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FLASH MEMORIES

Leverage Past Wins to Fuel Future Successes

Sunnyside High School in Sunnyside, Washington, was not such a sunny place to be back in 2007. The graduation rate was an abysmal 41 percent, an example of what the documentary Waiting for ‘Superman’ termed a “failure factory.” And the district-wide student body was so economically disadvantaged that the US Department of Education allocated special grant funding so that all the kids at the school received no-cost meals throughout both the school year and summer.

But that was not the school I visited in 2014 to address teachers and administrators during their annual school year kick-off event. Sunnyside had transformed itself in seven short years into one of the most-watched districts in the nation. The pride over how far they had come was palpable in the room packed with more than seven hundred educators and administrators. Their graduation rate had more than doubled to 89 percent. How?

The answer was a story repeated over and over by Superintendent Dr. Richard Cole, a story that eventually transformed the entire culture of the school. Dr. Cole made it clear that this was a school of success, not a failure factory. Under his leadership, Sunnyside received a federal improvement grant, which he used to help teachers institute higher expectations for attendance and stricter off-campus lunch policies, as well as to create constant reminders about grades and other success measures. Following Dr. Cole’s lead, the school administrators, teachers, and the wider community became proficient at celebrating what was already working well. They identified stories of success from within the high school student body to share with everyone during assemblies, in newsletters, and on bulletin boards. They gave concrete examples of how the new programs were working to raise grades and engagement, and they highlighted students who were doing well in class or at extracurricular activities. And by inviting everyone (from the superintendent to the gym teacher to the janitor to the bus driver) to greet students each day with enthusiasm and care, together they transformed the school culture from splintered to connected.

The new story of excellence, repeated over and over, became strong belief, not wishful thinking. As a result, the culture conformed to the expectations embedded in the story. For instance, students with a C grade or below in any of their classes were required to spend part of their lunch period in study hall. Those students failing classes went through a mandatory after-school study program. If students were late to or missed class a few times, they had to meet with a guidance counselor to create a plan for attending school. The message to students was as follows: This is an excellent school, so we expect excellence from you because you’re worth it.

Ultimately, the key to Sunnyside’s success was refocusing on the positive and identifying the ways the school was already successful. It would have been easy for everyone to rehash on a daily basis how dreadful a situation they were in back in 2007. But instead, repeating positive stories became the fuel everyone needed to keep working hard each day. Every time someone doubted that there was potential to raise student grades or improve a very low graduation rate, the educators repeated the examples of success among the school body as proof positive that change was possible.

Let me give a concrete example of this great practice: A few years ago there was a star student who got derailed. Working the graveyard shift to help his family put food on the table, this teenager became exhausted. He could barely keep up with his schoolwork, even though it was clear from all indications that he was a bright kid. And that is when he made a bad decision: to deal cocaine to make some easy money. The police arrested him, and it looked like he was going to be yet one more example of a kid stuck in a cycle of incarceration and disappointment.

Except he wasn’t your typical case, and that is what makes his story especially compelling. In the face of these challenges, he made a choice. Working diligently and partnering with some positive mentors at the school, he actually got back on track in a way that was stronger than before. He refocused his attention on his grades, and on the advice of his college guidance counselor, he applied for a Gates Millennium Scholarship, which would not only pay for his college but also any advanced education, such as a master’s degree.

Who would suggest to a kid caught dealing drugs to apply for a Gates Millennium Scholarship? I’ll tell you: people who believe that positive change is possible at any point. By working hard, identifying the successes that came as a result, and cataloging them in his scholarship application, this young man hoped to communicate to the scholarship committee that he was a worthwhile investment. He and his family were still poor, and it would have been easy for him to slide back into a life of crime. The scholarship would be a golden ticket out of this cycle. And he got it.

The story of this student did not end there. It became enshrined as one of a number of often-repeated success stories at Sunnyside that spotlighted achievements and showed how obtaining success is possible. Note, however, that the stories are not told as the exceptions but rather the rule: “This school produces these kinds of students.” There was a constant drumbeat of how everyone’s behavior matters: “Where there is adversity, we overcome it. When we are faced with challenges, we persevere and achieve greatness.” In the school’s recent six-page newsletter, the word success was used fourteen times. The school used these themes to shift the student body’s mindset away from thinking they were losers to seeing that they were winners and believing that with hard work and tenacity, they were capable of incredible feats.

After the first year of implementing such positive-minded changes, Dr. Cole received the graduation rate numbers. They went up almost nine percentage points. And then that story was used as proof that change was possible. The student body, teachers, administrators, and the community at large listened. And when I took the stage to address the district several years later in 2014, I knew I was preaching to the choir. I was speaking not to a failure factory but to a school with an 89 percent graduation rate (up from 41 percent just seven years prior!). Oh, yes, and with eight more Gates Millennium Scholarship recipients.

In this chapter I’ll share with you why, in order to achieve success, we need to move our brain past its natural focus on what we need to improve to what is already working. We accelerate toward growth when we have perceived progress, not when we feel we still have a long way to go. I’ll share with you the science of finding and repeating success stories to fuel motivation and optimism, and how to use these stories to create what I call “flash memories.”

A flash memory is the first thought you have in response to a particular stimulus in your environment, and changing it from negative or neutral to positive can dramatically increase motivation and achievement. In the case of Sunnyside, by changing students’ flash memories about their own potential from “I can’t” to “success is possible,” grades, attendance, and even the graduation rate skyrocketed.

When done right, repeating success stories to solidify strong positive flash memories creates an upward spiral of achievement in the brain as we build upon our previous wins. As a positive broadcaster, you can inspire your children, colleagues, students, and anyone else you come into contact with by consciously repeating success stories—and in turn encouraging positive behavior in the future. Believing that change is possible unlocks our potential and motivates us to take positive action. If you want to lead a team or organization to greatness, the first step is to instill in it a belief that change is possible: Proclaim the dream, look for evidence it is coming, and then celebrate stories of success along the way to the finish line to create optimism, motivation, and results.

NEGATIVITY IN A FLASH

Chicago is an old boys’ club, and nowhere is that more evident than at city hall. It was my beat as a reporter, back when I was working in Chicago. Walking down the halls outside the chamber, you can catch bits of hushed conversations among the city’s aldermen, high-powered businesspeople, and religious leaders from the Southside’s influential churches. During press conferences, if you started asking questions about sensitive topics, the mayor would shut you down. As a reporter, I will never forget the day I realized I was no longer on the outside looking in.

I was there every Tuesday for city council meetings. Fifty aldermen from across the city would convene to battle over some of Chicago’s biggest issues. Every Tuesday the same kind Chicago police officer would greet me at the door. Over the course of more than a year, we became friends through conversations about our lives and a healthy Chicago baseball rivalry (go Cubs!).

One day he tipped me off to a big story. There was a secret list. He had heard whispers about it circulating. It was a list of Chicago’s roughest officers—the list contained the names of police officers who had more than ten allegations of police brutality against them by citizens. The city and police department were trying to suppress the list in fear they would look soft on internal crime. I knew I had to get my hands on a copy of that list.

I started quietly asking around. The first few aldermen didn’t know about this list. As I started running out of trusted people to ask, I found someone who knew where to get it. He told me to meet him in the back hallway behind city hall chambers. The lights were dim when I arrived. I saw him, list in hand, and I remember feeling like this was a scene out of a movie. He handed it to me without a word and disappeared around the corner. It was understood that I was never to reveal my source.

That night on the news, we led with the story of this list that the police department was trying to suppress. The next morning all the other news outlets in town were trying to play catch-up. It was a big win for our team. But it was also a loss—not for us but our community. It was yet another negative blow for the fantastic and hardworking Chicago Police Department. My news story about the secret list of allegations of police brutality further linked them to failure, ignoring their successes. It communicated to citizens that their police department could not be trusted, and it helped strengthen a negative reputation. Many people might hear “police” and think “brutality,” instead of a number of other words that could be used to describe the department, including safety, competency, and trusted. Such disproportionate focus on the negative is why we must change the media, but it also points to why we often need to change the way we communicate. Focusing too heavily on the negative creates a negative flash memory.

As mentioned above, a flash memory is the first thought your brain experiences when you think or hear about a person or thing. For instance, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when I ask you about campfires? Do you think of marshmallows? Or do you think about Smokey the Bear warning about the possibility of forest fires? Maybe your first thought is about how, when you were a kid, you got burned while lighting one. Your first thought about a word, person, or topic is your flash memory about it, and it shapes your feelings about that idea.

Let’s try a couple more: House. Which one did you think of? Your house. Was it the outside of your home, something on the inside, or a different house than the one you live in now? Success. Did you picture winning a medal or race? Was it a bonus check or bank statement? Was it your kids?

Flash memories directly influence the way we process the world and operate within it. When our flash memories of a person or thing are negative, we steer clear of it. We might feel rushes of panic or anxiety or disgust. Or we might simply feel frozen in place and very pessimistic about someone’s or something’s potential. A flash memory about a manager, for example, might cause us to disengage with a project not because of the work involved but because negative feelings are associated with the person in charge of reviewing his or her progress on the project.

When our flash memories are neutral, we may not even think twice about the person or thing. It doesn’t register in our minds as important. For example, I have neutral flash memories about the Lower East Side of New York, because the few times I visited the neighborhood while living in Manhattan, it didn’t make a strong positive or negative impression on me. Therefore, my flash memory doesn’t compel me to visit that neighborhood when I am in town, but I also don’t feel averse to meeting a friend there if she suggests it.

When our flash memories of someone or something are positive, we are pulled toward that individual or object like an invisible gravitational field. If we have positive flash memories associated with things like our skills, colleagues, friends, and potential for success, our mind is alive with possibilities and positive connections. Many of the students at Sunnyside had developed positive flash memories about school, describing it with words like high achievement, supportive community, and best place to be during the day. When I was there I asked about their school, and the first things a couple of students said to me were positive, such as, “People here care about us,” and “I’ve heard Sunnyside is fun, and so I am happy to be starting here as a freshman.” The students with positive flash memories are the ones who turn toward school instead of away from it.

Creating positive flash memories goes beyond mere free-association thinking. It involves a process that influences the way the brain retrieves the information it has previously stored.

TOTALLY POSITIVE REKALL

“Welcome to Rekall, the company that can turn your dreams into real memories.”

In the movie Total Recall (the Colin Farrell remake, not the 1990 Schwarzenegger version), a virtual entertainment company, Rekall, promises it can turn your dreams into real memories. Farrell’s character, factory worker Douglas Quaid, had been having dreams that he was really a secret agent for the United Federation of Britain. To spice up his life, he visits Rekall to get implanted with a set of memories. He wants to feel like a secret agent, but before he can receive the implant, real agents try to arrest him. I don’t want to ruin the movie for you if you haven’t seen it, so I’ll just tell you that at this point he begins to figure out that someone long ago had altered his memories—causing him to act very differently.

The way we process the world and how we decide to operate within it is largely guided by our memories of the past. Memory recall is the act of accessing information from the past. During each moment of the day, your brain is hard at work encoding your experiences. Your brain’s codec—the set of rules it follows to understand and interpret experiences in your life—is based upon the lens you use to process the world around you. When your codec is more optimistic, your memories are encoded with an optimistic spin on them. The opposite goes for having a negative outlook. For instance, if you were feeling particularly negative about a camping trip while you were on it, there is a strong likelihood that you will feel negative about camping in general because of that coded experience in your brain.

During recall, the brain revisits the same pattern of neural activity that originally occurred in response to an event. When we review that retrieved information, we experience an echo of our brain’s perception of the original event. In fact, according to neuroscientists, there is no real distinction between the act of remembering and the act of thinking. Both acts retrieve what was previously stored inside the mind.

Much like pages of stored information are found on Google, our brains have stored tons of memories associated with every person we know and every event. In fact, Google is a perfect example, because oftentimes we don’t have much time or energy, so if we search for a term online, we usually go right to the very first result in Google. As most of you know, there are thousands of companies whose only specialty is raising your brand’s SEO (search engine optimization) ranking. In other words, they’re paid to increase a certain URL’s ranking in the sequence of results people find when they search for associated terms. That’s exactly what Dr. Cole at Sunnyside did; he raised the SEO on the positive so that when people thought about Sunnyside, their flash memories were not about low graduation rates or hopelessness.

What’s incredible is that these mental “replays” are not exactly the same as the original “recordings” or encodings, partly because there is an intrinsic awareness that replays are not actually happening in the present. But even more significant is that other information often colors these replays. If new information is introduced at any point after the original memory was encoded that relates to that memory, it can alter it in our mind, causing us to recall a different version the next time we think about that person, place, thing, or event. This means that every single memory we have stored in our minds has the potential to be influenced and rewritten. We can shift our own memories, but more importantly, for the purpose of motivating others, we can influence their memories as well.

You can test yourself on flash memories right now to see if there are general patterns present in the way that you perceive the world. Write down your flash memories for the following:

       1.    Your workplace or school

       2.    Your past year

       3.    Your colleagues

       4.    Your child’s math ability (or your own)

       5.    Challenging people

       6.    McDonald’s

       7.    Your first job

       8.    Your country of residence

If you took the time to write these down, and even do a few extra ones, you’ll actually be able to observe the lens through which your brain views the world. For some, there are patterns that show up, such as the need for attention or need for power. For others, there is a pall cast over all their flash memories, which is a sign of depression. And for others still, the flash memories reveal a general thread of optimism.

Flash memories are crucial for companies, political campaigns, and marketers because they predict performance. For example, what is your flash memory for McDonald’s? Do you think about cheap food or the best quality potatoes in the industry (true fact!) or a lawsuit for a hot coffee spill? What do you think of for Nike—a celebrity athlete or a sweatshop? How about for Walmart? Do you think about how much it pays their associates or how much it donates to charity?

Positive flash memories often don’t develop as easily as negative ones. Due to the brain’s natural negativity bias—the heightened focus on threats in our environment—we pay more attention to the negative. After a vacation, the memory of the subpar food might stick with us more than the beautiful view we saw from our hotel room. To make positive flash memories stick, it often takes more conscious attention, like Dr. Cole creating a positive flash memory of Gates Millennium Scholarships for students of Sunnyside. It often takes work to build positive impressions about a place or a community and the meaning behind the work being accomplished.

It is possible to rewrite other people’s flash memories to shift how they process the current moment. While we might not be able to add in memories like they did in Total Recall, we can help mold the ones that our colleagues, students, and children currently hold. For instance, you might have thought elementary school was boring and full of bullies, but after talking with your mom, who provided you with other impressions of the experience, you started to see that you actually had a better time than you thought. You had close friends, liked your homeroom, and had so much fun out on the playground each day after school that your mom had to pry you away when she came to pick you up.

Changing other people’s memories by adding in new facts is a process called “creative reimagination,” and we make their memories more positive by repeating success stories. By repeating positive stories and facts in a way that resonates with others, we introduce new information into the brain. When a person attempts to access that original memory, it will now surface with new data points. Thanks to this new information, the brain will serve up a slightly different memory than before. Introduce enough information that intellectually and emotionally appeals to the recipient, and you can do a massive rewrite of the way they think about a person, situation, or even their own potential for success.

Trial lawyers know this all too well as they “work” with witnesses’ memories of crimes and other events. It is possible that they can help create wrongly interpreted memories by simply switching up the words they use. This phenomenon was clearly demonstrated in a study conducted by researcher Elizabeth Loftus, who showed how changing the wording of a question could influence the response.

Study participants were asked to watch a video of two cars getting into an accident and then asked to recall what happened as if they had been eyewitnesses. They were asked specific questions, including “About how fast were the cars going when they (smashed/collided/bumped/hit/contacted) each other?” The speed that participants estimated seemed to be affected by the verb that was used in the question, with those who had been questioned with the word smashed reporting car speeds of almost ten miles faster than the group questioned with the word contacted.¹

Ten miles per hour (mph) can make a big difference on the road. (As a brief but interesting aside, it makes such a difference that the New York City Department of Transportation ran an ad campaign focusing on how New Yorkers should drive thirty mph and no faster. Its ad also revealed a shocking fact: “If a pedestrian is hit by a car traveling forty mph or faster, there’s a 70 percent chance that a struck pedestrian will be killed. At thirty mph, there’s an 80 percent chance that the pedestrian will live!”²)

Now back to the study and its findings, which indicate our memories about an event are highly malleable. Exposure to new information can modify an original memory. In the realm of potential, this means we can rewrite what the people around us think of their own potential by showing them new information regarding why there is more possibility for them than they currently think. And rewriting flash memories about potential by repeating success stories can have a dramatic impact on a full range of behavioral outcomes.

So how do we rewrite flash memories by using success stories? There are three keys to success: spotlight the wins, select the package, and choose the frequency.

KEY ONE: SPOTLIGHT THE WINS

Almost anyone who has ever looked into buying a home has heard of RE/MAX. Its logo—a hot air balloon—is extremely recognizable, and to many people it is synonymous with the dream of being a homeowner.

For anyone who has ever worked for RE/MAX as a real estate agent, you would have been introduced to their story of “32 Years of Unstoppable Growth.” It’s the story of incredible financial growth experienced by the company from when it first opened its doors in 1973 until 2004. The story is often told in the form of an awe-inspiring bar graph (which is amazing because bar graphs don’t usually have quite that effect on people). This graph, which the senior leaders proudly displayed everywhere they could, shows the amazing positive trajectory of sales spanning three decades—twenty-one million to more than one hundred million—that followed a path much like that of an airplane taking off and eventually morphing into a rocket ship blasting away. The graph is a great sales tool, and it makes you want to work for the company.

But it is not just its financial track record that sets the company apart. It’s also the way RE/MAX talks about its work. The company has a philosophy of “doing business that is worth sharing with the world.” Set by the core team of top executives, the company exudes a spirit of camaraderie instead of competition by helping one another achieve their sales goals through mentoring, training, and offering continual feedback. Employees always try to stay connected with the meaning behind their work: helping people realize their dream of homeownership. And key executives at the company never doubted that they would be successful. When asked if she was surprised by the company’s success, RE/MAX cofounder Gail Liniger said she was not: “In fact, I always thought it should have happened sooner.” By shining a light on the successes and the meaning behind their work, the people at RE/MAX fueled even greater success. Just like at Sunnyside High School, focusing on how far they had already come was the key to going even further.

If your aim is to motivate your team, spotlighting current successes puts them in the right mindset for future achievement. Too often I see managers get stuck in the performance trap that causes them to take the opposite approach. They believe that in order to effectively manage their employees, they need to constantly give constructive feedback so team members know what to work on, but multiple studies tell us that’s the wrong approach. The same holds true when kids learn a new sport. Their wins should be pointed out at a much higher frequency than the places for improvement.

In a study done with competitive swimmers, researchers found that athletes who received both encouraging and instructional coaching after undesirable performances put forth more effort in the future and were more likely to prefer challenging activities.³ Additionally, coaches who were quick to praise, offer an abundance of encouragement, and simultaneously deliver instructional feedback were equally motivating to those who were already performing at a high level. Instructional feedback is good, but without an abundance of spotlighting the wins, it can threaten to decrease performance overall.

Our brains are hardwired to scan the world for threats at work, including how we are not living up to expectations. Therefore, as a positive broadcaster, it is crucial to highlight all that is working right. I make the same argument to journalists in the appendix of this book in the Journalist Manifesto, in which I look at how simply featuring positive stories of people who have overcome challenges fuels success in society at large. In business, showcasing the positive can be easily done. For example, PayPal has hung patents on the walls of its offices, as well as a television in the main entryway with a video playing that highlights recent advances from the company. My brother, who is a singer/songwriter and producer in Los Angeles, hung his framed CDs and album artwork on the walls of his studio to remind himself and his team of all their hard work. And while I used to think it was hokey to hang your college degree on the wall of your office, there is major cognitive value in doing that.

Another great example of spotlighting the positive comes from a privately funded investigative journalism body called the Better Government Association (BGA), which could otherwise have only been known for spotlighting the negative. The BGA, headed up by former ABC 7 Chicago reporter Andy Shaw, investigates governmental departments for corruption and promotes reform through civic engagement and by keeping tabs on government officials. But this forward-thinking association didn’t want to simply point out the problems and work toward solutions in a lengthy process; it also wants to highlight what is working right now.

The Good Government Spotlight was the brainchild of Robert Reed, director of Programming and Investigations. The idea was to offer a chance for members of the community to nominate government employees, programs, agencies, and organizations that “reflect the BGA’s core values of government transparency, accountability, efficiency, and fair play for taxpayers and the community.” For example, it tells the tale of Chris Kennedy, who, as chairman of the board of the University of Illinois, navigated an admissions scandal that threatened to rip apart the school and brought the school to a new level. The Good Government Spotlight also looked at how, amidst a sea of failing public pension programs, the Illinois Municipal Retirement Fund was able to make things work. The BGA uses its spotlight to showcase how to be successful in the face of challenge so others don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Not to mention, it also creates positive flash memories for Chicagoans about their government.

Spotlighting the positive also works wonders at home to motivate your kids. Stuart, a father of four, decided to keep a running list of the funny things his kids would say and do. He had been taking improv and comedy classes for a long time, and he was very excited to see a hearty sense of humor developing in his children, especially the oldest two. Every Friday night at dinner he would share some of the funniest moments with his family, and they would relive them. Often it made everyone laugh and reminded them to look for the funny moments during the week ahead.

Similarly, Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is known for transforming his company’s work environment, turning it into a fun place to work. During a dinner with him, he told my husband and me about some of the ways he helped make the company’s call center fun (given that working at a call center can be monotonous). For instance, each work team was asked to come up with a different theme and decorate their workspace to reflect it. When you take the tour of their Vegas offices (yes, they offer tours!), you can clearly see the enthusiasm each team has as its members greet you and show off their artistic creativity and the zeal with which they are helping to revive the economically depressed downtown area. Zappos is intentional about creating positive flash memories for their employees and visitors so that customers not only think about shoes when they think about Zappos, but also about happiness or community engagement.

Which stories can you spotlight to motivate your team or your family? What previous wins have you had as a group? What positive stories can you shine a spotlight on? With your kids, what successes have they had recently? Any examples you have, no matter from how far back or how small they are, can be helpful ammunition.

KEY TWO: SELECT THE PACKAGE

Without personal emotional connection to a success story, it is useless. And often that emotional connection comes as a result of not only the content but also who delivers the message and how. In broadcast journalism, the way you package a story, from the interviews and the visuals you include to how you write it, can have a dramatic impact on how the viewer connects with it.

This was very evident in a clever research study done by fellow positive psychologist and Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant. Grant and his team were looking at how to motivate callers who were raising money for their school, the University of Michigan. As he writes in Give and Take, years ago Grant came across a sign in the call center that said, “Doing a good job here is like wetting your pants in a dark suit. You get a warm feeling, but no one else notices.”⁴

In order to motivate the callers, at the beginning of the next shift, the staff leader described how the money they raised was used for good, including paying for new construction on campus, top professors, and of course, sports. The impact of this rah-rah speech? Nada. The callers did not raise any more money after that than they normally did.

Grant suggested bringing in a scholarship recipient to talk to a group of randomly selected callers. In just a few minutes, this student explained how the scholarship had changed his life and thanked them for their work. Another group of callers read a letter from him but did not meet him. And the rest of the callers did not meet or hear from him.

During the next thirty days, the callers who had face-to-face time with the scholarship recipient raised an average of 171 percent more money. They also spent more time on the phone overall. Those who had read the letter or had no contact with him showed no change. Hearing the story directly from the person affected by their work motivated the callers in ways the other methods could not. In this particular case, it also gave these callers great stories to share with potential donors, which kept the ripple effect going even further.

The meaning behind the work we do drives our motivation to do more of it and do it well, and hearing from those impacted by our work is an ideal way to share stories of success. Figure out the best way to get someone else involved in sharing success stories with the people you are trying to influence. For instance, you can invite your clients to share with your back-office staff how their work has made a difference. You could ask some former students to videotape a message to their former teachers updating them on how well they are doing so that it fuels those teachers to invest more deeply in their current students. If your child is raising money for charity, perhaps for the kids at St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, see if it is possible to take a family trip there so your child can see his or her impact firsthand.

Personal messages are key, and while it is best to have them delivered in person, video can be a great second option. For example, at the opening of its yearly conference, an event at which I was to present, a medical devices company kicked it off with a video of patients whose lives had been saved by doctors using the equipment developed by this company. The video was so well done that the entire room of sales professionals, back-office staff, and distributors were in tears. Videos, not to mention using social media, newsletters, and bulletin boards, can also help reinforce a message the recipient might have first been exposed to in person.

KEY THREE: CHOOSE THE FREQUENCY

Now that you have selected your content and packaged the message in a way that creates emotional connection, the last key ingredient for effectively repeating success stories is—you guessed it!—repeating them. Did I mention you’re supposed to repeat them? Just in case, I’ll say it again—repeat them often.

In his 1885 guide, Successful Advertising, Thomas Smith came up with a saying that is still being used today to examine how people respond each time they see an advertisement:

This classic advice (or “ad-vice”) still holds true today. Modern-day advertisers focused on getting your attention on their products know that usually people don’t even “see” an advertisement the first three times, and it’s only by the fifth time that it permeates their conscious brain. If you ever watch TV shows online on streaming sites like Hulu, you know what it is like to be subjected to the same ad over and over and over. (Fine, I’ll go buy your stuff, T.J.Maxx!) We don’t want to be annoying like Hulu, but we do want to get our message across, and for that repetition is king. Research scientist and longtime head of marketing at the General Electric Company Herbert Krugman found that it takes a minimum of three times for a person to connect to a message. He said we all go through three psychological states in response to exposure: curiosity, recognition, and decision.⁵ His research results have become much of what big-time advertisers base their frequency decisions on today.

Repetition is important in order to make it part of a culture, so even if you have told others your positive message, the message here is to tell them again . . . and again. Oversaturation is rarely the problem. Too often we say something once, maybe twice, and we think the job is done. You might think that other people already know about the positive year-end numbers or the fact that your daughter was named a National Hispanic Scholar, yet in our busy, overstimulated lives, there is small chance the information will be cemented in their minds. The more we say it, the more easily another person will recall it.

Repeating stories at a higher frequency strengthens flash memories. Neuroscientists have found that the information we have previously tucked away inside our brain is scattered in different areas of it, and when we recall a memory, we are pulling from a number of locations. Some describe our organizational system as more like a collage than books on a library shelf, with related information linked together by neural networks and associations. This means as you pull information from your memory, you travel down the same neural pathways created when the memory was first written, and the stronger the pathway, the more quickly you can recall it. Certain parts of the memory might exist along stronger neural pathways, and therefore come to the top of your mind more quickly and easily. This is why you might remember the beer you drank during your last trip to Germany better than where you drank it. The beer was very important to you when you encoded it and you’ve thought of it a number of times since then. The pub was less meaningful to you. Each time you access information, it is brought from long-term memory into your short-term working memory before being stored back into your long-term memory, thus strengthening it.

A number of studies have shown that thinking more deeply helps create positive associations, and giving people more positive information helps lessen the chances that they will come to negative conclusions.⁶ By repeating these positive stories multiple times, we help solidify stronger positive flash memories in other people’s minds by strengthening the neural pathways their brains take to get there.

But equally important to repeating the information is how often we actually test that knowledge. There have been a number of studies in the field of neuroeducation that show that testing knowledge after learning significantly improves the memory of that knowledge. After a quick “pop quiz,” information can be recalled better and faster, with increased overall understanding of the subject and ability to problem solve. It’s called the testing effect, and not only does it improve retention for much longer periods of time, it also helps guard against the feeling of being overwhelmed by too much information.

A study published in Psychological Science shows that a quick quiz is one of the most effective tools to improve learning. Students scored better on tests that were preceded by frequent pop quizzes as compared to tests that were not accompanied by a prior quiz.⁷ (This finding alone motivates me to give my son pop quizzes instead of forcing him to study longer!) Another study found that pop quizzes not only improved performance on subsequent exams, but C-average students were the ones who benefitted the most. They gained nearly an entire letter grade thanks to these surprise tests.⁸ Testing not only evaluates learning but can promote it too.⁹ Since we want these stories to stick, testing becomes crucial.

At an insurance company, a senior leader we worked with named Larry uses testing during his monthly meetings, except his team members have no idea they are being tested. Each month he asks three people to share a positive story about someone else in the room. In particular, Larry asks each person to describe how a colleague was helpful and made his or her job easier. After each person is done, he asks if anyone else in the room can spot the strengths that enabled this colleague to be so helpful. He is testing them to make sure they listened to the story while also having them identify even more things to praise about the person who is being called out. By simply asking the question and having people answer, the memories of these stories stick with everyone in the room even better.

And I’ll say it again: Repetition is the key to creating instantaneous, positive flash memories.

CONCLUSION

We all know that if we don’t have a t-shirt for a community event, it can feel as if it never happened. Every time we take that t-shirt for a breast cancer fundraising walk out of our drawer, it is a great reminder of a cause we care about. And without that constant reminder, all the positive work we did that day could easily become a distant memory.

And so it is not too surprising that at Sunnyside High School, you’ll often see at least a handful of people each day wearing a black t-shirt with white writing on the back that says, “Empower Each Other. Support. Honor. Succeed.” It is the motto they chose during the big transformation from barely getting by to smashing expectations. Students and administrators wear the t-shirt because they’ve found success. The shirt is literally a black-and-white reminder of it and a great reflection of the sunnier place Sunnyside has become to go to school.

The more we can share success stories to create positive flash memories, the more fuel we have to motivate all of us moving forward. By spotlighting the wins or identifying positive stories, packaging and disseminating the information from the right source to make it personal and emotional, and increasing the repetition of listening and telling these important stories and testing often to ensure stickiness, we raise our chances of creating strong positive neural pathways that can be easily recalled to fuel future success.

THE HEADLINE

Create an upward spiral of success by moving the brain past its natural focus on what we need to improve to what is already working. Leverage these stories of success to create and solidify positive flash memories, which act as evidence that positive change is possible and subsequently fuel motivation.

THE BIG IDEAS

Flash Memories Shape Our Experiences

A flash memory is the first thought that our brain has in response to a stimulus, and it directly influences the way we process the world and operate within it. A negative flash memory about someone or something typically causes us to steer clear of it, while a positive memory pulls us toward it like a gravitational field. If our flash memories about our potential or success are negative (“failing grades at my school is normal”), motivation and results suffer. Flash memories can be rewritten even years after they were first created.

Rewrite Flash Memories

When recalling a memory, the brain experiences the same pattern of neural activity as when the event happened. If new information that relates to that memory is introduced at any point after the original memory was encoded, it can alter the memory and cause us to recall a different version the next time we think about that person, place, thing, or event. This means that every memory has the potential to be influenced and rewritten. You can help people rewrite neutral or negative flash memories into positive ones by adding new facts. This is known as creative reimagination.

The three keys for using success stories to rewrite a flash memory are summarized below.

Spotlight the Wins

If you want to motivate your team, spotlight current successes and put them in the right mindset for future achievement. When we perceive that we’ve already made progress, we accelerate toward growth.

Select the Package

We cannot simply tell success stories; without a personal emotional connection to a success story, it’s useless as a motivator. Emotion can be invoked through the content of the message, who delivers the message, and how it’s conveyed. For example, have a client talk directly to your team about how their work has helped him or her.

Choose the Frequency

Oversaturation is rarely the problem. Most of the time, people don’t see or hear a message the first time they’re exposed to it, which is why repeating our success stories often is key. The more frequently we give people positive information about something in new and different ways, the more we strengthen their positive flash memories and lessen the chances that they’ll come to negative conclusions.

THE EXPERIMENT

Identify a situation for which rewriting a negative flash memory could fuel motivation and success. Next, collect positive stories and map out how you will broadcast them to your target audience, using the three keys above. Start broadcasting those stories, test for retention, and notice the effects these new stories have on motivation and perceived likelihood of success.