Wednesdays this month on Orange Leaders we will be discussing one of the top 100 business books of all time! When the Heath brothers co-wrote “Made to Stick– why some ideas survive and others die”, it stayed on the Business Week Bestseller list for 2 whole years until they retired it to give some other books a shot. It’s a classic for anyone trying to communicate something important and hoping the idea will bring about lasting change. And that’s most of us!
I’m going to share with you some key things to know about this successful book in a template that we use with the 2 books we review each month in our premium leadership curriculum, YouLead. We cover one book focusing more on personal development and another one aimed at professional or ministry development.
About the Authors
Chip Heath now works at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford while his brother Dan works at Duke University’s CASE center, supporting social entrepreneurs. Previously Dan was a researcher and case writer for Harvard’s Business School.
If that wasn’t enough to convince you that these guys know their stuff, Chip and Dan have consulted with many organizations on how to apply the principles in Made to Stick including companies like Nike, Microsoft, Ideo, Macy’s and the American Heart Association.
Interesting Fact
Did you know that when a research team looked at a group of top, award-winning ads– 200 of them– they discovered something that might surprise you. 89% (most) of these popular ads could all be easily grouped into 6 basic categories or similar approaches. They had more in common than anyone would have guessed! In fact, templates were made so others could learn from and even copy some of what made these ads so successful.
The authors summarized that, “The highly creative ads were more predictable than the uncreative ones.” And then they quoted Tolstoy as saying, “All happy families resemble each other, but each unhappy family is unhappy in it’s own way.”
Check back each Wednesday this month as we talk about other idea success stories and what we can do to make our own messages stick better! To read along, order your copy of this amazing book here.
