Why do some messages stick in our heads and others don’t? Why are some speeches more memorable than others? Why does Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address stand out? Did you know that when President John Kennedy set the goal to send a man to the man and return him safely before the decade was out that was at the end of speech on foreign policy given to Congress? What about Dr. Marin Luther King’s I have a dream speech. Most people at time in the 1960’s can remember the circumstances surrounding the speech and that phrase “I have a dream”, but perhaps not much about the whole speech.So what makes ideas stick? There is a new book out addressing that subject, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The authors Chip and Dan Heath have studied what makes an idea stick. They have identified six principles that impact whether an idea will remain with us. They are:Simplicity – “How do we find the essential core of our ideas?”Unexpectedness – “How do we get our audience to pay attention to our ideas, and how do we maintain their interest when we need time to get the ideas across?”Concreteness – “how do we make our ideas clear?’Credibility – “How do we make people believe our ideas?”Emotions – “How do we got people to care about our ideas?”Stories – “How do we get people to act on our ideas?”In their book they address these principles in more details. Regardless of what we do in life we are all communicators. Learning how to make our ideas stick is an essential skill to possess. Too many great ideas go down the drain because they are not communicated properly.If you are interested in learning more read the book, it is worth the time.