reseñas educativas (Spanish)    
resenhas educativas (Portuguese)    

This review has been accessed times since August 12, 2008

Heath, Chip & Heath, Dan. (2007). Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. NY: Random House. Pp. 291     $25     ISBN 978-1-4000-6428-1

Reviewed by Daniel Connelly
Auburn University

August 12, 2008

Let’s be frank. As teachers, the best ideas on pedagogy which actually have a chance of finding their way into our classrooms need to meet two tests – the powerful test, and just as importantly, the simple test. Pedagogical concepts that are the fruit of research may be mesmerizing and sexy, but all too often are impossible to employ, or sometimes to fathom. As practitioners, we typically don’t have access to a research staff that can devote countless hours to interpreting research findings until they become meaningful, and are too busy to force a connection between the research and our profession that may not always be there.

That’s why it’s so refreshing to find an idea for increasing the power of your teaching that is at once powerful and simple. These two qualities are the core of Chip and Dan Heath’s new book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. In fact, powerful and simple are the key qualities of the book’s central metaphor – a piece of duct tape that is also “pasted” across the front of the book (makes the book easier to spot at your bookstore, too). Just as duct tape is a powerful and simple solution to many household problems, the authors convincingly offer their book as an example of the highest quality “duct tape” out there for sticking our lessons to our students’ brains.

While the book is not formally a pedagogical text, its applicability to many functions of communication and many diverse settings only adds to its value for educators. The book’s message is relevant to group work among faculty and students, project development, school slogans, campaigns and programs, personal essays and other written text, just about any aspect of our professional lives. Of the several reasons I can offer to you for reading this book, the most significant is that it is an enjoyable read that combines simplicity and practicality, and carries the potential for immediate application to your classroom. For those who are primarily educational researchers, Made to Stick is a helpful reminder that the tendency to be complex can sometimes allow others outside our field to outstrip our benefit to the teachers we are obligated to assist.

The book’s core idea – “stickiness” – is that anyone can craft his or her worthwhile ideas into enduring, evocative messages that resonate with an audience. The authors frame their core idea with a classic dichotomy familiar to educators: nature versus nurture. As the Heath brothers see it, their book is “the nature versus nurture debate applied to ideas: are ideas born interesting or made interesting?” (p.5). The authors are very clear about which side they’re on: “Well, this is a nurture book” (p.5). The rest of the book unveils a simple, effective approach to how to nurture your ideas to a high level of interest with your audience.

While neither of the Heaths possesses a terminal degree in an educational specialty, both brothers offer a wealth of experience regarding the communication of ideas in an educational setting. Chip, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, received his Ph.D. in organizational behavior. Dan, an educational consultant for Duke Corporate Education who also founded a textbook publishing company, was formerly a researcher with Harvard Business School. They are very clear about the purpose of their book: to help readers learn to empower their ideas to have a lasting impact, even to change the behavior of their audience.

To achieve such results, the Heaths tell us to focus on the design of our message, rather than to consider only the standard recommendations about issues of delivery such as slides, handouts, and “make plenty of eye contact”. This focus on design arose from the personal experiences of the authors. Chip approached the issue from the standpoint of his scholarly studies, having spent several years researching the processes of “idea-making” and the survival of ideas in the social marketplace. Over time, he started incorporating what he was learning into his courses at Stanford. Dan, in the context of developing educational material, turned to the question of effective lesson design while analyzing the practices of some of the top teachers in the country. Eventually, they decided to join forces in order to dissect what constitutes a “sticky” idea, and to uncover the sources of the “glue”.

The authors flesh out their core idea of “stickiness” with six key qualities that are the heart of the book: simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, and stories, or “SUCCESs” as the authors refer to them. I say the “heart” because these are the qualities that give the book its immediate practical value. As you read through the pages and gain insight into these qualities, you can start applying them right away to whatever you’re currently working on: the teaching of concepts, selling your ideas to peers or administrators, anything that involves a message. But are these qualities truly helpful to message-makers? One way to evaluate the book’s “SUCCESs” is to apply its own criteria to the pages within.

The authors define “simple” as finding the core of your idea, stripping it down to its bare essence. If you find that you are in fact juggling several ideas, some of which compete or are extraneous, ask yourself “What is the single most important idea in my message?” This core is what must be nurtured, or it will be lost amid the details, and your audience will be distracted and miss what you truly want it to learn. Judging the book itself on this criterion of “simple”, in my view the book succeeds because it has one core idea with six qualities. This basic structure is easy to hold in your mind and is effectively supported by the book’s title and the simple metaphor of duct tape. Here I’m reminded of the success of two of Malcolm Gladwell’s recent books, Tipping Point (2000) and Blink (2005). Each employs a simple metaphor that effectively conveys the core idea of the book and also serves as the book’s title. It’s noteworthy that the Heaths credit Gladwell with supplying part of the inspiration that led to their book (p.13), pointing out that the very term “stickiness” came from Gladwell’s Tipping Point. Also from the standpoint of “simple”, every example the Heaths use to explain a concept is easy to picture, and directly reinforces each chapter it is in as well as the book’s core idea.

“Unexpected” makes our ideas sticky, according to the Heaths, because the brain is wired to notice changes in a big way. So essentially, by taking advantage of humanity’s universal sensitivity to changes, we can achieve surprise and maintain interest to get our audiences hooked, and keep them hooked. Does the book make use of this quality of “unexpectedness”? Made to Stick opens with a startling retelling of a case of human organ theft – that never actually occurred. This story is actually the basis of a familiar urban legend, and certainly jolts the casual reader. The stories peppered throughout the rest of the book are widely diverse, providing lots of contrasting images, and consequently do a great job working on the reader’s sensitivity to change.

In introducing “concreteness”, the Heaths recommend avoiding the high theory and laborious discussions that often hide the practical utility of your idea and create distractions. And having internalized their take on “concreteness”, the authors fill their book with solutions grounded in what is possible, even easy, for most message-makers to accomplish. Gone are the vast theoretical solutions in much of our literature that typically place unrealistic demands on practitioners and their resources. In this respect, Made to Stick is akin to Gladwell’s no-nonsense, approachable writing style.

On the topic of “credibility”, the Heaths extend the everyday definition in specific and meaningful ways. They even suggest considering “antiauthorities” as helpful in establishing your credibility as a communicator, e.g. sources with no reason to benefit from belief in your idea. Additional recommendations include employing concrete, tangible, vivid and “localized” details accompanied by strong images and other sensory data. Caution is recommended for all uses of statistics, though. The use of numbers should always express a relationship that is related to your idea, and fit what the authors call the “human-scale principle” – everyday terms that tap the audience’s well-known schemas. In their defense, the Heaths turn to dozens of anecdotes involving real people to make their own ideas more credible. Many of these anecdotes are about message-makers “like us”, who are not superstars but are still effective. Their examples include many “localized details”, such as stories about urban legends and Subway Restaurant.

Regarding “emotion”, the Heaths discuss a Carnegie Mellon University study which suggested that the act of processing large numbers of needy people as opposed to concentrating on one needy person reduced subjects’ charitable impulses (dubbed the “Mother Teresa effect”). The intended point is that an analytical frame of mind, especially at the beginning of your message, may weaken the likelihood that your audience will care about what you are communicating, and therefore a message entirely driven by analytical issues and approaches won’t connect with the humans on the receiving end. Rather than give up if our topic happens to be largely analytical, the authors suggest associating our message with other, perhaps unlikely ideas, but distinctive ones our audience cares about. A few additional sub-topics under “emotion” will be familiar to educators, such as self-interest, Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, and identity needs. The Heaths capitalize on our emotions as readers by continually turning to stories of one person and their success to enhance key points.

The power of “stories”, the Heaths’ sixth and final quality of note, is due to their ability to expose suggested causal relationships in new and entertaining ways. Drawing on the work of Gary Klein (1998), the authors argue that the right stories provide “simulation” (information on effective ways to act) and “inspiration” (reasons to act in these effective ways). In one of the best treatments found in the book, they impress upon us the power of mental simulations (p.212-217) to aid in problem-solving and skill development – behaviors crucial in the classroom. The bottom-line point here on stories is that, when topical and carefully chosen, stories trigger mental simulation in a way that can promote positive behavioral change – and learning. Accordingly, you will find the Heaths have dug deep to find dozens of such stories to support their own key points.

The book’s layout, framed around the six key chapters on the above qualities, is simple, contributing to a read that “sticks” with you. A short introduction covers the purpose and structure of Made to Stick, while an engaging summary chapter at the end accomplishes two objectives. First, it contains a review of the qualities of “SUCCESs”. Even more useful to educators, the Heaths also take another look at what they call the “worst villains” of sticky ideas. While each villain was briefly covered in previous pages, it was helpful to have another treatment of them here in the summary. The authors’ short but extremely helpful section in the summary on how to avoid these villains is easily translated into the classroom.

The danger of “burying the lead”, the first villain to avoid, should inspire us to ensure we don’t overwhelm our students until they miss the point of our lesson. “Stressing the delivery” implies a warning not to sacrifice engaging content for an exclusive emphasis on “whizz-bang” delivery methods. Avoiding “decision paralysis” means don’t present complex material without prioritizing it – your students may delay committing to and comprehending such material. The “curse of knowledge”, aptly noted as the “arch-villain” of sticky ideas, is perhaps well-known to educators but can be excruciatingly difficult to avoid. Simply put, teachers at times excel at “teaching to themselves”, forgetting that their students “haven’t heard this before”.

The Heaths’ solutions to avoiding these “villains” are simple. Proclaim your “lead” up front, keep it simple, and return to it as needed. Put as much or more effort into “what” you are teaching as you do into “how” you are teaching it. Prioritize your lesson content for your students to reduce uncertainty and invite engagement. And always, always be conscious of what your students know, and especially what they don’t know, or you’ll end up impressing an audience of one.

As educators, we have an obligation to be familiar with the field-related literature. But this familiarity doesn’t rid us of the need to be mindful of its occasional limitations. In a similar vein, we also have the opportunity to seek help from venues a bit farther afield. Such are the insights found in Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick – a book powerful enough to offer real nuggets of gold for the classroom, and simple enough to allow those of us without a lot of spare time to easily find the nuggets.

References

Gladwell, M. (2000). The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference. Boston: Little, Brown and Co.

Gladwell, M. (2005). Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. NY: Little, Brown and Co.

Klein, G. (1998). Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

About the reviewer

Daniel Connelly is a doctoral student in the educational psychology program at Auburn University, AL. His research interests include personality, motivation, and individual differences.

Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review.

Editors: Gene V Glass, Kate Corby, Gustavo Fischman

~ ER home | Reseñas Educativas | Resenhas Educativas ~
~ overview | reviews | editors | submit | guidelines | announcements | search ~