A Walkthrough of the Made to Stick Skill: Making Your Ideas Unforgettable
Six commands that apply the SUCCESs framework to your ideas — finding your core message, creating unexpected hooks, building in concreteness, and choosing the right story.
Chip and Dan Heath's Made to Stick answered a question that marketers, teachers, and leaders have always struggled with: why do some ideas get remembered and others vanish? Their research identified six qualities of sticky ideas, captured in the acronym SUCCESs: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories.
The Made to Stick BookSkill has six commands that apply this framework to your specific ideas and communications. Here's what each does.
The Six Commands
/success-audit — Score Your Idea on All Six Dimensions
What it does: Evaluates your idea, message, or communication against all six SUCCESs dimensions. For each dimension, assesses whether your current communication is meeting the bar and, if not, specifically where it falls short.
What you get: A stickiness scorecard — your current communication scored on all six dimensions, with the lowest-scoring dimensions identified as priority improvements.
When to use it: First. The audit reveals which dimensions are your weakest and directs the other commands to the highest-leverage improvements.
/core-message — Find the Heart of Your Idea
What it does: The Heaths' most important principle: before any idea can stick, it must be simple — not dumbed-down, but stripped to its essential core. This command applies their "Commander's Intent" technique: what is the single most important thing this communication must convey? If someone could only remember one thing, what should it be?
What you get: A core message statement — the essential, stripped-down nucleus of your idea, expressed in one sentence.
When to use it: Before any significant communication, presentation, or content piece. The core message becomes the test for everything else: does this element serve the core or distract from it?
/unexpected-hook — Create a Curiosity Gap
What it does: The Unexpected dimension works through curiosity gaps — moments where you violate an expectation and leave the audience wanting to know more. The command helps you identify the gap in your audience's knowledge (what don't they know that they should?) and create an opening that opens that gap rather than closing it with information.
What you get: A hook and gap opening for your communication — a specific way to start your message that creates curiosity rather than delivering information immediately.
When to use it: After finding your core message. The unexpected hook is how you get your audience's attention long enough to deliver it.
/concrete-test — Make Your Abstraction Tangible
What it does: The Heaths' observation: abstract ideas are hard to remember, concrete ideas are easy. "People with grit persevere" is abstract. "Angela Duckworth found that grit predicted success at West Point better than the Whole Candidate Score" is concrete. This command helps you take your abstract ideas and rewrite them in concrete terms.
What you get: Concreteness rewrites — your abstract statements translated into specific, sensory, tangible language.
When to use it: After the core message is clear. The concreteness rewrites make the core message memorable rather than abstract.
/story-finder — Choose the Right Story Type
What it does: Stories are the most powerful carrier of sticky ideas, but not all stories work the same way. The Heaths identify three story types: the Challenge story (someone overcomes adversity — inspires action), the Connection story (someone connects across a gap — builds empathy), and the Creativity story (someone solves a problem in a novel way — unlocks thinking). This command identifies which type fits your communication goal and helps you find the right story.
What you get: A story framework with a specific narrative — the story type that serves your goal and a template for telling it effectively.
When to use it: When you need to make an emotional, memorable case for your idea. Stories are particularly powerful in presentations, pitches, and change communications.
/curse-of-knowledge — See What Your Audience Doesn't Know
What it does: The Curse of Knowledge is the Heaths' name for the cognitive difficulty of remembering what it's like not to know something you now know. Once you know how your product works, it's hard to see your communication through a novice's eyes. This command helps you identify and correct for the curse — the places where you're assuming knowledge your audience doesn't have.
What you get: A simplified communication plan — specific places where you're speaking over your audience's heads and specific rewrites that bridge the gap.
When to use it: Before any external communication — product documentation, sales materials, presentations to non-experts. The curse of knowledge is most destructive in communications with audiences who don't share your domain knowledge.
Recommended Sequence
/success-audit— identify your weakest dimensions/core-message— find the essential nucleus/unexpected-hook— create attention-getting openings/concrete-test— make abstractions tangible/story-finder— build the emotional carrier/curse-of-knowledge— ensure accessibility
What the Heaths' Framework Delivers
The Made to Stick framework is useful because it's analytical — it gives you a diagnostic tool, not just inspiration. When a message isn't landing, you can ask which of the six dimensions is failing. When a competitor's message is more effective than yours, you can map it against the six dimensions and see what they're doing that you're not.
The Skill makes this analysis practical: each command produces specific rewrites and improvements, not just observations about what's wrong.
Ready to make your ideas stick? Get the Made to Stick BookSkill and start with /success-audit.