The crystallization moments studied by Baumeister are serendipitous. There’s no predicting when (or if) if they will happen. Notice, though, that the realization sparked by CLTS is very similar in character. Because of the facilitators’ questions, people in the villages are made to “see” what had been in front of their eyes the whole time. And that’s not a serendipitous “aha!” moment, it’s an engineered moment. How do we engineer powerful insights in more ordinary organizational situations? Consider the way Scott Guthrie handled a situation at Microsoft in 2011. He’d been tapped by Steve
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