The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

by Chip Heath

The surprise about great service experiences is that they are mostly forgettable and occasionally remarkable.

an executive leads her company through a fast-growth period, but there’s little to distinguish one week from the next. Or we spend weekend after weekend together with our kids, but in memory all those times blend together.

a defining moment is a short experience that is both memorable and meaningful.

How are you feeling now as you reflect on the contents of your treasure chest? What if you could give that same feeling to your kids, your students, your colleagues, your customers? Moments matter. And what an opportunity we miss when we leave them to chance!

The lack of attention paid to an employee’s first day is mind-boggling. What a wasted opportunity to make a new team member feel included and appreciated.

To avoid this kind of oversight, we must understand when special moments are needed. We must learn to think in moments, to spot the occasions that are worthy of investment.

for an individual human being, moments are the thing. Moments are what we remember and what we cherish.

three situations that deserve punctuation: transitions, milestones, and pits.

If you’re struggling to make a transition, create a defining moment that draws a dividing line between Old You and New You.

To maximize customer satisfaction, he said, you don’t want to be perfect. You want to get two things wrong, have the customer bring those mistakes to your attention, and then hustle like mad to fix those problems.

Transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled.

practical strategies for creating special moments using the four key elements of memorable experiences: elevation, insight, pride, and connection.

“In sports, there’s a game, and it’s in front of an audience. We run school like it is nonstop practice. You never get a game. Nobody would go out for the basketball team if you never had a game. What is the game for the students?” That’s thinking in moments. In essence, Gilbert is asking, “Where’s the peak?”

The “occasionally remarkable” moments shouldn’t be left to chance! They should be planned for, invested in. They are peaks that should be built. And if we fail to do that, look at what we’re left with: mostly forgettable.

It’s as though the leaders aspire to create a complaint-free service rather than an extraordinary one.

when it comes to the way service executives think, it’s not surprising that bad is stronger than good. Their attention is naturally drawn to the customers who had the worst experiences. But in indulging that instinct, they miss an enormous opportunity.

There’s nine times more to gain by elevating positive customers than by eliminating negative ones.

To elevate a moment, do three things: First, boost sensory appeal. Second, raise the stakes. Third, break the script.

This reminds me of too many people.

Beware the soul-sucking force of “reasonableness.” Otherwise you risk deflating your peaks. Speed bumps are reasonable. Mount Everest is not reasonable.

The concept is simple but the execution is hard. One reason it’s hard is that it’s usually no one’s job to create a peak.

I experienced more Perfect Moments and Perfect Days in two weeks than I had in the last five years, or than I probably would have in the next five years, had my life continued the way it was going before my diagnosis. Look at your own calendar. Do you see Perfect Days

ahead? Or could they be hidden and you have to find a way to unlock them? If I told you to aim to create 30 Perfect Days, could you? How long would it take? Thirty days? Six months? Ten years? Never? I felt like I was living a week in a day, a month in a week, a year in a month.

But here’s the problem: Familiarity and memorability are often at odds. Who cherishes the memory of the last time they ate at McDonald’s? If you’re looking to create memorable moments for your customers, you’ve got to break the script.

Executives who are leading change should be deliberate about creating peaks that demarcate the shift from the “old way” to the “new way.” The heart of change, after all, is the need to break the script.

At the two-day leadership conference, Dull and Yu accomplished something vital: In essence, they had dramatized the company’s new strategy. Being innovative starts with getting outside the office, and it doesn’t “hurt,” it feels good! It stimulates you and stretches you and reinvigorates you.

surprise stretches time.

If you have a standing meeting in your organization, you’ve got a great opportunity to create a moment that refreshes and rejuvenates the participants. Not every meeting needs to be a “defining moment.” But once every 5 to 10 meetings, find a way to break the script.

The Microsoft story and Kamal Kar’s story have power for similar reasons. First, the leader knows what truth he wants to share. Guthrie’s truth: Our customers can’t use our product. Kar’s: These villagers are making themselves sick. Second, the realization strikes fast. It takes minutes or hours, not weeks or months. Tripping happens quickly. Finally, people in the audience discover the truth for themselves. In turn, that discovery makes the need for action obvious. Guthrie doesn’t share his findings from his customer meetings; he creates a situation where they can replicate his discovery. It becomes their own insight, and as a result, they’re motivated to act.

This three-part recipe—a (1) clear insight (2) compressed in time and (3) discovered by the audience itself—provides a blueprint for us when we want people to confront uncomfortable truths.

You can’t appreciate the solution until you appreciate the problem. So when we talk about “tripping over the truth,” we mean the truth about a problem or harm. That’s what sparks sudden insight.

Fill in this sentence: 3–5 years from now, my students still know _______________. Or they still are able to do _____________. Or they still find value in ________________.”

Sometimes, in life, we can’t get our bearings until we trip over the truth.

Research suggests that reflecting or ruminating on our thoughts and feelings is an ineffective way to achieve true understanding.4 Studying our own behavior is more fruitful.

Action leads to insight more often than insight leads to action.5

Mentors push, mentees stretch. If you mentor someone—a student, an employee, a relative—you might wonder about the best way to give them a productive push. A good starting place is a two-part formula cited in a paper by the psychologist David Scott Yeager and eight colleagues: high standards + assurance.8

What great mentors do is add two more elements: direction and support. I have high expectations for you and I know you can meet them. So try this new challenge and if you fail, I’ll help you recover. That’s mentorship in two sentences. It sounds simple, yet it’s powerful enough to transform careers.

If you’re always in a life vest, you don’t know if you can swim.

It wasn’t long before I grew immune to the word ‘no’ and even found my situation amusing.” That’s a powerful moment of insight. She realizes: I don’t fear failure anymore. It’s no longer an obstacle to me.

When Blakely and her brother were growing up, her father would ask them a question every week at the dinner table: “What did you guys fail at this week?” “If we had nothing to tell him, he’d be disappointed,” Blakely said. “The logic seems counterintuitive, but it worked beautifully. He knew that many people become paralyzed by the fear of failure.

Because when you seek out situations where you might fail, failure loses some of its menace. You’ve been inoculated against it.

A few minutes can change a life. These moments didn’t just happen; thoughtful teachers made them happen.

The recognition is spontaneous—not part of a scheduled feedback session—and it is targeted at particular behaviors.

About a month later, Risinger kicked off a sales meeting with the story of Hughes’s progress with Dr. Singh, highlighting the value of asking more questions and listening to the answers. To commemorate the occasion he awarded Hughes a symbol of his quality listening: a pair of Bose headphones.

Pharmaceutical sales reps are well paid, and they can afford their own headphones and coffee machines. The prizes were symbols. With his half-silly gifts, Risinger created moments of pride for his team members.

The style is not important. What’s important is authenticity: being personal not programmatic. And frequency: closer to weekly than yearly. And of course what’s most important is the message: “I saw what you did and I appreciate it.”

Kamb’s insight was that, in our lives, we tend to declare goals without intervening levels. We declare that we’re going to “learn to play the guitar.” We take a lesson or two, buy a cheap guitar, futz around with simple chords for a few weeks. Then life gets busy, and seven years later, we find the guitar in the attic and think, I should take up the guitar again. There are no levels.

So he co-opted gaming strategy and figured out a way to “level up” toward his goal: LEVEL 1: Commit to one violin lesson per week, and practice 15 minutes per day for six months. LEVEL 2: Relearn how to read sheet music and complete Celtic Fiddle Tunes by Craig Duncan. LEVEL 3: Learn to play “Concerning Hobbits” from The Fellowship of the Ring on the violin. LEVEL 4: Sit and play the fiddle for 30 minutes with other musicians. LEVEL 5: Learn to play “Promontory” from The Last of the Mohicans on the violin. BOSS BATTLE: Sit and play the fiddle for 30 minutes in a pub in Ireland.

he invented five milestones en route to the destination, each worthy of celebration.

By using Kamb’s level-up strategy, we multiply the number of motivating milestones we encounter en route to a goal. That’s a forward-looking strategy: We’re anticipating moments of pride ahead.