Credible ideas make people believe. Emotional ideas make people care. The right stories make people act. The story’s power is derived from two benefits: simulation (knowledge about how to act) and inspiration (motivation to act). Both are geared toward generating action. Mental simulation—recreating events or sequences in your mind—works because people can’t imagine something without also thinking about doing it. According to the authors, mental simulation is not as good as actually doing something, but it’s the next best thing. How does mental simulation apply to sticky ideas? The right kind of story is, in effect, a simulation. Going back to the Velcro Theory of Memory, the more hooks you put into your ideas, the better they’ll stick. Stories put knowledge into a framework that is more real, more true to our day-to-day lives. They get the audience ready to act.

          The authors also make the point that you don’t always have to create sticky ideas. Spotting them is often easier and more useful. They use the story of Jared, the man who lost weight eating a diet of Subway sandwiches, as an example of an inspirational found story. What if nonprofits could count on their volunteers to be on the lookout for symbolic events or encounters that might inspire others in or outside of the organization? Spotting great ideas isn’t hard, but they are easy to overlook. However, there are story templates that have been proven effective, and learning them helps you spot those inspirational stories:

1.      The Challenge Plot: The key element of a Challenge plot is that the obstacles seem daunting to the protagonist. The story of David and Goliath is the classic Challenge plot. Jared slimming down to 180 pounds is a Challenge plot. Challenge plots inspire us by appealing to our perseverance and courage. They make us want to work harder, take on new challenges and overcome obstacles. They inspire us to act.

2.      The Connection Plot: Connection plots are about people who develop a relationship that bridges a gap—racial, class, ethnic, religious or demographic. The movie Titanic and the play Romeo and Juliet are classic Connection plots. Connection plots inspire us to help others, be more tolerant of others, work with others and love others. The authors offer this practical advice: If you’re telling a story at your organization’s Christmas party, it’s best to use the Connection plot; if you’re telling a story at the kickoff party for a new fundraising campaign, use the Challenge plot.

3.      The Creativity Plot: The Creativity Plot involves someone making a mental breakthrough, solving a long-standing puzzle or attacking a problem in an innovative way. Creativity plots make us want to do something different, to be creative or to experiment with new approaches.

The goal of learning about these plots is not to invent new stories, but to be able to spot stories that have potential for your organization. You don’t have to make stories up, but you do need to know what you’re looking for so that when a good story presents itself, it doesn’t fall by the wayside. Stories can also beat the Curse of Knowledge. They embody most of the SUCCESs framework in that they are concrete; most of them also have emotional and unexpected elements. The hardest part about using stories is making sure that they are simple—that they reflect your core message. It’s not enough to just tell a great story; it has to reflect your mission.

Read more about Made to Stick by subscribing to Page to Practice™ book summaries. Or, purchase this or one of our other Page to Practice™ executive summaries by visiting the CausePlanet summary store.We welcome your comments on this book or any of our others on our CausePlanet blog. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

The Search for Social Entrepreneurship examines the power of social entrepreneurship to accomplish large-scale systemic change within the nonprofit sector. Author Paul C. Light takes on the behemoth task of synthesizing differing views and research outcomes to arrive at a consensus so entrepreneurialism can be studied and replicated for the greater good. Despite the fact that absolute certainty about what constitutes a highly entrepreneurial organization is elusive, Light successfully teases out useful similarities among researchers’ findings. He does so by identifying four basic components of social entrepreneurialism. In the end, the reader gains a collective view of what highly entrepreneurial organizations look like and how they behave.

          Below is an excerpt from a delightful Q & A we had with author Paul Light in our March Page to Practice™:

CP: In your book you conclude that highly socially entrepreneurial organizations portray internal practices such as lower emphasis on strategic planning and undiversified revenue streams. These descriptors seem antithetical to highly performing organizations that have a diversified funding base and good planning systems in place. How would you turn these conclusions into instructive guidance for aspiring entrepreneurial organizations?

PL: It’s the founder’s syndrome we often talk about. Once the entrepreneur has the idea, why should he, she, or they look for input from inside or outside the organization?  They have THE idea after all.  They also have less interest in strong governance, I think. The board exists to serve the idea—I’m a big believer in strong boards, but agree that micro-management is off limits.  But an occasional conversation about what the entrepreneur might do better is strictly required. So is the social exploring I talked about earlier in this interview. The more diversity in this picture, the better. In fact, the latest research suggests that “collaborative creativity” by diverse groups produces more breakthroughs than “garage innovation” by lone wolves. And it is more effective in reducing dead-ends.  In baseball terms, collaborative teams produce more hits, extra bases, runs, and homeruns (“going yard” as Detroit Tigers fans like me call it), and they also produce fewer strikeouts and errors. 

CP:  What advice do you have for nonprofit leaders who would like to hire more entrepreneurial staff members or train the team they have?  What characteristics should they be looking for or trying to develop? 

PL: Creativity is the key, I think. Once you find someone with faith, look for creativity, inspiration, passion, and hope (which I view as a deep form of optimism—we all have optimism at some level, whether about that dinner we just put in the oven (or microwave in my case), the movie we’re about to watch, our favorite sports team, or the opera.  But hope is something more durable—it resides in our being, a sense that what we are doing will add up somehow to a significant change in the world.

Can we teach people to be more creative? Absolutely. Set aside some training dollars for your team to do just about anything that stirs their imagination—a cooking class, pottery workshop, a yoga class (though I rather prefer an elliptical myself), a painting course, you name it.  Too much of our training is tightly circumscribed—accountants take accounting classes (and we don’t want them to be creative with the numbers, but we do want them to see how those numbers are part of the creative discipline), leaders take leadership courses, etc.  We can do better.  Some of the best training classes for innovation involve a drawing pad and a charcoal pencil.  Believe it.

Read more about Search for Social Entrepreneurship by subscribing to Page to Practice™ book summaries. Or, purchase this or one of our other Page to Practice™ executive summaries by visiting the CausePlanet summary store. We welcome your comments on this book or any of our others on our CausePlanet blog. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Why do some ideas seem to circulate effortlessly while others are forgotten as soon as they are created? How can your organization improve its chances of creating an idea that will “stick?” Authors Chip Heath and Dan Heath offer readers a simple formula for creating successful ideas: a Simple Unexpected Concrete Credentialed Emotional Story (SUCCESs). The authors argue that creating sticky ideas is something that can be learned, regardless of how “naturally creative” you are. By using the six traits of sticky ideas outlined in this book,  Made to Stick, almost any idea can be made stickier—and a sticky idea is one that is more likely to make a difference.

The six principles to maximizing an idea’s stickiness are:

1.      Simplicity: Being simple means more than saying something short. Instead, the goal is to create something both simple and profound, similar to a proverb. Simplicity means finding the essential core of your idea; it means excluding all other information and relentlessly prioritizing.

2.      Unexpectedness: Using surprise is one way to get people to pay attention to your idea, but surprise doesn’t last. In order for your idea to last in the long run, you must create both interest and curiosity. And you engage people’s curiosity over the long haul by “opening gaps” in their knowledge—and then filling those gaps.

3.      Concreteness: Sticky ideas are full of concrete images. Making your ideas concrete means explaining them in terms of human actions or through sensory information. Mission statements are usually so ambiguous that they are meaningless. Using concrete language ensures that your idea will mean the same thing to everyone in your audience.

4.      Credibility: You can’t always have an authority give his or her credentials to your ideas, but you need ways to help people test your ideas for themselves—as the authors put it, a “try before you buy” philosophy for the world of ideas. For example, in the 1980 U.S. presidential debate between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, Reagan could have cited statistics that showed how sluggish the economy was. Instead, he asked a simple question that let voters test for themselves: “Before you vote, ask yourself if you are better off today than you were four years ago.”

5.      Emotions: Tapping into people’s emotions—making them feel something—is how you get them to care about your ideas. Research shows that people are more likely to make a donation if they think they are helping one needy person rather than an entire impoverished nation.

6.      Stories: You get people to care about your ideas by tapping into their emotions; you get them to act on your ideas by telling stories. According to the authors, research shows that hearing stories acts as a kind of mental flight simulator, preparing us to respond more quickly and effectively.

Read more about Made to Stick:Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by subscribing to Page to Practice™ book summaries. Or, purchase this or one of our other Page to Practice™ executive summaries by visiting the CausePlanet summary store.We welcome your comments on this book or any of our others on our CausePlanet blog. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Most nonprofit executives are familiar with those persistent and pesky problems within their organizations that never seem to go away. Despite your best efforts to deal with the problem or the people involved, when the problem doesn’t go away, most people give up trying to make change happen because they believe it’s too difficult, if not impossible.

The most common tool we use to change others’ behavior is the use of verbal persuasion – but when it comes to resistant problems, verbal persuasion rarely works. Instead, personal experience is much more effective. Try to help people experience the world as you experience it. When you can’t create personal experiences, create vicarious experiences. This is one of the most accessible influence tools any influencer can employ.

Become a storyteller

To exert influence, we need to be good storytellers. We can use words to persuade others to change their minds by telling a story rather than lecturing them. The following characteristics of storytelling make some stories more powerful tools of influence than others:

1.      Understanding. Every time you try to convince others through verbal persuasion, you struggle to select and share language in a way that reproduces exactly the same thoughts you are having in the mind of the listener. You say your words, but others hear their words, which in turn stimulates their images, their past histories and their overall meaning. A well-told narrative provides concrete and vivid detail rather than terse summaries and unclear conclusions. 

2.      Believing. People oftentimes become less willing to believe what you have to say when they know that your goal is to convince them of something. This natural resistance stems from a lack of trust. First, people may lack confidence in your expertise and, second, they may doubt your motive. Concrete and vivid stories are influential because they transport people out of the role of critic and into the role of participant.

3.      Motivating. People must actually care about what they believe if their belief is going to get them to change their behavior. If emotions don’t kick in, people don’t act. When they’re told well, stories stimulate genuine emotions.

Read more about Influencer:The Power to Change Anything by subscribing to Page to Practice™ book summaries. Or, purchase this or one of our other Page to Practice™ executive summaries by visiting the CausePlanet summary store.We welcome your comments on this book or any of our others on our CausePlanet blog. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Our February Page to Practice book summary of Up and Out of Poverty presents a timely look at social marketing and a methodology for creating social change. While the poverty issue serves as a case study throughout the book, it is clear that Kotler and Lee’s thoughtful and concise 10-step social marketing plan applies to a multitude of organizations tackling the greater good. Here’s an excerpt from CausePlanet’s February Page to Practice book summary and Q&As as well as Nancy Lee’s link for creating your own social marketing worksheet.

CausePlanet: In light of the recent earthquake in Haiti, are there any strategies that relief organizations can adopt from your book that would help them be the most effective and efficient they can be?

Kotler and Lee: Haiti represents an emergency situation rather than a settled situation involving poor people and poor communities. Social marketing is most appropriate in the later case. In emergency situations, everything must be done to save lives by supplying food, water and housing. Social marketing’s role in this situation would be to discourage persons from engaging in behaviors that will cause or spread disease or lead to unsafe outcomes.

Key to success will be following fundamental steps in the social marketing model, especially: segmenting the market and prioritizing target audiences; determining a few single, simple, doable behaviors that would help; and then understanding and addressing barriers to these behaviors.

CausePlanet: What are the first steps our readers should take after reading your book?

Kotler and Lee: Download our social marketing planning worksheets on one of two Web sites: www.upandoutofpoverty.com or www.socialmarketingservice.com. Use these to develop a social marketing plan focused on influencing a target audience to adopt a desired behavior (ideally a single, simple, doable one to start).

CausePlanet: Is there anything else you feel our readers should take away from your book?

Kotler and Lee: Our hope is that readers experience that the real magic of marketing is (simply) a customer-oriented approach. We spend time defining and understanding what barriers our target audience has to performing desired behaviors, and we develop programs that reduce these barriers and increase personal benefits.

Read more about Up and Out of Poverty by subscribing to Page to Practice™ book summaries. Or, purchase this or one of our other Page to Practice™ executive summaries by visiting the CausePlanet summary store.We welcome your comments on this book or any of our others on our CausePlanet blog. Follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Women control 51 percent of the wealth in America according to a recent article in the New York Times.  Additionally, the percentage of women earning bachelors and master’s degrees is up to 56 percent. Consequently, it should come as no surprise that women now surpass men in business ownership.  So why do we still pitch the women like they’re men when it comes to philanthropy?

I was delighted to see an article titled Eight lessons for working with female prospects or donors and remind myself of some of the gems I should know about my own gender!  Two of the lessons struck a chord with me as to why we women are a little more involved when it comes to giving. 

One: Women often work collaboratively and seek the opinions of others. Be sure to include and respect the opinions of those in your donor’s close network.

Two: A major gift is not just a transaction for women. It is an experience that requires time for reflection.

Both of these lessons tell the ED or the DOD in any organization that engaging women philanthropists is going to involve a more robust cultivation process. However, some of the most accomplished fundraising programs I’ve had the privilege of being part of embraced the female perspective and are wildly successful because they facilitated an environment where women could learn, reflect and give…in the company of other women.

Kim Klein, author of Reliable Fundraising in Unreliable Times further makes the profound point by efficiently saying, “Good fundraising focuses on the donor, not the donation.”  Perhaps the reason why some make the mistake of only asking men for a donation or treating women like men when they do ask is because they’re operating on an antiquated fundraising model.  I bet the ad execs at Nike don’t run print ads for men’s shoes in Oprah magazine.  Let’s get on board and think about the donor.  She would really appreciate it.

For an executive summary of Reliable Fundraising in Unreliable Times, click on the book title above. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and CausePlanet for more information about nonprofit leadership.

This is the final installment of a 12-part series on great managing in the holiday spirit of “12 days of Christmas” and 12:The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James Harter.

This series of excerpts from our Page to Practice book summary of 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James Harter is the follow up to the 1999 bestseller First, Break All the Rules, which identified the 12 most important elements that all great managers share.

In 12, the authors once again draw from The Gallup Organization’s database—which now includes 10 million employee and manager interviews—to give real-life examples of how managers from around the world epitomize each of the 12 Elements. In addition to the Gallup data, the authors use the latest insights from brain-imaging studies, genetics, psychology, behavioral economics and other scientific disciplines to reveal what drives good managers.

Wagner and Harter’s 1st element is not a partridge in a pear tree. Rather, it’s knowing what’s expected:

First Element: “Knowing What’s Expected”: Although this element seems to be the easiest of the 12 (if employees don’t know what’s expected, just tell them), applying it in practice means more than just writing a job description. People need to know how what they do fits into what everyone else does, and how those expectations change when circumstances change. Employees on the “front lines” are usually so insulated from management that they don’t have a clear idea of how their job contributes to the mission of the organization. Executives must ask themselves whether or not each person in the organizational hierarchy has a set of responsibilities that advance the organization’s mission. This comprehensive view of knowing what’s expected is what creates real teamwork.

Watch for our next installment of the “12 days of great managing” and give your staff the gift of good management in 2010. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and CausePlanet for more information about nonprofit leadership.

This is part eleven of a 12-part series on great managing in the holiday spirit of “12 days of Christmas” and 12:The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James Harter.

This series of excerpts from our Page to Practice book summary of 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James Harter is the follow up to the 1999 bestseller First, Break All the Rules, which identified the 12 most important elements that all great managers share.

In 12, the authors once again draw from The Gallup Organization’s database—which now includes 10 million employee and manager interviews—to give real-life examples of how managers from around the world epitomize each of the 12 Elements. In addition to the Gallup data, the authors use the latest insights from brain-imaging studies, genetics, psychology, behavioral economics and other scientific disciplines to reveal what drives good managers.

Wagner and Harter’s 2nd element is not two turtle doves. Rather, it’s the right tools for the job:

Second Element: “Materials and Equipment”: The average person joins an organization about which it feels excited and, especially in the nonprofit sector, one about whose mission he or she feels passionate. People join organizations with high expectations, but when they are not supplied with the proper tools they need to reach their high ideals, they become disillusioned. When employees lack the means to do their work well, they feel frustrated and angry at the organization for putting them in a difficult position. The best managers help employees get what they need to do their job well. This works in the organization’s favor in two ways: 1) Having the right tools makes a job safer, easier and more productive; and 2) Giving employees the equipment they need sends the message that the organization cares about them.

Watch for our next installment of the “12 days of great managing” and give your staff the gift of good management in 2010. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and CausePlanet for more information about nonprofit leadership.

This is part ten of a 12-part series on great managing in the holiday spirit of “12 days of Christmas” and 12:The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James Harter.

This series of excerpts from our Page to Practice book summary of 12: The Elements of Great Managing by Rodd Wagner and James Harter is the follow up to the 1999 bestseller First, Break All the Rules, which identified the 12 most important elements that all great managers share.

In 12, the authors once again draw from The Gallup Organization’s database—which now includes 10 million employee and manager interviews—to give real-life examples of how managers from around the world epitomize each of the 12 Elements. In addition to the Gallup data, the authors use the latest insights from brain-imaging studies, genetics, psychology, behavioral economics and other scientific disciplines to reveal what drives good managers.

Wagner and Harter’s 3rd element is not three French hens. Rather, it’s answering the question, “Who would excel in this job?”:

Third Element: “Opportunity to Do What I Do Best”: Studies show that the right combination of personality traits, talents and abilities predispose some people to succeed in a job where others fail. For the manager, this poses a simple question: Who would excel in this job? Managers must help each employee mold his or her job around the way he works naturally, realizing that as long as he fulfills his responsibilities, without any harm along the way, how he does his work doesn’t matter.

Watch for our next installment of the “12 days of great managing” and give your staff the gift of good management in 2010. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and CausePlanet for more information about nonprofit leadership.