Finished a re-read of great and fast book on how to make ideas and storytelling better and more memorable. Funny how re-listens surface more information for me.
Key take aways for me.
- Simplicity— Simple is not a par it down to minimum, rather simple means elegant prioritization.
- Unexpected ness – Always build in a bit of surprise.
- Concrete – Make a concrete example for everyone to get it.
- Credible – Make a schema that is credible and makes sense.
- Emotions. – Make the idea have emotional elements.
- Story – The idea needs to be in the form of a story, people gravitate and remember stories.
- Simple. Elegance priorities — This is not just making your ideas simple, but nuanced simple, elegant prioritization of concepts.
- The Southwest Airlines idea about finding the core, meaning the core concept or intent of the idea… ‘ We will be the lowest cost airline, period.’ – CEO of SWA Gary C. Kelly and Herb Kelleher. I took this as stating the key or core principal. Even though there is a lot to do to make that happen.
- Commander’s intent — the order from the commander is just the order, execution requires understanding the intent of the order and execute accordingly. The link will take you to a good article about this. I think is like the ‘you know what I meant …’
- “ The low fare airline “
- “Have fun at work”
- “The lead” – Never bury the lead.
- The inverted pyramid model for news story— Read more about this here.
- Gravity toward complex — Many ideas people come up with gravitate toward the complex… instead of crisp simple ideas.
- Schema. Series of attributes, a framework for organizing elements of an idea, think of it as a mechanism that relates all the parts to a whole and structures the concept or idea in a why that can be easily understood.
- Metaphors — Also thinking in metaphor or mental models also gives a quick way to make and idea or concept come to life for folks.
Some other concepts I listed out while listening.
Avoid gimmickry — When concerting ideas gimmicky ideas often fall flat are easily discounted by humans.
Unexpected implications — Make sure the idea has an unexpected implication… “Technology destroys relationships “
“Guessing machines are broken” — The humans are essentially guessing machines
“Uncommon sense”
“Breaking models” — This is that the idea will break current model like saying, traditional research is dead… now the news is consumed via influencers on TikTok.
“Defective schema” — Ad council ads violates expected with unexpected. (‘Didn’t see that coming’) Surprise grabs attention (surprise brow)
“Gap theory.” Open and close
“What you didnt know ?” Things left out…
Here’s what you know-here’s what you’re missing