Chip Heath > Quotes

“Stephen Covey, in his book The 8th Habit, decribes a poll of 23,000 employees drawn from a number of companies and industries. He reports the poll's findings:

* Only 37 percent said they have a clear understanding of what their organization is trying to achieve and why
* Only one in five was enthusiastic about their team's and their organization's goals
* Only one in five said they had a clear "line of sight" between their tasks and their team's and organization's goals
* Only 15 percent felt that their organization fully enables them to execute key goals
* Only 20 percent fully trusted the organization they work for



Then, Covey superimposes a very human metaphor over the statistics. He says, "If, say, a soccer team had these same scores, only 4 of the 11 players on the field would know which goal is theirs. Only 2 of the 11 would care. Only 2 of the 11 would know what position they play and know exactly what they are supposed to do. And all but 2 players would, in some way, be competing against their own team members rather than the opponent.”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

“The most basic way to get someone's attention is this: Break a pattern.”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick

“Anger prepares us to fight and fear prepares us to flee.”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick

“To make our communications more effective, we need to shift our thinking from "What information do I need to convey?" to "What questions do I want my audience to ask?”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

“The Curse of Knowledge: when we are given knowledge, it is impossible to imagine what it's like to LACK that knowledge.”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

“People tend to overuse any idea or concept that delivers an emotional kick.”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick

“Create a need for closure.”
― Chip Heath

“The Aha! experience is much more satisfying when it's preceded by the huh experience.”
― Chip Heath

“To get someone's attention break a pattern of thinking.”
― Chip Heath

“If I already intuitively "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I obsess about remembering it? The danger, of course, is that what sounds like common sense often isn't.... It's your job, as a communicator, to expose the parts of your message that are uncommon sense.
Source: Made To Stick, p.72”
― Chip Heath

“The first problem of communication is getting people's attention.”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick

“Many armies fail because they put all their emphasis into creating a plan that becomes useless ten minutes into the battle”
― Chip Heath

“Common sense is the enemy of sticky messages, if I already "get" what you're trying to tell me, why should I be obsessed about remembering it.”
― Chip Heath

“A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's nothing left to take away.”
― Chip Heath

“Stories should put knowledge into a frame work that is more lifelike.”
― Chip Heath

“Use statistics as input not output. Use them to make up your mind on an issue.Don't make up your mind and then go looking for the number to support yourself.”
― Chip Heath

“There's no such thing as a passive audience.”
― Chip Heath

“The company wants to sell you more shampoo, your friend doesn't, so she gets more trust points.”
― Chip Heath

“As we gain information we are more likely to focus on what we don't know :" Someone who knows the state capitals of 17 of 50 states may be proud of her knowledge. But someone who knows 47 may think of herself as not knowing 3 capitals”
― Chip Heath

“Plans are useful in the sense that they're proof that planning has taken place. The planning process forces people to think through the right issues. Bus as for the plans themselves they just don't work on the battle field”
― Chip Heath

“We can't unlearn what we already know and there are only two ways to beat the curse, the first is not to learn anything, the second is to transform our ideas.”
― Chip Heath

“The more we reduce the amount of information in an idea, the stickier it will be.”
― Chip Heath

“You say 10 things, you say nothing.”
― Chip Heath

“You don't have to speak monosyllables to be simple. What we mean by simple is finding the core of the idea.”
― Chip Heath

“Feature creep is an innocent process. An engineer looking at a prototype of a remote control might think to herself, “Hey, there’s some extra real estate here on the face of the control. And there’s some extra capacity on the chip. Rather than let it go to waste, what if we give people the ability to toggle between the Julian and Gregorian calendars?”
― Chip Heath, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

“Mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something. But it's the next best thing. And the right kind of a story is a simulation.”
― Chip Heath

“Knowledge curses us, if we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. And it becomes difficult to share our knowledge with others because we can't readily re-create our listener's state of mind.”
― Chip Heath

“No detail is too small.”
― Chip Heath