. When I first read it, I gave it a bit of a short shrift. It even has a checklist; I do love checklists.
Next week, we will discuss the new content in the updated book (Sticky Advice). I have not read this material before, I am reading my wife’s copy of Made to Stick. My copy seems to have not stuck in my library.
Buy a copy of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die and then catch up on this re-read:
Week 1: Announcement and Logistics – https://bit.ly/46tn5Bz
Week 2: Introduction – https://bit.ly/46CLmp1
Week 3: Simple – https://bit.ly/3PZLWaq
Week 4: Unexpected – https://bit.ly/43zfkaB
Week 5: Concrete – https://bit.ly/3qcn1Gg
Week 6: Credible – https://bit.ly/3Yo9aJo
Week 7: Emotional – https://bit.ly/3QCAQbx
Week 8: Stories – https://bit.ly/3sbk2yp
