The Power of Moments: Why Certain Moments Have Extraordinary Impact

by Chip Heath

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.

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie did not pitch a new feature set for Azure. What they did, instead, was dramatize the problems: Ingesting feces. Struggling to use a software package. And once those problems became vivid in the minds of the audience members, their thoughts immediately turned to . . . solutions.

Apin selling - situation problem impact nextel solut

“Imagine that you have a group of dream students. They are engaged, they are perfectly behaved, and they have perfect memories. . . . 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 .”

The differences between the “before and after” syllabi from the CDI are often striking. (To see an example of a complete syllabus before and after the CDI, visit http://www.heathbrothers.com/CDIsyllabi.)

John b descriptions?

One weekend, racing against a deadline, she finished putting the last touches on a buttercream wedding cake and loaded it into her car. Just as she prepared to drive off, she realized she was about to leave the front door of her unoccupied bakery wide open. It was her lightning-bolt moment: I’m making myself crazy being this stressed out. And she realized, “I wasn’t in love with baking anymore,” she said later. “It was like this albatross of butter around my neck.”

Chadwell’s self-insight was sparked by a classic “crystallization of discontent” moment—the moment when she almost drove away from her bakery with the door wide open. In an instant, the fragments of frustration and anxiety she’d experienced were assembled into a clear conclusion: I’m not good at this. It’s not me.

Her defining moment—convincing the shop worker that she was a “native”—is almost the mirror image of Chadwell’s. She realized: I can do this. I can be this person. Both women experienced moments of self-insight sparked by “stretching.” To stretch is to place ourselves in situations that expose us to the risk of failure.

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

Self-understanding comes slowly. One of the few ways to accelerate it—to experience more crystallizing moments—is to stretch for insight.

You’ll never hear someone say, “Yeah, the best coach I ever had was Coach Martin. He had no expectations whatsoever and let us do whatever we wanted. He was a great man.” Mentors focus on improvement: Can you push a little bit further? Can you shoulder a little more responsibility? They introduce a productive level of stress.

“One of the highlights of the year is our Easter Vigil service on the night before Easter Sunday morning. I usually don’t schedule an intern to preach that service, usually choosing to do that myself. This year, I told the intern that he would be preaching at that service. I told him that it was an important service and that he needed to bring his best, but that I was sure he could do it.”

two piles. They appended a generic note, in the teacher’s handwriting, to each essay in the first pile. It said, “I’m giving you these comments so that you’ll have feedback on your paper.” The essays in the second pile got a note reflecting what the researchers call “wise criticism.” It said, “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know you can reach them.” (High standards + assurance.)

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.

“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. They’re constantly afraid of what others will think if they don’t do a great job and, as a result, take no risks. My father wanted us to try everything and feel free to push the envelope. His attitude taught me to define failure as not trying something I want to do instead of not achieving the right outcome.”

A risk is a risk. Lea Chadwell took a risk on a bakery; it made her miserable. If risks always paid off, they wouldn’t be risks. The promise of stretching is not success, it’s learning. It’s self-insight.

Just wanted you to know that we resisted the urge to include a cheap joke about Spanx in the “Stretch” chapter.

Clinic 3 Improving a Chinese Restaurant The situation: Angela Yang is the owner of Panda Garden House, a fairly conventional American Chinese-food restaurant in Raleigh, North Carolina—the kind of place that features General Tso’s chicken, wonton soup, and paper Chinese zodiac placemats.

“More than 80 per cent of supervisors claim they frequently express appreciation to their subordinates, while less than 20 per cent of the employees report that their supervisors express appreciation more than occasionally.” Call it the recognition gap.

every Employee of the Month program in human history has been plagued by a similar dynamic: If you judged the award fairly, your best employee would win the award every month, but it seems socially awkward to give it to Jenny every time, so you start concocting reasons to spread the award around, and after a year or two of hopscotching among employees, Stuart is the only guy on the team who hasn’t won, and it’s becoming An Issue, so one November you throw him a bone (“He has made real progress on his tardiness!”), and from that moment on, anytime you say the phrase “Employee of the Month,” your employees will roll their eyes. And pray it’s not them.II

The recognition is spontaneous—not part of a scheduled feedback session—and it is targeted at particular behaviors. A classic paper on recognition by Fred Luthans and Alexander D. Stajkovic emphasizes that effective recognition makes the employee feel noticed for what they’ve done. Managers are saying, “I saw what you did and I appreciate it.”

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.

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.”

Close your eyes. Call up the face of someone still alive who years ago did something or said something that changed your life for the better. Someone who you never properly thanked; someone you could meet face-to-face next week. Got a face? Your task is to write a letter of gratitude to this individual and deliver it in person. The letter should be concrete and about three hundred words: be specific about what she did for you and how it affected your life. Let her know what you are doing now, and mention how you often remember what she did.

Over the years, as interest in Couch to 5K grew, parts of the plan took on almost mythic qualities. For instance, in week 5 comes a moment that has spawned its own acronym: W5D3 (for week 5, day 3). This day requires the new joggers to step up their efforts considerably. While the previous workout featured two 8-minute runs, separated by a walk, W5D3 requires a continuous 20-minute jog, by far the longest stretch the participants have run to that point. It is feared and loathed by new joggers. In a blog post called “The Dreaded W5D3,” one jogger wrote, “I can think of at least 10 times where the old me would have stopped to walk. Instead I shuffled along, sometimes very slowly, until I regained my breath and was able to pick the pace back up. I did it! . . . Woooooo!”

In the first year of marriage, they fought about almost anything. (One actual example: Which spices can stay on the kitchen table?) Over the next three years, the arguments steadily dwindled, and by the fifth year, they could recall only minor bickering. Not even an honest-to-goodness fight. And they laughed at the memory of fighting over spices.

One day, he made a declaration to his family: He was going to read a biography of every American president, in order. “It became more than liking history,” he said. “It became a quest.” A quest with 45 ready-made milestones.

Donating blood, reading challenges

Now when Ettl completes a president, he buys the commemorative dollar coin for that president from the U.S. Mint. The coins provide a visual token of his progress,

Blood drop pins

That’s the milestone effect. That’s an exhausted runner who turns on her afterburners with one mile to go because she cannot bear to let the numbers on the stopwatch cross 4 hours. The milestones are completely arbitrary, of course: There is no defensible performance difference between 3:59:59 and 4:00:00. But of course, you understand the difference, and so do we. (One of your authors will sometimes walk laps around his bedroom at night in order to clinch 10,000 steps for the day. Absurd but true.) We all love milestones.

The psychologist Peter Gollwitzer has studied the way this preloading affects our behavior. His research shows that when people make advance mental commitments—if X happens, then I will do Y—they are substantially more likely to act in support of their goals than people who lack those mental plans. Someone who has committed to drink less alcohol, for instance, might resolve, “Whenever a waiter asks if I want a second drink, I’ll ask for sparkling water.” And that person is far more likely to turn down the drink than someone else who shares the same goal but has no preloaded plan.

When I leave work today, I’m going to drive straight to the gym.

The good news is that if even one person is brave enough to defy the majority, we are emboldened. We’re not alone anymore. We’re not crazy. And we feel we can call red “red.” In short, courage is contagious. From historic protests to everyday acts, from the civil rights movement to an employee asking a tough question, this is the lesson we’ve learned: It is hard to be courageous, but it’s easier when you’ve practiced, and when you stand up, others will join you.

There are three practical principles we can use to create more moments of pride: (1) Recognize others; (2) Multiply meaningful milestones; (3) Practice courage. The first principle creates defining moments for others; the latter two allow us to create defining moments for ourselves. 3. We dramatically underinvest in recognition. • Researcher Wiley: 80% of supervisors say they frequently express appreciation, while less than 20% of employees

You can’t deliver a great patient experience without first delivering a great employee experience. And Sharp’s “employee engagement” scores were weak compared with the likes of Ritz and Southwest.

How do you design moments that knit groups together? Sharp’s leaders used three strategies: creating a synchronized moment, inviting shared struggle, and connecting to meaning.

If a group of people develops a bond quickly, chances are its members have been struggling together. One study found that when strangers were asked to perform a painful task together—in one case, submerging their hands in tubs of ice water to perform a “sorting task”—they felt a greater sense of bonding than did strangers who had performed the same task in room-temperature water. And this bonding happened even though the task was pointless! (Fraternity hazing is a good example of a pointless and painful bonding ritual.)

HIGH PURPOSE LOW PURPOSE HIGH PASSION 80th percentile 20th percentile LOW PASSION 64th percentile 10th percentile The outcome is clear. Purpose trumps passion. Graduation speakers take note: The best advice is not “Pursue your passion!” It’s “Pursue your purpose!” (Even better, try to combine both.)

When radiologists were shown photos of the patients whose X-rays they were scanning, they increased both the raw number and the accuracy of their scans. When nurses, assembling surgical kits, met a caregiver who would use the kits, they worked 64% longer than a control group and made 15% fewer errors. Connecting to meaning matters.

In the business world, the Gallup organization has developed a set of questions to assess employees’ satisfaction at work. Gallup has found that positive responses to the questions are associated with almost all the goals a typical manager would care about: the employee’s engagement, retention, productivity, and profitability—even the satisfaction of the organization’s customers. Gallup discovered that the six most revealing questions are the ones below. Notice that the final three of them might as well have been penned by Reis himself: 1. Do I know what is expected of me at work? 2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right? 3. Do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day? 4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for good work? (Validation.) 5. Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person? (Caring.) 6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development? (Understanding. Caring.)

That question “What matters to you?” struck Bisognano like a lightning bolt. It was, at heart, the same question the compassionate physician had asked her brother.

BAGGAGE-HANDLING REP NO. 2: Thanks for your purchase. I understand that you are having a problem with the battery. . . . Hmm, according to our system, it looks like you’ve called several times about this, is that right? Okay, thanks. Can you tell me what you have tried already, and what has or has not worked to help preserve the battery life? Then we can take it from there instead of repeating stuff you’ve already tried. Baggage handling is responsive: It demonstrates understanding and validation of a customer’s frustrating past experience. And the effect it had on calls was stunning: Customers rated the quality of their experience with Rep No. 2 almost twice as highly as the other, and their perceptions of the effort they had to invest to resolve the problem plummeted by 84%.

ROUND 1 Question 1: Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest? Question 4: What would constitute a “perfect” day for you? Question 8: Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common. ROUND 2 Question 13: If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know? Question 15: What is the greatest accomplishment of your life? Question 21: What roles do love and affection play in your life? ROUND 3 Question 26: Complete this sentence: “I wish I had someone with whom I could share . . .” Question 28: Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you’ve just met. Question 33: If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?

Art Aron’s 36 questions have become famous—there’s even an app you can download if you want to try them out with a partner. (It’s called “36 Questions.”) But in some ways, the questions are beside the point. It’s not these specific questions that create intimacy—it’s the turn-taking. Another set of 36 questions could work just as well, so long as they matched the escalating cycle of vulnerability that Aron created.

In the short term, we prioritize fixing problems over making moments, and that choice usually feels like a smart trade-off. But over time, it backfires. Bronnie Ware, a palliative care nurse who served patients for the final weeks of their lives, wrote a moving article called “Regrets of the Dying.” She shared the five most common regrets of the people she had come to know: 1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. (“Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.”) 2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard. 3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings. (“Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others.”) 4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends. 5. I wish that I had let myself be happier. (“Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits.”)

When we began to read these powerful stories, we thought we were reading about epiphanies. “Eureka!” moments. But what dawned on us, as we read more of them, is that these were not stories about sudden realizations. These were stories about action.

As is my story!