David de Souza

Win Bigly - 80/20 Summary

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• Amazon: Link
• Score: 10/10
• Skill Category: Persuasion
• Mental Models: Action & Reaction: Newton's 3rd Law, Agenda Setting Theory, Authority, Choice Architecture, Curiosity Instinct, Consistency & Commitment Bias, Ego, Emotions: Fear, Opportunity Cost, Scarcity, Seeing the Front, Social Proof, Trust, Vividness Bias

Mental Models from the book

'Win Bigly' can be summarised into 15 mental models:

1. ACtion & Reaction: NEwton's 3rd LAw

• When you confront a person about their beliefs, they will harden their belief even if your argument is perfect.

2. Agenda Setting Theory

• 'Master persuaders move your energy to the topics that help them, independent of facts and reason'.

3. Authority

• People defer to experts. When you show your credentials it will allow you to influence them. Don't brag - ask someone to highlight them for you.

4. Choice Architecture

• Frame your choice to your audience as: 2 ways to win and no way to lose. This is a natural high-ground maneuver.
• When someone is indecisive using a 'fake because' will give them self-justification to go ahead.
• Thinking Past The Sale: Ask your audience to imagine making a decision, to bias them to make that decision.

5. Consistency & Commitment Bias

• When there is confusion people are attracted to the most confident person.

6. Curiosity Instinct

• "By now you are wondering...." is a hypnosis technique that implies that you know what your audience is thinking. This creates a connection between you, and everything else that you say will be more interesting.

7. Ego

• To spot cognitive dissonance, look for the trigger. The trigger is what made you realize that your actions were in conflict with your self-image.

8. Emotions

• Facts and reason only influence our decisions on trivial things. With important decisions, emotion is attached, and we make decisions first and then rationalize after.
• When we become emotional our sense of reason shuts down. We don't realize when this is happening.

8.1 Emotions: Fear

• The Hierarchy of Persuasion:

1. Big Fear
2. Identity
3. Small Fear
4. Aspirations
5. Analogies
6. Reason
7. Hypocrisy
8. Word Think

9. Opportunity Cost

• Every decision is a comparison of alternatives. If you can influence how people see the alternatives you can sell any decision.

10. Scarcity/Narrative Instinct

• Remove details that give your audience the opportunity to think "That's not me". Have enough blank space so they can incorporate their own narrative.

11. Seeing the Front

• The High Ground Manoeuvre: Moving an argument from the details on which there is disagreement to higher ground where everyone agrees.

12. Social Proof

• Use: "Many people are saying...." to invoke social proof.

13. The Ikea Effect

• Strategic ambiguity is where you intentionally leave out words from your message. People use their imagination to fill in the gaps which is more persuasive than you can be yourself.

14. Trust

• Displaying confidence (both real and fake) increases persuasiveness.

15. Vividness Bias

• Ideas that are not concrete and can't be visualized are weak for persuasion.
• A visual message is more persuasive than audio or written one. However, an oral or written presentation can be more persuasive than a visual one if it is higher in the pervasive stack.

Mental Model Mind Maps

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