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The Great Wall of China is the only man-made structure visible from outer space, so it is said. This notion has gained the status of fact since the early days of space travel. But is it true? Think about it. The Great Wall is fairly narrow. If it were able to be seen from outer space, then so would any six-lane highway.
The Great Wall of China theory, so easily refuted—and so wrong— has become a fixture in the marketplace of ideas. It’s what Dan and Chip Heath, authors of Made to Stick, call a ‘sticky’ idea.
As trainers in the business of presenting and selling ideas, it’s useful for us to consider how we can make ideas stick. Here are some techniques:
1 Create surprises People respond more strongly to unexpected rewards than to those they know are coming. The expected end-of-year bonus is always pleasing, but there’s usually very little buzz around it. Compare that with an unexpected gift—it’s remembered.
The brain, research shows, allocates more resources to surprises and the unexpected. So create small surprises, sometimes called S.T.A.R. moments: Something They’ll Always Remember. Nancy Duarte, author of Resonate and Slide:ology (and creator of Al Gore’s presentation An Inconvenient Truth) recommends five types of S.T.A.R. moments:
• Memorable dramatisations, such as demonstrations or the use of props. Remember Steve Jobs’ launch of the iPhone?
• Repeatable sound bites. Who can forget Neil Armstrong’s words as he stepped onto the moon surface? Or Johnnie Cochran, O.J. Simpson’s lawyer and the phrase ‘If the gloves don’t fit, you must acquit!’
• Evocative visuals. A compelling image creates an emotional response. Sometimes just one image can tell a whole story. The iconic polar bear stranded on ice has been used to summarise the whole issue of global warming and melting Arctic ice.
• Emotive stories. Stories can be personal, something from current affairs, or a recount of a historical event. Julie Dirksen, instructional designer and author of Design for How People Learn says (p133):
‘We like stories. We learn a lot from stories, and seem to have a particularly good memory for them. A really well-told story can stick with us for years, even if we’ve heard it only once.’
• Shocking statistics. Sometimes the facts are dramatic, in and of themselves. And if you think statistics are boring, watch Hans Rosling’s talk on www.ted.com as he vividly brings to life trends in health and global economics.
2 Provoke curiosity The format of quiz shows has changed little since the early days of broadcast media, and they still feature in prime time on every
television network. The presenter asks a question (for example, What’s the longest river in the world?). Our brain is alerted, and tries to fill the gap: Is it the Nile or the Amazon?* In neuro- linguistic programming, it’s called ‘Open Loop’.
When there’s an information gap, we’re motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate that slight feeling of discomfort we experience.
How can trainers provoke curiosity? • Ask interesting questions. Don’t be too ready to give the answer
when you ask a rhetorical question. Pause. Allow curiosity to bubble up. Make the learners work to fill the gap.
• Set up a mystery. Use a case study involving a dilemma, and have participants solve it.
• Use fill-the-gap type puzzles. When you want participants to focus on one word, write the first and last letter on the whiteboard. You won’t even have to give instructions. Within seconds, your audience will be calling out the word.
• Make that yawn-inducing mandatory training more involving and fun, and keep participants on their toes by having them fill in key statistics or concepts in their training manuals (which they need to show to complete the course).
Make the learning stick Pamela Thorne
the brain, research shows, allocates more resources to
surprises and the unexpected.
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3 Mystery What do these headlines have in common? • Three things you need to know about the food you eat. • Which recently retired actor bought a waterfront property? • The surprising truth about cough medicine.
They all set up a mystery. Information that is believed to be secret, scarce, or unobtainable elsewhere is more highly valued than information that’s easily obtained.
So create a bit of mystery in your presentation. Hint at special information that will be revealed later by using phrasing such as: • Later in the program we’ll be learning about the one thing you must
never say to a customer. • I have a secret method that I’ll be sharing with you later in the session. • There’s one sure way to solve this, and we’ll be covering it later today.
4 Use rewards wisely Supposing you have some small gifts (such as stress balls or squishy balls—the sort of thing you see in the toolbox of many trainers). Should you hand them out to everyone at the beginning of the seminar, or use them as a ‘reward’ for correctly answered questions?
One company routinely gave out squishy stress balls along with training manuals at the beginning of each seminar … until they noticed that many were just left behind at day’s end. They changed to using the balls as a reward for correctly answered questions. The result? More involved participants, no toys left behind and a financial saving for the company because they needed fewer balls.
They correctly applied the principle of scarcity, as described by Robert Cialdini in his ground-breaking book Influence: Science and Practice: ‘we want more of something that has limited availability’.
So whatever rewards you use as a motivator, use the principle of scarcity and don’t just hand them out willy-nilly. It’s amazing what people will do for a chocolate frog, a key-ring, or a squishy toy.
5 Add friction If you are lucky enough to have a wide-awake and ready-to-learn audience, you could probably just give a lecture. But for even mildly disengaged learners, some friction is required to make the learning stick. What is friction? Anything that requires learners to engage with the material. With friction, the information doesn’t just go in one ear and out the other. It sticks.
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Here are a few ways to apply friction:
• Show, don’t tell. Show what happens in different scenarios. Here’s where case studies and role plays can help learners to put the information to use.
• Create discussion and debate. Participants can then bring their own experience and perspective to the topic. Set up teams to argue different points of view.
• Have small groups work together to present information to the rest of the class. This can be a good way to cover otherwise boring lists of What to do/What not to do.
• Have learners rank items in a list. That way they read the list and actually think about the importance of each item in the list.
*Answer: The Nile is the longest river. The Amazon is the largest river in volume.
Further Reading Cialdini, Robert B, 2009, Influence, Science and Practice. 5th edn. Boston, MA: Pearson Education.
Dirksen, Julie, 2012, Design for How People Learn. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
Duarte, Nancy, 2010, Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences. Hoboken, NJ.: John Wiley & Sons.
Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations. Sebastopol, CA., O’Reilly Media, 2008.
Heath, Chip, and Heath, Dan, 2007, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. New York, NY.: Random House.
If you’re looking for a compilation of stories suitable for training, this is a handy site: www.businessballs.com/stories
With twenty years’ experience in workplace learning and development in Australia, the UK and the USA, Pamela Thorne brings a wealth of experience to the training room. She specialises in business writing, team communication and professional development. Pamela loves to help people learn and grow, and believes that the learning experience should be stimulating and fun.
Email: pam@vivatraining.com.au
39th ARTDO International Leadership and HRD Conference Enriching Borderless Learnvironments November 12-16 2012 Radisson Blu Hotel, Cebu City, Philippines
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