What Leaders and Managers Can Learn from Made to Stick
Assuming that a technically accurate announcement to your team is enough for them to remember and act on it is the specific trap Made to Stick names, and it's an easy one to fall into when you know every detail matters to you.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Find the single core point and strip everything else away
A message that tries to communicate everything about a change ends up remembered as nothing; identifying the one essential point and cutting everything that doesn't serve it makes your announcement far more likely to stick.
A manager announces a new initiative covering the rationale, the timeline, the metrics, and the process all with equal weight, and the team walks away without a single clear takeaway.
Identify the one sentence you most want your team to remember after this announcement, and cut anything that doesn't support it.
Break the pattern people expect, to actually earn attention
An announcement that fits smoothly into the format every other memo follows slides past without registering; one that genuinely surprises or violates an assumption earns the attention needed to be remembered.
A manager delivers an important update in the exact same format as every routine update, and it gets treated with the same low attention as the routine ones.
Identify one assumption your team likely holds about a coming change, and open by directly addressing it.
Make the idea concrete and give it built-in credibility
Abstract statements are hard to remember and hard to believe on their own; grounding your message in a concrete, checkable detail makes it stick on its own merits rather than relying purely on your authority.
A manager describes a change as "a big improvement" without a single specific, checkable detail behind the claim, and the phrase slides past without leaving an impression.
Replace one abstract claim in your next announcement with a specific, concrete detail your team could actually picture or verify.
Carry the idea with genuine emotion and a story, not a dry fact
Facts alone rarely move a team to remember or act on a change; connecting it to real emotion and a concrete story people can retell makes it far more likely to actually influence behavior.
Covering every important detail and making one idea truly memorable aren't opposites — a memorable core message often carries the important details further than a complete but forgettable list would.
Name one thing, honestly
If someone on your team had to describe your last important announcement a week later, what would you want them to say?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Replace one abstract claim in your next announcement with a specific, concrete detail your team could actually picture or verify.