Many years ago, I remember sitting in a science class, biology or physics, but the professor was talking about dispersion and the different types of dispersion: acoustic dispersion, dispersion in chemistry, geology, material science, etc. Just to help us understand dispersion, he took an air freshener spray, pressed it and then said, “As you get the smell of this particular air freshener, you will understand that particles have been dispersed and carried in the atmosphere to you.” I remember thinking that it was a wonderful way of explaining something. Because when you look at the different descriptions of dispersion, you have the mathematical description of dispersion in the system – spreading of signals and multimode fibers and waveguides by a distortion mechanism, and all the rest of it which is so complex. Yet he was able to simplify it to the point where I’ve never forgotten it.
All of us have the need to take ideas that we have and communicate them in a way in which it is easily understood, and more importantly, followed; which means that it has to captivate the person to whom we are speaking. But when you look at this whole process of communicating ideas, you come up against a very unusual roadblock. You have to communicate ideas from the point of more knowledge to a point of lesser knowledge. Writers have argued that this ability or the fact that we have more knowledge is in itself a deterrent to communication. What do we mean by that? They call it the curse of knowledge.
I was reading a great book by Chip and Dan Heath called ‘Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die’. In it, they talk about a 1990 experiment that Elizabeth Newton, who earned a PhD in Psychology at Stanford, conducted. She assigned people to one of 2 roles: tappers or listeners. The tappers received a list of 25 well-known songs (Happy Birthday and the like). Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener by knocking on a table. The listener’s job was to guess the song based on the rhythm being tapped. Now, the listener’s job in this game is quite difficult. Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out, listeners guessed only 2.5% of the songs, i.e. 3 out of 120. But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listener guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tapper to predict the odds that the listener would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50%. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought that they were getting their message across 1 time in 2.
Why was this? Newton says that when a tapper taps, he/she is already hearing the song in their head. She invites us to try it out ourselves. Tap out a song without really singing or humming it; it’s in your head. But that is a knowledge that the person who is listening to you, doesn’t have. But that knowledge makes it so difficult for you to accept yet the other person is unable to find out what the tune is. These authors call this ‘The Curse of Knowledge’. Sometimes having more knowledge becomes a stumbling block in being able to communicate to somebody who doesn’t have that knowledge.
In this book, they go on to talk about how you can take an idea and make it stick. That’s the key word for them. There are 6 things that must happen to an idea for the idea to stick.
• Must be simple
• Must be unexpected
• Must be concrete or tangible
• Must be credible
• Must have and draw emotions into it
• Must be like a story
Everybody at some level has to communicate something to somebody. CEOs do it to clients and employees, teachers have to do it for students, politicians have to do it for voters, marketing executives have to do it for customers, writers for their readers. How do you take that knowledge that you have and simplify it to the point that it is almost like you don’t have that knowledge, so that it can be communicated? That is indeed the key in trying to communicate. You and I who communicate everyday run up against this invisible wall. How to keep it simple?
I continue to go back to my biology teacher who was able to so simply communicate to us what dispersion was all about. To be able to just keep it simple, not complicated.
In the same article, in an interview with Thom Haller: “Familiarity is one of the main things that gets in the way of clarity. This is a total paradox, though. The more you know an application, the better poised you are to write a good help file. But the more you know an application, the more familiar you are with it, and so you are less likely to write a good help file.”
I wonder whether you run into that; whether you have trouble trying to communicate ideas to people. If the authors of this book are to be believed, for it to be a SUCCESs it has to be:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete/tangible
Credibility
Emotion-drawing
good Story
I give this to you this morning as a perspective on communicating your ideas. Maybe you’re having trouble doing that with people that you’re working with. Maybe today, one of these things could challenge you. Maybe it’s too complex and you need to make it simple. Maybe it’s just a mundane routine thing and you need to make something unexpected out of it. Or maybe it just needs to be concrete, something that is workable or credible. Maybe it needs to have an emotional tag to it. Maybe you need to weave the idea into a story that makes it appealing.
My hope and prayer for you is that as you continue to communicate to people around you that you will be able to make the ideas stick.
God Bless You All.
All of us have the need to take ideas that we have and communicate them in a way in which it is easily understood, and more importantly, followed; which means that it has to captivate the person to whom we are speaking. But when you look at this whole process of communicating ideas, you come up against a very unusual roadblock. You have to communicate ideas from the point of more knowledge to a point of lesser knowledge. Writers have argued that this ability or the fact that we have more knowledge is in itself a deterrent to communication. What do we mean by that? They call it the curse of knowledge.
I was reading a great book by Chip and Dan Heath called ‘Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die’. In it, they talk about a 1990 experiment that Elizabeth Newton, who earned a PhD in Psychology at Stanford, conducted. She assigned people to one of 2 roles: tappers or listeners. The tappers received a list of 25 well-known songs (Happy Birthday and the like). Each tapper was asked to pick a song and tap out the rhythm to a listener by knocking on a table. The listener’s job was to guess the song based on the rhythm being tapped. Now, the listener’s job in this game is quite difficult. Over the course of Newton’s experiment, 120 songs were tapped out, listeners guessed only 2.5% of the songs, i.e. 3 out of 120. But here’s what made the result worthy of a dissertation in psychology. Before the listener guessed the name of the song, Newton asked the tapper to predict the odds that the listener would guess correctly. They predicted that the odds were 50%. The tappers got their message across 1 time in 40, but they thought that they were getting their message across 1 time in 2.
Why was this? Newton says that when a tapper taps, he/she is already hearing the song in their head. She invites us to try it out ourselves. Tap out a song without really singing or humming it; it’s in your head. But that is a knowledge that the person who is listening to you, doesn’t have. But that knowledge makes it so difficult for you to accept yet the other person is unable to find out what the tune is. These authors call this ‘The Curse of Knowledge’. Sometimes having more knowledge becomes a stumbling block in being able to communicate to somebody who doesn’t have that knowledge.
In this book, they go on to talk about how you can take an idea and make it stick. That’s the key word for them. There are 6 things that must happen to an idea for the idea to stick.
• Must be simple
• Must be unexpected
• Must be concrete or tangible
• Must be credible
• Must have and draw emotions into it
• Must be like a story
Everybody at some level has to communicate something to somebody. CEOs do it to clients and employees, teachers have to do it for students, politicians have to do it for voters, marketing executives have to do it for customers, writers for their readers. How do you take that knowledge that you have and simplify it to the point that it is almost like you don’t have that knowledge, so that it can be communicated? That is indeed the key in trying to communicate. You and I who communicate everyday run up against this invisible wall. How to keep it simple?
I continue to go back to my biology teacher who was able to so simply communicate to us what dispersion was all about. To be able to just keep it simple, not complicated.
In the same article, in an interview with Thom Haller: “Familiarity is one of the main things that gets in the way of clarity. This is a total paradox, though. The more you know an application, the better poised you are to write a good help file. But the more you know an application, the more familiar you are with it, and so you are less likely to write a good help file.”
I wonder whether you run into that; whether you have trouble trying to communicate ideas to people. If the authors of this book are to be believed, for it to be a SUCCESs it has to be:
Simple
Unexpected
Concrete/tangible
Credibility
Emotion-drawing
good Story
I give this to you this morning as a perspective on communicating your ideas. Maybe you’re having trouble doing that with people that you’re working with. Maybe today, one of these things could challenge you. Maybe it’s too complex and you need to make it simple. Maybe it’s just a mundane routine thing and you need to make something unexpected out of it. Or maybe it just needs to be concrete, something that is workable or credible. Maybe it needs to have an emotional tag to it. Maybe you need to weave the idea into a story that makes it appealing.
My hope and prayer for you is that as you continue to communicate to people around you that you will be able to make the ideas stick.
God Bless You All.
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