As I continue my evaluation research with three additional site visits this past week, I have been thinking about how I will later frame all of this information in a convincing and compelling way to justify the funding of AmeriCorps VISTA Summer Associates. I happened to just finish the book Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath, which explains why some ideas persist throughout time, while others aren’t remembered after 10 minutes. Hoping to be bring this core idea of future funding for Summer Associates to the attention of key stakeholders and to stick, I’m trying my best to keep these tips in mind as I begin to analyze and write about the data that I am collecting. Getting an idea to stick and last the audience must: pay attention, understand and remember, agree or believe, care, and be able to act on it. A large majority of the book is spent explaining how to do exactly do all of that, and is explained through the acronym SUCCESs.

SUCCESs

1. Simple: Find the core of an idea and make that most important. People remember simple, they don’t necessarily remember details.
2. Unexpected: Get attention the attention of the audience; create a sense of surprise and hold attention by creating interest in the idea.
3. Concrete: Help people understand and remember the idea by framing an intangible or ambiguous concept into a concrete example,
4. Credible: Help people believe by showing credibility of source. Using an anti authority, qualifying with details and statistics, and having an extraordinary example.
5. Emotional: Make people care. Tapping into existing emotion (using associations), fighting semantic stretch (the change of word connotation or meaning with over-use), appealing to self-interest, and appealing to identity are a few ways to add the emotional component to presenting an idea.
6. Stories: Get people to act; “a story is powerful because it provides the context missing from abstract prose.” We want an un-passive audience.

Beyond that, the book also focuses on the ‘Curse of Knowledge’, which is knowing things that others don’t know, and not remembering what it’s like not to know those things. It’s a curse because you are not able to explain the idea clearly in a way that those who don’t know will understand, and from the beginning the Curse of Knowledge causes an idea to fizzle out quicker than birthday candles at a 6th birthday party; no one would be able to even understand what you are talking about!

While my little synopsis does not do the book and concepts therein justice, I do think that for my project it will be very useful as I will need to frame my information, ideas, and suggestions in such a way that the audience will be able to understand, remember, and most importantly want to act. I’ll need to really hone in on the emotional realm of an idea, and pull on the stakeholders’ heart strings. Also creating a story by putting my information into a narrative form that really focuses on individual experiences will greatly help with encouraging action. The book quotes Mother Theresa, who said, “If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”  I will want to keep that in mind and really show how each Summer Associate impacts the operations of the Summer Feeding Program that it serves and, hopefully this will add the emotional component that will cause action.

I hope everyone has a good week!

Melissa