The last couple of days, we've been traveling a bit and speaking at different venues in the South. I've been talking about excellence and how excellence needs to permeate our very life, that it's a journey and not a destination. I had quoted K. Bush many times about men and women of excellence who are people who are able to expect more than others think can be expected. In that connection I had talked about a friend who had been instrumental in bringing a company into India and how they needed to change some of the wording to get the license. Everybody had told him that it could not be done but he believed that it could and had gone to Delhi and sat in the office where the permissions could be got. Finally he met one of the senior people in the administration who told him, "I'll give you five minutes. Talk to me about what you want." In five minutes, my friend was able to communicate to him what exactly was the problem, how it would help in terms of increasing the work force, in terms of increasing the money that would come into India and he was able to get this through.
I was reflecting on that over the last couple of days and thought – to be able to communicate something succinctly in a short period of time, is sometimes very difficult. You have to be very clear in your mind what it is that you are trying to communicate so that it is clearly put across. But more often than not, we find that when we are given five minutes to say something, we tend to ramble. We go all around the place, we chase a lot of rabbit trails and eventually we lose the time that was given to us and therefore, lose an opportunity.
I wonder how many of us are in that position where we are given a particular window of opportunity but are not able to speak within that time limit to communicate a good idea. Chip and Dan Heath wrote a book called 'Made To Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die." They say, "There are six cardinal rules you must have as you present an idea to people. They've based it on an acronym that they have given – SUCCESS. It should be:
· Simple
· Unexpected
· Concrete or tangible
· It must have Credibility
· Emotion drawing: draw the person into the whole picture.
· Must have a good Story line.
Six key points to help us make an idea stick.
You and I have been in many situations where, like in a brainstorming session, we have sat down with different people to talk about things. Every now and then, a good idea surfaces, there's some amount of excitement from the person. You can see that it's a good idea, but that person is trying to articulate but is not able to. Then there's a sense of frustration that begins to develop among the people who are listening because you can see that this person is excited but they're not doing a great job in communicating it. It makes you resentful, most people will tune out and the idea is trashed. Good ideas sometimes go into the trash basket rather than seeing the light of day. A part of it stems from the fact that there's a gap between the person who's giving the idea and is excited about it, and the person who is receiving the idea who is not able to see the excitement. This is because it is not being communicated well.
I don't know how many of you have played the game Dumb Charades. In this game, you are given a movie or a book title and you are supposed to communicate it to the group only using actions. Often you can see the level of frustration that creeps in from the person who is trying to communicate because the people are not getting it. He/she is excited about it, trying to communicate it in all ways, but it's not happening. This gap that happens is so detrimental to good ideas. The reason for it is that we are assuming that the other person has the same kind of knowledge or database to unravel that idea that we are trying to communicate.
There was a study that was done many years ago in 1990 at Stanford by Elizabeth Newton who was doing her PhD in Psychology. She conducted a study where she had two groups of people: one was the listeners and the others were what she called the tappers. The tappers were given about 120 songs, and they were expected to tap out the beat of the song without singing it and the listeners had to determine which song it was from the beat. The songs were very straightforward songs like 'Happy Birthday' and the like. The point of this whole experiment was to find out what the assumptions were. They came up with an incredible knowledge. When they asked the tappers what they thought would be the percentage of the songs guessed rightly by the listeners, they said 50%. So one in every two would get the song. But when they actually did the experiment, they found that it was only one in every forty that got the song. There was such a huge difference between what was assumed and what actually happened.
When you look at that you realize that to assume is not a good thing. I remember many years ago hearing someone say, "Never assume!" They broke up the word 'assume' into 3, because it makes an ASS of U and ME. To assume is to think that there is knowledge. In fact they call it the 'Curse of Knowledge' – sometimes having more knowledge and it becomes a stumbling block in being able to communicate to somebody who doesn't have that knowledge.
I wonder whether you get frustrated trying to communicate things to people. To assume means to take for granted without proof. Every now and then, a good idea begins to fall to the ground because we assume that people have the same kind of knowledge that we have.
So I want to ask you – are you assuming when people come up to you with good ideas? Or are you assuming when you present an idea, that they have the same framework that you have to understand the idea? So as we realize how important communication is to our daily work, let's ask the question: what am I assuming? Am I assuming an understanding of the topic that I am talking about? Am I assuming that my excitement is going to communicate something? Do I need to back up and give a little more knowledge about what I am trying to do so that at the end of it, I can be successful in getting my idea across? Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotion drawing and a good Story, but without any assumptions will help in good communications.
Let me pray with you. Almighty God, I pray for each person on this call, that you would bless each of us with wisdom. As we try to communicate that You would show us the assumptive gaps in our communications and You would help us to fix it. And above all, we pray for Your wisdom to know how to make our ideas a success. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
· Chip & Dan Heath, "Made to Stick: Why some Ideas Survive and others Die."
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