💡 Today I Learned

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath

  1. Simple (core) (simple and profound, proverb like) the commander's intent. The lede. Compact.
  2. Unexpected- surprising interesting violate expectation counter-intuitive make people curios
  3. Concreteness - not abstract, specific, may use concrete metaphors/examples
  4. Credible - can test for yourself, backed with guarantees, authority
  5. Emotions - people must care. An individual over a statistic. Many emotions to choose from: fear resentment compassion disgust
  6. Stories.

2 step plan.

Step 1: find the core. Step 2: Translate the core using the success checklist.

Core--

Illustrate the core by saying how it beats adjacent priorities. Eg if you've found the best chicken salad in the world I don't care about it if it interferes with our need to be the best low cost airline.

Commander's Intent

Commander's intent was a great example i learned from this book.

The commander has to not only tell people what to do - but summarize the why -- so that when the what goes pear shapeed they can still improvise on achieving the commander's intent.

When you know the commander's intent - you can answer a lot of questions you haven't faced before, without having to ask the boss.

Here's a quote re south west airlines.

I can teach you the secret to running this airline in 30 seconds. This is it: We are THE low-fare airline. Once you understand that fact, you can make any decision about this company's future as well as I can.

Tracey, from marketing, comes into your office. She says her surveys indicate that the passengers might enjoy a light entree on the Houston to Las Vegas flight. All we offer is peanuts, and she thinks a nice chicken Caesar salad would be popular. 'What do you say?'

You say "Tracey, will adding the chicken Caesar salad make us THE low-fare airline from Houston to Las Vegas? Because if it doesn't help us become the unchallenged low-fare airline, we're not serving any damn chicken salad".

-- and apparently Dan and CHip got the quote above from "Buck Up, Suck Up, and Come Back When You Foul Up: 12 Winning Secrets from the War Room, James Carville and Paul Begal"

-- and i found it written down for me already in this medium article: The Commander's Intent: How to Make New Habits Stick

This also overlaps with two things from the book, "Corporate Creativity" --

  1. First, the concept of 'Alignment' -- where people working in a business are aware of the goals of the business. They give American Airlines as an example of a business with great alignment.
  2. The description of American Airlines, from that book, gives it, basically, the same "Commander's Intent" -- so much so, that I had to double check the two books were talking about different airlines.