Making your ideas stick

One of the best ways to develop the robustness of ideas is through social interaction - share your idea, discuss them, put them under scrutinity to find its strengths and weakness.

But a cruical challenge is always- how to communicate your idea in a compelling way so that it sticks in the minds of the people you share it with, especially after you have left. One of the best methods I have come across on doing this comes from the book "Made to Stick" - Chip and Dan Heath. A simple numonic SUCCES is used to define the crucial characteristics that your idea should be packaged into:

• S - Simple - dumb down the concept or the idea, so that it can be explained to the normal person. Translate the complexitiy into every day anologies that the person can relate to .


• U - unconventional (surprise) - The message should present the concepts and ideas in an out of the box manner. Dont be bland, or boring when describing the solution that your idea addresses.


• C - Credible - The idea must be believable, and solve a real problem and be presented in an interesteing but sensible manner.


• C - Concrete - Dont be fuzzy about the idea or the concept. It is crucial that you have personally subjected your idea to stress tests, so that when you put is across its not half baked. It does not have to be fully formed, because the process of interaction will reform it.


• E - Emotive - Be passionate, and evoke emotion in the person that you are talking to about your idea. When crafting the message, evoke an emotional response to make the person you are sharing this with care about what you saying.


• S - Story - Storytelling a great medium to use to convey the idea. Make it a personal journey about how you arrived at the idea, perhaps even narrate your personal creative process.

A good example of the success of this, is using stories to convey business achievements, out of the box solutions, "in the field" quick fixes to address a client issue or meet a customer requirement. Research has shown that these stories become embedded in the informal operating practises of organisations.

Tapping into this source of innovation is however crucial to the evolution of the business, and successful agile organisations find ways to capture these knowledge pools and draw it formally into the organisation.