BUSS5080 · Succeeding In The Accounting Profession
Communication & Sticky Ideas
Week 3 of BUSS5080 is about making important ideas land, stay, and move people to act — and then flipping the skill around to draw the other person out by listening. The unit teaches two sides of communication. First, sticky output: Chip Heath's Made to Stick gives six principles, and the unit extends them to seven — the SUCCESS model (Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories, Serve), where Serve is the unit's own seventh principle. Second, quality input: coaching (Emerson & Loehr — blame-free, warmth-first, control-building) and high-quality / active listening (Itzchakov & Kluger's listening circle, formalised as Feedforward Interviewing). The closed-book multiple-choice exam reliably asks you to tag a message with the SUCCESS principle(s) it uses and to recognise coaching and listening moves, so learn to apply the models to fresh scenarios, not just recite them.
What this chapter covers
- 011. The three goals of sticky communication — an idea must be understood, change thought or action, and be remembered
- 022. The SUCCESS model — the unit's seven principles (Simple · Unexpected · Concrete · Credible · Emotional · Stories · Serve)
- 033. Six vs seven — Heath names 6 (SUCCES); the unit adds Serve (tailor to the audience) to spell SUCCESS
- 044. Building the Credible principle — three levers: derivative legitimacy, balanced portrayal, and credible evidence
- 055. Emotional vs informational — emotion makes people act, information only makes them think
- 066. Coaching (Emerson & Loehr) — blame-free, warmth-gated, raises the person's sense of control (ask > tell)
- 077. High-quality / active listening — the listening circle (Itzchakov & Kluger); attend, suspend judgment, paraphrase, probe
- 088. Feedforward Interviewing (FFI) & Google's Project Oxygen (Garvin) — the best predictor of a good manager is being a good coach
Short-answer: tag the sticky message and name the credibility lever
- +1Concrete — the ‘$9,000 team dinner’ and the ‘front page’ are vivid, visualisable specifics, not abstract policy language. Tag the sensory image first.
- +1Emotional — ‘as if it were going on the front page’ triggers a personal, reputational, protective feeling. Emotion makes people act, where dry policy text only makes them think.
- +1Credible — she cites ‘the auditor-general’s report’, borrowing trust from an authoritative endorsing source. That is derivative legitimacy, one of the three ways to build the Credible principle.
- +1Discriminate — this is one image, not a before → after narrative arc, so it is Emotional rather than Stories; and the trust comes from a cited source, so it is Credible via derivative legitimacy rather than raw evidence. Precision on the mechanism earns the final mark.
Key terms
- Sticky idea
- An idea that does three things: it is understood, it changes how the audience thinks or acts, and it is memorable enough to persist until they can act on it. Miss any one and the message dies on the way to action.
- SUCCESS model
- The unit's seven principles of a sticky idea — Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories, Serve. It extends Chip Heath's original six (SUCCES) by adding a seventh principle, Serve.
- Serve
- The unit's seventh, self-added principle: tailor the message so it is relevant to this specific audience — answer ‘why does this matter to you?’ The more principles a message uses the stickier it is, so reserve the full treatment for your most important ideas.
- Credible (the three levers)
- One SUCCESS principle, built three ways: derivative legitimacy (borrow trust from a credible endorsing source), balanced portrayal (acknowledge pros and cons, then show benefits outweigh costs), and credible evidence (data or a testable, try-it-yourself claim).
- Emotional vs informational
- The unit's stock contrast: emotion makes people act, whereas information only makes them think. A page of statistics informs; a message that touches identity, fairness or self-interest moves people to do something.
- Coaching (Emerson & Loehr)
- Improving another person's performance without focusing on blame — by raising their sense of control over their goals and helping them see how specific actions produce specific outcomes. It is warmth-gated (warmth is a precondition) and works by asking more than telling, not by giving advice.
- Active listening / the listening circle
- High-quality listening (Itzchakov & Kluger) that is attentive, non-judgmental and undistracted. It lowers the speaker's defensiveness and helps the speaker think more clearly. The loop: attend → suspend judgment → paraphrase → probe.
- Feedforward Interviewing (FFI)
- A structured active-listening method focused on the person's peak experiences, using questions plus listening. Employees coached this way performed substantially better months later than those given traditional feedback.
Communication & Sticky Ideas FAQ
Is it six principles or seven?
The unit tests seven. Chip Heath's Made to Stick names six, mnemonic SUCCES (Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional, Stories). BUSS5080 adds a seventh — Serve (tailor it to the audience) — to spell SUCCESS. If a question asks about the unit's model, choose seven; only choose six if it explicitly says ‘Heath's original’. Do not drop or reorder the letters: the second S is Stories, the final S is Serve.
What does the exam actually ask about SUCCESS?
It rarely asks you to list the principles. It hands you a message and asks which one or two principles it primarily uses — you tag by mechanism. The most-tested contrasts are Concrete versus abstract and Emotional versus purely informational, plus the trap of confusing Concrete (you can picture it) with Credible (you trust it), and Unexpected (surprise) with Emotional (feeling that drives action).
How is ‘Credible’ built, exactly?
Three levers. Derivative legitimacy: borrow trust from a respected endorsing source (a standard, an expert, a trusted brand). Balanced portrayal: acknowledge the pros and cons, then show the benefits outweigh the costs. Credible evidence: supply data or a testable, verify-it-yourself claim. Naming the specific lever — especially derivative legitimacy — is a reliable mark.
What is coaching, and how is it different from giving advice?
Coaching (Emerson & Loehr) is blame-free performance improvement that raises the person's sense of control; it works by asking more than telling and by focusing on what to do next rather than who is at fault, with warmth as a precondition. Treating it as ‘give good advice’ or ‘deliver firm criticism’ is the trap that loses marks — the graded insight is ask > tell.
What does high-quality listening add?
Itzchakov & Kluger show that attentive, non-judgmental, undistracted listening reduces the speaker's defensiveness and extremism and helps the speaker think more clearly and see both sides of their own issue. The concrete technique to name is paraphrasing (‘so what I'm hearing is…’), which both demonstrates and improves listening; the workshop formalises this as Feedforward Interviewing.
Why does the unit mention Google here?
Garvin's account of Google's Project Oxygen (people analytics) found that managers do matter and that the single best predictor of being seen as a good manager is being a good coach — which is exactly listening plus control-building. It ties communication to management and sets up the later managing-people material.
Exam move
Treat this chapter as applied recall. First, memorise the SUCCESS acronym in order (Simple · Unexpected · Concrete · Credible · Emotional · Stories · Serve) and be ready to say that the unit's seven extends Heath's six by adding Serve — this six-versus-seven point is a stock trap. Then drill tagging: take any short message and name the one or two principles it uses, reading the mechanism (picture it = Concrete, trust it = Credible, feel-and-act = Emotional, narrative arc = Stories). Lock the three levers of Credible and the line ‘emotion makes people act, information makes people think’. On the input side, remember coaching is blame-free, warmth-gated and control-building (ask > tell), high-quality listening runs attend → suspend → paraphrase → probe with paraphrasing as the named technique, and Garvin's Google finding is that the best predictor of a good manager is being a good coach. For applied short answers, structure your response as name the framework → apply it to the scenario → name the concrete move, and you will pick up the marks the closed-book exam is testing.
