Peter Drucker:

Too many think they are wonderful with people because they talk well. They don’t realize that being wonderful with people means listening well.

In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath point out that bad ideas often keep circulating, while good ideas often have a hard time succeeding.

Why is that?

That’s the question their book — which most have probably heard of by now — answers.

To make an impact, your idea has to stick. A “sticky” idea is one that is understood and remembered, and has lasting impact. A sticky idea changes the audience’s opinions or behavior.

How do you make your ideas sticky? They give six points. Here they are, from my notes on the book:

1. Simple. This gets people to understand.
2. Unexpected. This gets people to pay attention and maintain interest.
3. Concrete. This gets people to understand so they remember.
4. Credible. This helps show that your idea is true.
5. Emotions. This gets people to care.
6. Stories. This gets people to act.

The rest of the book unpacks each of those ideas. It is well worth a read if you haven’t already.

Also from my notes on Chip and Dan Heath’s article:

1. Before the audience will value the info you’re giving, they have to want it. Demand has to come before supply.
2. Therefore tease, don’t simply tell, by opening knowledge gaps and filling them.
3. “Great presentations are mysteries, not encyclopedic entries.”
4. “Curiosity must come before content.”
5. Don’t structure your presentation by asking “what’s the next point I should make” but “what’s the next question I want them to wrestle with.”

And, here are a few great points on using data well:

1. Don’t lead with the data — that leaves it abstract, and doesn’t move people emotionally. Tell a story about an individual first, and then say “our research suggests that there are 900,000 stories like this, in Mumbai alone.”
2. “Data are just summaries of thousands of stories — tell a few of those stories to help make the data meaningful.”

These are from the notes I took from an article by Chip and Dan Heath (authors of Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die):

1. Don’t preamble—parachute in.
2. “The first mission of a presentation is to grab attention.”
3. A preamble is a laborious overview of what’s going to be covered. Don’t start with this. Don’t follow the “tell them what you’re gonna tell them, tell them, then tell them what you told them.” Steve Jobs doesn’t present this way. Ronald Reagan didn’t present this way.
4. Example: Rebecca Fuller presenting on tactile museum exhibits. She parachuted in by shutting off the lights and saying “this is what it’s like for a blind person in most museums.” It wouldn’t have improved here presentation to say “today I’m going to give you an overview of the challenges faced by the visually impaired in most museums.”
5. “If you bring us face to face with the problem, we don’t need a lot of upfront hand-holding.”

The most important point: parachute it. “Telling them what you’re going to tell them” usually reduces interest.

“Questions attract thoughts and new ideas. Asking questions creates a learning mindset.”

Plus, it’s the right thing to do. Being interested in others — reflected in asking questions — is part of treating people well.

Chip and Dan Heath have a good article in Fast Company on what makes messages go viral.

“Making an idea contagious isn’t a mysterious marketing art. It boils down to a couple of simple rules.”

Edward Tufte’s The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within is a fantastic — and humorous — article on the abuse of PowerPoint. I highly recommend checking it out.

In it he talks about how PowerPoint is commonly misused, how to use PowerPoint right, how to avoid the boring use of bullet points, and how bad PowerPoint deserves part of the blame for the Challenger space shuttle disaster back in 1985.

The one problem is that the article is not available online for free. However, an abbreviated version called PowerPoint is Evil appeared in Wired a few years ago. It’s worth checking out; and if you’re interested, you can obtain the entire article at Amazon.

From a recent book by Harvard Business Press:

The conclusion [in a presentation] should not summarize your arguments; rather, it should appeal to the audience for its understanding, its action, and its approval — whatever it is you want the audience to do or think.

So don’t fall into the trap of telling your audience what you’ve already said. Summing it up is a surefire way to kill any enthusiasm your presentation may have generated. So forget about a summary; instead, tell your audience what it should think or do.

Good advice from Scott Williams. Here’s the gist:

Consider using the GAP filter for your tweets.  That doesn’t mean put on GAP clothing before you tweet, but rather ask this question: “Is my tweet Genuine, Accurate and Positive?”  The bottom line is Be Careful What Tweet, it may end up on the front page of a newspaper or worse.

Scott Berkun has a good article on how describing your idea or product is as important as conceiving it. Here’s are a few excerpts:

Just about anyone in the professional world is, in effect, a professional speaker. Every single idea in the history of the business world had to be explained to at least one other person before it got approved, funded or purchased by anyone else. Call it what you like–sales, marketing, pitching or presenting–but I know the history. Despite dreams of a world in which the best ideas win simply because they should, we live in a world where the fate of ideas hinges on how well you talk about what you’ve made, or what you want to make.

….

From my studies of innovation history (which led to my best-seller, The Myths of Innovation), I know that the difference between relatively uncommon names like Tesla, Grey and Englebart, and household ones like Edison, Bell and Jobs, has more to do with their ability to persuade, convince and inspire than their ability to invent, create or innovate.

One potent thread in the fabric of reasons why some ideas take off and others don’t is the ability entrepreneurs have to explain to others why they should care. The bigger the idea, the more explaining the world demands. Yet these skills are constantly trivialized in many organizations, leading to dozens of great ideas being rejected, and their creators wondering why lesser rivals with weaker concepts are able to capture people’s imaginations and pocketbooks.

….

I see too many inventors and executives who see speaking about their work as the least important thing they do. And it shows. To the detriment of the quality of their ideas, their presentations are the spotty lens through which those ideas will be seen. Without dedicated effort, those lenses distort and betray what it is they truly have to offer.