Take a look and see how you can incorporate this idea in to your next opportunity.

There is serious Giants fever in San Francisco. The sidewalks are streaming with fans clad in orange and black. Co-workers are screaming game updates over cubes (actually as I sit on BART, some guy just yelled, “the Giants are up!” (Game 3 vs. the Phillies began at 1:05pm today). There’s even a sign posted in the high rise window across from our office, “Go Giants!”.

In the spirit of the playoffs, communicators everywhere can take a tip from professional athletes. You gotta work on your game to get to the bigs. And keep working on it to clinch the pennant.

It’s about continuous improvement. There’s really only one group of professionals who are always in school, constantly acquiring and responding to feedback…

Athletes. They break down video, refine techniques, and in doing so they’re conscious of every position, stance and swing. And you should be too.

But, in our daily jobs, we blissfully go along communicating unconsciously. Maybe you stare at the Blackberry with someone standing right in front of you asking your opinion. Or talk in a monotone voice on a conference call at 4pm, while trying to rally the troops around meeting that project deadline. Or you talk in such complicated jargon that no one leaves the meeting with the same message. The problem is we don’t even know it – we are simply unconscious about our communications.

Start now: 3 easy ways to regain consciousness:

1. Get yourself recorded. Ok, I get it – it might be tough to rig a video camera in the middle of your next meeting, but everyone has access to an audio recorder. You don’t even need to buyanaudiorecorder anymore. Get an app on your phone and record your next conference call – andthen listen to it. Would you want to listen to you?
2. Get feedback. The only way to figure out what you’re doing is for someone to tell you. After yournext meeting, ask a colleague for feedback: 3 Keepers and 3 Improvements.The feedback must be balanced and specific so that you can do something with it.
3. Get involved. Subscribe to this blog (and others like it) and have posts delivered to your Inbox.That little reminder in your email about communications just once per week is enough to keep you thinking. Other options:

• Join the Linked In Decker Community
• Like us on Facebook – we’re currently holding a contest to give away a seat in one of our upcoming Decker Made to Stick Messaging programs. Get in on the action.

Keep us posted. Let us know how you’ll turn your communications experience into a winning season.

BTW…update from the guy on BART: Giants take it 3-0, and now lead the series 2-1. Go Giants!

**Update: Comment on this post with why you need help with your messaging skills by midnight PST Oct 29 to enter to win a seat in an upcoming Decker Made to Stick Messaging!**

Mostly because you probably don’t even know you’re cursed. Psychologists and behavioral economists who study this phenomenon find the more of an expert you become in your field, the more likely you are to be cursed by your own knowledge. That is, you don’t know what it’s like NOT to know what you know. This has HUGE implications in our communications. We end up communicating to clients, internal team members, and even our kids in a language they can’t comprehend and then wonder why our product doesn’t sell, that project doesn’t move forward and why our kids just won’t patiently wait when we ask them to. According to Chip and Dan Heath, The Curse of Knowledge is the villain to all things sticky – including your messages.

Tamer Osman, CEO of RGlobe was a participant in our August Decker Made to Stick Messaging program. He noted that throughout his career it has been challenging to create messages that resonate and have a lasting impression on customers. “I’ve struggled with pinpointing the best approach to delivering complex messages to any type of audience in the most simple, yet effective way.”

Here’s an executive who has spent his career managing account and strategic relationships with Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, Oracle, CA, Microsoft and many other leading high tech companies. Experienced, smart, entrepreneurial and, like many technology execs (and likely the other 5.9B people in the world), Tamer had the classic case of the Curse of Knowledge. Just how cursed was he? As part of the program, each participant gets to test this out first hand by giving their pitch to a group of other professionals right out of the gates. Here’s Tamer with his “Take One” message, pitching RGlobe:

Was the pitch a SUCCESs?

Using Chip and Dan Heath’s SUCCESs framework from Made to Stick, Tamer received peer feedback about the stickiness of his message. Did it have the elements of being Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Story?

Tamer’s “Take One”

The biggest element missing here is that of concreteness. He talks about the process for leveraging a partner, streamlined platforms, and private collaborative networks. Those terms are common knowledge to Tamer – certainly, there’s a tune playing in his head that makes perfect sense to him. But to us, the listeners, it sounds like abstraction after abstraction and our minds start to blur. We have no concrete image of what the service offers.

You might be thinking, “He’s talking to techies. It’s concrete to them.” And yet, we too often make the wrong assumptions about what our listeners do or do not know (remember, we’re cursed!). In fact, one Oracle engineer in the program said, “I’m really technical but even I don’t understand what your company does.”

This is not to say that you can’t have technical terms and information. We’re not encouraging you to dumb it down. Instead, for any abstraction, think of a concrete example to support it. Even better, lead with the concrete example, and THEN reference the abstract term. The bonus is when you do this, you’re helping your technical audience spread the message further. And that could mean closing the deal if they take your oh-so-sticky message and sell it internally to senior management.

Here’s where it gets really good…check out Tamer’s “Take Two” pitch, delivered in the afternoon after applying the Decker Made to Stick principles throughout the day.

The Secret to SUCCESs

What SUCCESs factors stood out?

Concrete: Check! Tamer uses a fantastic set up that is targeted to a specific listener group. He’s provided a concrete image of the difficulty, and potential, of working effectively with partners. You can “see” it.

Simple: He’s added an analogy to help you instantly get the concept. “It’s as simple to use as Facebook, but it’s private and secure.”

Emotional: He’s getting to the pain points of the listener. Dealing with partners is complex and time-consuming. Houston, we have a problem.

After completing the program, Tamer said “I now have a new prospective on how to reach my audience by crafting the right message through their eyes and the confidence to know the difference between the right way and the wrong way.”

What now? How do you spot the Curse?

The first step: Sit back and think about your listeners (or readers). Now REALLY think about them and ask some questions: what’s important to them? Why would they be resistant? What do they know about you/your service?” Then and only then can you start crafting your message.

Next, have someone outside your immediate team, organization, or even industry to review your message – they’ll be able to spot the curse before you do.

Better yet, sign up for an upcoming Decker Made to Stick Messaging program: November 17th in NYC, or December 10th in SF. Hope to see you there!

It’s intriguing, deep, and action packed. And great effects if you’re into that kind of thing. While I was trying to sort out the plot around whose subconscious was whose, I started hearing the SUCCESs framework from Made to Stick. Disclosure: yes, I am in tune to it, but really not that geeky about it. Seriously, Nolan MUST have taken a few notes from the book in his research. If you’ve read the book or attended one of our programs you know that SUCCESs is a checklist for sticky messages which share the principles of Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, and Story.

The premise of Inception is how to extract and plant subconscious thoughts, using dreams as the vehicle. And it turns out that planting an idea is the more difficult of the two. Not unlike what we do everyday: trying to plant ideas like adopting a new technical standard, launching a new initiative or process, convincing the boss why we’re the right person for the job, lobbying for a family vacation in Florida instead of Colorado, and even getting the kids to put things back in their place (by starting with putting their shoes away in the closet instead of leaving them in the middle of the kitchen floor).

So, Leo (aka, master thief Dom Cobb) assembles a crack team including a dream architect, a chemist, and a forger – all of whom can also kick butt in the process. Their task: to plant an idea in the mind of a major energy conglomerate heir – specifically, the idea that he should sell off and disband the business his father built. And they do it using a few of the SUCCESs principles that also map to the Decker Cornerstones:

• Simple: The idea must be incredibly simple so that it can grow and thrive on its own. That means boiling your message down to the biggest change in how you want your listener to think/act about your idea – it’s your Point Of View.
• Concrete: There must be some specificity and familiarity in the environment to allow the idea to grow. In other words, once you get someone to buy off on your Point of View, you must tell them what to do next. Include a Specific Action Step that is timed, physical and measurable.
• Emotion: Use it! This is the get-someone-to-CARE-about-your-idea part. Why would they do this? Give them the benefits (to THEM), and remember that positive emotion trumps negative emotion. The movie really tugs at the heartstrings here – without giving away too much I’ll just say that parents, don’t throw out all the elementary school artwork.

And it all comes together in a terrific 2.5-hour story that keeps your mind whirling. Head to the theater and go brush up on your communications – it’s a pretty good excuse. I’ll leave you with the trailer:

Let me add on to Dan’s 3 tips with a few examples we’ve seen in our programs recently:

1. Be Simple: Force yourself to prioritize. Boil down your message into one (yes, one) phrase that signifies the single biggest change in how you want people to think or act about your idea, topic, initiative, product or service.

A veterinarian from our messaging program was trying to convince pet owners that they’re overusing protein in their pet’s diets. This could easily turn into a PowerPoint nightmare of chart-by-chart comparisons of the recommended dietary allowances for carbs, protein, vitamins, etc. Instead, she focused her message and took a page right out of James Carville’s playbook, and created the Point Of View: “It’s the calories, stupid.” And then she went on, “Protein alone is not the answer. It’s a balanced diet that your pet needs.”

2. Show something: One participant said that rather than decorate his slides with bullet points, and complex diagrams, that they would begin to “Deckerate” them instead. That means simplify – to the point that you might not even need a slide. Remember that slides are supposed to be a support for your presentation, not to be the presentation.

Of course, the best example of showing and not telling is all things Apple. Man, that iPad is beautiful, and yes, I want it. Apple is so good that they even get you to think that you need it.

3. Tease before you tell: Get them interested! In one of our programs last month, an exec from an insurance company announced that he was going to be doing his in-class presentation on work/life balance. Snooze. Like we haven’t heard that one before. But he began this way…first, he grabbed a flip chart and wrote “Key Clients” at the top. Then he asked everyone to write down their top 5 clients. “If those are your very best clients, you take their calls, right? You’ll let them interrupt a meeting, and always think about how you can add value.” Teaser accomplished. He continued, “Now, how many of you listed your spouse or kids on that list? It’s absolutely critical that you think of your own family as key clients.” Whoa. Mom guilt is in full effect. I’m in.

Your turn. Win a seat in our upcoming June 4 Decker Made to Stick Messaging program! Comment below with a good stickiness story and we’ll draw a winner!

Yes, it’s simple. I get it. It’s a cloud. There’s just one little problem. Clouds stink because you can’t see through them. Their mere presence makes the morning commute a little bit longer, and they’re notorious for delaying flights in and out of SFO.

For those in high tech, you’re cursed big time with your own knowledge about cloud computing. You know what happens in that cloud – you can talk all day about leveraging shared capabilities that are self-healing to maximize efficiency and minimize risk, right? Unfortunately for you, the rest of us don’t know that tune. In fact, we’re probably a whole lot more like Dorothy trying to figure out what’s going on behind the curtain.

So, how can you differentiate your message about the cloud (or any technical jargon for that matter)?

First, think about your customers – what’s the number one thing they’re concerned with? What would make them resistant to your idea? Maybe it’s security. For example, why would I (as a CTO) hand over all my precious data to you, and not know exactly what’s happening in that cloud and how it’s being used?

Next, try a dose of Unexpectedness to get your message to be heard – here’s how a recent participant from our Decker Made to Stick program framed her message around the cloud:

When we think of clouds, we typically think of big, white puffy things. The cloud I’m talking about is completely different because you can see through it. It offers the transparency you need to clearly see all the data flowing in and out of the network…

All of a sudden the big benefit of visibility is brought to life because she juxtaposed it right next to our schema of what a cloud is: nebulous, nontransparent and even confusing.

I leave you with a little inspiration and perspective from the great Joni Mitchell and her lyrics to Both Sides Now (my Women in Music professor would be so proud – watch a fabulous performance here). Imagine that your customers view your cloud offering this way…

Bows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere, I’ve looked at clouds that way.
But now they only block the sun, they rain and snow on everyone.
So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way.

I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now,
From up and down, and still somehow
It’s cloud illusions I recall.
I really don’t know clouds at all.

It’s on you to make sure your customers and even non-technical team members know those clouds inside and out. How else are you going to get them to buy off on that cute white fluffy thing?

We’d love to hear some of your great message successes (technical or not) – send them our way!

*UPDATE: Here’s an awesome plain-spoken explanation on cloud computing from Walt Mossberg at the Wall Street Journal (thanks to our buddies at ServiceSource for the tip!).

Let’s start with the behavioral side (the part that we hear and see as someone is speaking to us):

The pilot came on the PA system to give an update on our delay. In what was possibly the worst monotone voice I’ve EVER heard (keep in mind that I hear a lot of them), he explained:

“Um, there was a, um, delay due to, um, bad, um, weather in Chicago, um. [Insert long, painful pause] Um, we, uh should be um, pulling away from the uh, gate, in about um, five minutes.”

I wish I could say I was exaggerating. I overheard the couple next to me saying that he sounded like he was falling asleep in the middle of his announcement. Awesome – a narcoleptic pilot. Perfect for a cross-country flight.

And on the content side (the words we say):

Flight status updates are basic — and brief. Why should there ever be an abstraction in them?  These announcements talk about low acceptance rates and flow control. How does that help me understand why I won’t be home in time to tuck my kids into bed? It’s simple. The pilots are cursed by their own knowledge.

Yes, we passengers want details and an explanation for what happened, but please speak in plain English. I have no clue what a low acceptance rate is. One flight attendant on another recent flight finally spoke up, “SFO usually operates two different runways, but they had to close one of them due to the nasty rain. Now they can’t land as many planes, things are backed up and we just have to wait our turn.” Ok, I get it now. Thanks for the translation.

So what?

We’re a lot like these pilots. Many of us don’t consider ourselves to be public speakers. But we’re ALWAYS public speaking (there’s really not much private speaking going on). If you’ve got a high-stakes presentation, you probably work pretty hard at both what you’re going to say and how you’re going to say it. But those are rare moments. How are you working on your daily communications? In your one-on-ones, staff meetings, on a conference call, and even over the PA system.

Time for a self-check: how do you come across on a conference call?

The good news is that you can always be practicing. Pros are always in school, constantly working to get better. Get feedback (an audio recorder and/or a trusted colleague work great) and start tweaking and testing.

[Note that Southwest, Jet Blue and Virgin America are far better in these interactions – primarily because they make them conversational, both in behavior and content. They don’t fill them with jargon. Rather, they just tell it like it is, and have fun with it too – a little of that goes a long way on the tarmac.]