Frank Luntz helps Republicans choose words that resonate with Independents. I held my nose and bought his book, Words That Work, hoping to learn the devil’s secrets so I could twist them to good use. I did learn a lot, including that I share many of Luntz’ opinions on words — especially his belief that the word “imagine” is the most powerful. “The word imagine … allows individuals to picture whatever personal vision is in their hearts and minds.”

Luntz’ most important point is contained in the book’s subtitle: “It’s not what you say, it’s what people hear.”

“Once the words leave your lips, they no longer belong to you. … When we open our mouths, we are sharing with the world—and the world inevitably interprets, indeed sometimes shifts and distorts, our original meaning.”

I was fascinated by the “dial sessions” Luntz uses in his research. Subjects hold dials that they turn to reflect their positive and negative reactions to speeches or ads. The result is wavy lines that help ferret out the precise words and phrases that work.

His research leads him to a few points that struck me:

When we in organizational communication construct an internal message, we routinely check off the “what,” the “so what” and “now what.” Luntz recommends we put the “so what” — the context and relevance — first. “You have to give people the “why” of a message before you tell them the “therefore” and the “so that.’”

When trying to demonstrate the concept of “value,” focus on the result rather than the process. For example, Luntz’ research shows taxpayers are moved to “reduce crime” (result) more than to support “law enforcement” (process). Additionally, “VALUE” = price + convenience + reliability.

Women respond more to stories and men more to facts. Men want to speak and women want to be heard.

“Respect is “the most important word related to how employees perceive their treatment and what they think of their employer.”

“In my research into the effectiveness of direct mail, the single most-read portion after the opening paragraph is the postscript.”

Luntz includes “patient-centered” among his words that work — validation for a term we use a lot at Kaiser Permanente. In fact, Luntz uses the Kaiser Permanente website as an exemplar of patient-centered language and imagery.

There isn’t much that separates what Luntz does and what I do. We both use language to advocate for a cause. And despite my headline and lead-in to this post, I don’t think he is evil. To me, his “death tax” is not so much inaccurate as maddeningly brilliant. I would call it the “Paris Hilton tax” and would be equally accurate (though less brilliant).

I think he crosses the line, though, when he dispassionately compares John Kerry’s weak words to the Swiftboat Veterans’ powerful ones. “Betrayal” is an appropriate attack word if the veteran is quarreling with Kerry’s opposition to the war he fought in, but not if the veteran is lying about Kerry’s war record.

I’m all for making words work. I’m against making them lie.

Some of Luntz’ words that work:

Imagine”
“Hassle-free”
“Lifestyle”
“Accountability”
“Results” and the “Can-do-spirit”
“Innovation”
“Renew, Revitalize, Rejuvenate, Restore, Rekindle, Reinvent”
“Efficient” and “Efficiency”
“Investment”
“Casual Elegance”
“Independent”
“Peace of Mind”
“Certified”

Here’s the Colbert Report bit with Luntz that lured me into buying his book.

Back about 1,800 inbox messages ago, I started to fret. The scrolling screens of red unread messages were my hamster wheel. A thousand inbox messages later, I felt symptoms of drowning each time I dove into the inbox, snagged a few important things and dreaded what I was missing. My real life is crazy busy enough without digital waterboarding.

Just as I was hitting rock bottom last week, a promising link appeared in my GTD Times feed. I am a disciple of GTD — Getting Things Done –but like the Disciple Peter in the Garden of Gethsemene, I’ve been dozing. The link promised PDF instructions for putting GTD principles to practice on the Blackberry and Lotus Notes. Best 20 bucks I ever spent.

It was a mind-numbing weekend, but I now have a GTD-spec message archive filing system, a modified Lotus To Do feature to keep my next-action tasks organized and a denser but more helpful Lotus calendar.

The To Do list is bulging and the calendar is daunting. The Blackberry still sucks. But the drowning feeling has been replaced by the bucking-down-the-rapids-in-a-kayak feeling. As David Allen explains in his book Getting Things Done, the drowning feeling comes from unclosed loops, from not knowing what you don’t know and knowing that you left something — probably a lot of things — undone somewhere.

So I made it through this day’s Class IV rapids and I’m feeling a bit cocky about the Class V I hear around the bend. See you on the other side.

The main point: Fear, facts and force are the favored approach for those who want to facilitate change, but they never work. Doctors know that even the threat of death is not enough to influence eight out of nine heart attack patients to change their lifestyles. Instead, successful change agents rely on a mixture of:

• Relate – Establish a new, emotional connection with a person or community that fosters hope.
• Repeat – Use this new relationship to learn and practice the new skills and behaviors you need to sustain change.
• Reframe – Allow this new relationship to help you see your situation and the world in a new light.

Good doctors have the first one down. To reframe, they need to help patients see the benefits of healthy changes today – healthy food can be delicious, exercise can give them more energy, meditation can reduce their stress symptoms. And they need to help them savor short-term wins so that they will repeat the behavior over and over until it becomes their new habit.

Best part about this book: The writing. Deutschman is a magazine writer (Fortune, GQ, Fast Company) and book author (The Second Coming of Steve Jobs) who has a raft of stories at his disposal. He never tells, he shows. He has spent quality time with the change leaders he profiles — so much so that you find out, for example, that 35 years into her successful program to rehabilitate criminals at San Francisco’s Delancy Street, Mimi Silbert still has days when she doesn’t have that fire in the belly. Her solution: act “as if” she does, and eventually the fire comes back.

Favorite quote:

I don’t think a leader can accomplish major change without being willing to slice yourself open and become part of the change. I say, ‘You guys force me to be my best self because I live in a glass house.’ — Mimi Silbert

Bits that stuck:

• Quick wins reward the hard work of change, nourish the faith and keep critics at bay.
• When stuck with a problem I haven’t been able to solve myself, the first step is to seek out a new relationship with someone or some group that has had success in this area.
• When the spirit flags, “fake it until you make it.” Act “as if” you have the spirit and it will come to you.

Diane Gage-Lofgren, our national VP of communications and PR, had asked a poet/performance artist  to bring life to our communication team’s new vision statement. A stroke of genius. I will forever have a visual and resonant image to add soul to our vision: To be a model for communication excellence as Kaiser Permanente is a model for the future of health care.

How did Sekou Andrews do it? By story, of course. He became Health Care. He was big, powerful, essential. He was the most important issue of our day. “But no one seems to be impressed with all this,” he said. “Because to the average American I am intimidating, extraneous, inaccessible and even bewildering.”

And he himself had no voice. He needed us to tell his story. He needed us to tell it in 140 characters, in video, in wikis — whatever it took and wherever the audience. And we communicators at KP have the special responsibility and opportunity to tell his story on behalf of an organization that is “offering a solution to the leader of the Free World.

I could see myself in the story — as the hero, of course. “Not observers. I need visionaries who can see as far as I can reach.” He needs me. I’m in.

And that’s how leadership storytelling works.

By comparison, my job as an organizational communicator is easy. Still, I have a well-drawn gameplan, thanks to Guber’s article in the December 2007 Harvard Business Review (you can search for it on my public Evernote folder). His four key principles:

The story must be true to the storyteller, reflecting his/her core values:

“He must enter the hearts of his listeners, where their emotions live, even as the information he seeks to convey rents space in their brains. Our minds are relatively open, but we guard our hearts with zeal, knowing their power to move us. So although the mind may be part of your target, the heart is the bull’s-eye. To reach it, the visionary manager crafting his story must first display his own open heart.”

The story must be true to the audience:

Every storyteller is in the expectations-management business and must take responsibility for leading listeners effectively through the story experience, incorporating both surprise and fulfillment. At the end of the story, listeners should think, “We never expected that – but somehow, it makes perfect sense.”

The story must adapt to the moment:

Intensive preparation and improvising are two sides of the same coin. If you know your story well, you can riff on it without losing the thread or the focus.

The story must elevate:

Even in today’s cynical, self-centered age, people are desperate to believe in something bigger than themselves. The storyteller plays a vital role by providing them with a mission they can believe in and devote themselves to.

Tellingly, the guy from Hollywood says the story has its own power, regardless the medium:

It isn’t special effects or the 0′s and 1′s of the digital revolution that matter most – it’s the oohs and aahs that the storyteller evokes from an audience. State-of-the-art technology is a great tool for capturing and transmitting words, images, and ideas, but the power of storytelling resides most fundamentally in “state-of-the-heart” technology.

The stories are more compelling: We all know someone whose breast cancer was caught early. That one life is real to us. The hundreds of false-positives are not. Even if we know an individual who got a clean bill of health after a suspicious mammogram, we don’t question her decision to get a mammogram in the first place.

The stories have and will prevail over the facts, and that is an important lesson for any of us who ever want to change someone’s mind. You want to improve service at work? Get your kid to drive safely? Pass a health care reform bill? Find yourself stories that resonate with the people you want to convince.

1. Make your first paragraph work. “I am thrilled to apply for ….” “Enclosed please find ….” “I noticed your posting ….” Will blend right in with about 95 percent of the letters. Start by saying why you want this job, or what you think you will bring to the table. Here’s one that I liked:

How many times have you attended an event and wished you could get those 60 plus minutes of your life back? Many I bet. I’m here to help.

2. Follow the marketing mantra: Talk about the benefits you bring, not your features. Forget about sentence after sentence of traits and skill sets “attention to detail … people-person … budget management … vendor relations … passion.” Tell me what you can do for me. Such as:

To this position, I will be bringing established relationships with

vendors, caterers, printers, entertainers.

3. Tell stories, but be short and to the point. Think very hard about that list of traits and skill sets and come up with stories that illustrate them. Descdribe the situation, what you did, and how it all turned out. Like this:

I single-handedly coordinated a party in Montréal, Canada for the company’s affiliates. Challenges included selecting a venue without an in-person visit, communicating with restaurant owners in French and negotiating cost in another currency. (The company’s) president and managers told me it was the best party in company history.

4. Cut the jargon. It’s great that you worked hard on the letter, but work harder on distilling the wording — reduce the sauce. Instead of “well-versed in conducting business in a university setting,” just say “I know how to do business at a university.”

5. Know something about the organization. There’s no excuse for not visiting the organization’s Web site and finding out what their mission and vision statements are, what their current advertising campaign is, what they’re putting in their news releases. Use this information to write a great first paragraph and to convert your “features” into “benefits.”

6. Edit the darn thing. You don’t get a second chance at making a first impression. The cover letter colors my perception before I open up your resume. The worst thing that can happen is you clearly demonstrate that you don’t have “attention to detail.” The second worst thing is that I close the thing without any sense of why you want to work in my organization and what you might bring to it.

There were a couple of interesting variations of note:

Two or three letter-writers had a short intro, then tabulated the job requirements on the left and their qualifications on the right. Not very engaging, but it sure made for a quick and easy scan. I can’t say any of these made my finalists list, though.

A couple of letter writers were clever. One wrote the “top 10 reasons why I am right for this job.” Another had a list of things about herself that indicated what a “event planner wonk” she is. They gave me an indication that these are outside-the-box people, and probably have nice personalities. But I don’t think the gimmicks are as good as well-tuned, specific stories.

Coincidentally, my favorite applied storytelling blogger, Kathy Hansen, last week released a book, Tell Me About Yourself, with advice on using stories to get jobs and advance your career. It’s in the mail from Amazon (if it were on Kindle, I’d have it already!).

I have thoughts on resumes, but that will be another posting.