Review: Made to Stick, GirlEffect, and CTEF
Tuesday, January 12th, 2010Recently I stumbled upon an enlightening presentation given by a Stanford Business School professor Chip Heath on the topic of what makes ideas stick.
He first asked the audience if anyone has heard that the only man-made structure visible to the eyes in outer space is the Great Wall of China. Many people raised their hands. He then said he was originally fooled by this urban legend himself too! Yes, the Great Wall is very long, but it’s also not very wide. So if it is visible from outer space, any 8-lane highway will do.
Professor Heath’s point is, without advertising budget and coordinated marketing effort, urban legends are able to stick to many people’s mind and spread far away. How can we learn from them to create messages for something as meaningful as helping countless children in poor areas of China? Professor Heath described the SUCCES formula in the book “Made to Stick” he co-authored with his brother Dan Heath. SUCCES stands for Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story.
On the authors’ website, they provided some supporting materials for the book. One of their handy PDF readings mentions the message from the Girl Effect organization:
“The world is a mess. Poverty. AIDS. Hunger. War. So what else is new?
What if there were an unexpected solution that could turn this sinking
ship around? Would you even know it if you saw it? It’s not the
internet. It’s not science. It’s not the government. It’s not money…”
Go to http://www.girleffect.org to find out what that is!
I believe both girleffect and CTEF focus on helping the children in need to become successful world citizens of the future. As CTEF has focused its effort on China’s poor rural areas, meaningful results are everywhere on its website and keep coming in all the time. By the way, my definition of a successful world citizen has 3 criteria:
* They are self-confident and self-reliant. They have faith in themselves and their future.
* They have empathy and respect for others. They care and unite others.
* They understand the world enough so that they know what will bring them true happiness and fulfillment. They know what they want, and know that when they relentlessly pursue their goals they’re also making the society better, better for their own future, for their family, and for everyone.
I want to work on my little definitions to make them meet the SUCCES criteria. I can definitely pick up tons of concrete examples from all the works done by CTEF.
