The Power of Moments

by Chip Heath

  Dull devised a plan to break the script at that meeting. Culture change is difficult and slow. To have any chance to succeed, the meeting needed to deliver a jolt.

  When their 150 colleagues arrived in the ballroom in Los Angeles, there were no tables and chairs. Just sofas, with enough room for all of them. VF Corporation CEO Eric Wiseman stood up to kick off the meeting. “Everyone sort of prepared to nestle in for a 30-minute opening,” said Dull. But instead something else happened. Wiseman announced that the group would spend its two-day meeting “going outside for new ideas.”

  Within five minutes, everyone was walking outside to board buses headed to a variety of different locations. One group participated in a beauty science workshop, where professionals did the makeup for each person in the group, helped them select an outfit, and then posed them for a photo shoot. Another group “tagged” a building (legally) with graffiti artists in inner-city L.A. Other groups took surfing lessons in Malibu, practiced improv comedy, or cooked a meal with Wolfgang Puck.

  “Most organizations have people think about a PowerPoint pitch with the hope that they will feel something and then do something different,” said Yu. “Let’s face it: Most PowerPoints aren’t creating a lot of emotion. We decided to flip this on its head. Let’s have people do something active and immersive. That’s going to generate more of an emotional response so they will feel something. And then they can think about what they’ve learned.”

  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.

  The retreat generated enthusiasm for the new approach to innovation, and when their colleagues returned home, they started embracing the “go outside” message. At JanSport, a leading maker of backpacks, “We had always thought of ourselves as the ‘carry stuff’ brand, for people who were carrying things from Point A to Point B,” said President Steve Munn. But as they began to observe the way people were using their bags—from commuters and students to more “extreme” users such as mountain climbers and homeless people—they realized that people weren’t just carrying the bags, they were unpacking them and using them in “third spaces” like coffee shops or buses or libraries. What if the backpack of the future could serve as a kind of portable desk, with built-in outlets for your devices and a master extension cord ready to be jacked into the wall at Starbucks?

  A group at Wrangler met with some structural engineers, and the conversation turned to cantilevers, or structures that are anchored on only one side. Think of a diving board or a balcony, where one side is secured so well that the other part can hang off, seemingly unsupported. Many bridges and buildings are built with similar features.

  Cantilevered designs allow unwieldy structures to be supported and elevated with elegance. Aha! thought the Wrangler team, we’d like to do that with buttocks! And thus was born Wrangler Booty Up jeans. Later, another VF brand called Lucy incorporated the same insight—a great example of the “mutual learning” that Dull and Yu had desired among the company’s brands.

  In the six years after the launch in Los Angeles, VF has grown its revenue from $7 billion to $13 billion, with most of that increase fueled by organic growth rather than acquisition. VF now has a pipeline of innovative products, estimated in value at $1.6 billion by Dull, that are in the process of design and testing en route to retail shelves. These products were created and nurtured by a corporate culture that has learned the value of going outside for ideas and inspiration.

  And the defining moment of that cultural evolution was the leadership meeting in Los Angeles. From the sofas to the buses to the creative expeditions, the meeting was designed to deliver strategic surprise.

  3.

  For business leaders, breaking the script is a strategy—a way of creating moments that support the company’s brand or, as with VF, reinforce a change in strategy. But beyond the world of organizations, breaking the script has a broader significance. The principle helps to explain why we remember what we do, and it sheds light on one of the most interesting mysteries of memory, which is called the “reminiscence bump.”

  In a study by Dorthe Berntsen and David Rubin, respondents were prompted to think about the life of a baby who had just been born and to predict what would be “the most important events that are likely to take place in this infant’s life.” The ten most commonly cited events were as follows (shown in order). See if you notice any patterns:

  1. Having children

  2. Marriage

  3. Begin school

  4. College

  5. Fall in love

  6. Others’ death

  7. Retirement

  8. Leave home

  9. Parents’ death

  10. First job

  It’s striking that 6 out of the 10 most important events all happen during a relatively narrow window of time: roughly age 15 to 30. (This 6 out of 10 calculation presumes that marriage and kids happen within that window, which of course isn’t true of everyone but is true for most people.)

  Similarly, if you ask older people about their most vivid memories, research shows, they tend to be drawn disproportionately from this same period, roughly ages 15 to 30. Psychologists call this phenomenon the “reminiscence bump.” Why does a 15-year period in our lives—which is not even 20% of a typical life span—dominate our memories?

  “The key to the reminiscence bump is novelty,” said Claudia Hammond in her book Time Warped. “The reason we remember our youth so well is that it is a . . . time for firsts—first sexual relationships, first jobs, first travel without parents, first experience of living away from home, the first time we get much real choice over the way we spend our days.”

  Novelty even changes our perception of time. In an experiment conducted by Vani Pariyadath and David Eagleman of Baylor College of Medicine, participants were shown a series of images. Most of them were identical, but every now and then, a new image would appear: brown shoe, brown shoe, brown shoe, brown shoe, alarm clock, brown shoe, brown shoe, and so on. Even though all the images were displayed for the same amount of time, it didn’t feel that way to the participants. They were convinced that the alarm clock—the pattern-breaking image—was displayed longer. This misperception has become known as the “oddball effect.”

  Eagleman, a neuroscientist, argued that what causes the oddball effect is, in effect, your brain’s boredom with the brown-shoe picture. The first time you see it, you examine the picture carefully. Your memory is “taking notes” rapidly. But with each repetition of the image, you devote less and less energy to inspecting it. By the seventh time, a quick glance tells you that, well, it’s just that same shoe again. Then, when you see the anomalous alarm clock, you start logging notes again. The resulting gap in the “density” of your memory—copious notes for the alarm clock, sparse notes for the repetitive shoe—leads to the misperception that the alarm clock picture was displayed longer.

  In other words, surprise stretches time. In supporting this insight, Eagleman has embraced some rather extreme research methods. He is famous for an experiment in which he asks volunteers to leap off a 150-foot platform and free-fall into a net. Afterward, they are asked to estimate how long the fall took, and their estimates are, on average, too high by 36%. Their fear and focus make time seem to expand. (So here’s one tip to live a “longer” life: Scare the hell out of yourself, regularly.)

  This is the intuitive explanation for the common perception that time seems to accelerate as we get older. Our lives become more routine and less novel. We’re seeing more and more brown shoes and fewer alarm clocks.

  Now, that’s a somewhat depressing realization. Have we really left our most memorable days behind us?

  Yes, probably. And that’s also probably a good thing. Because it would be very easy to create a second reminiscence bump late in l
ife. Just divorce your spouse, quit your job, move to New Zealand, and become a shepherd. Plenty of novelty there, and you’re certain to write a rush of memories. But let’s not confuse memorability with wisdom.

  For those anxious about facing a future that’s less memorable than the past, our advice is to honor the old saw, “Variety is the spice of life.” But notice that it does not say, “Variety is the entrée of life.” Nobody dines on pepper and oregano. A little novelty can go a long way. Learn to recognize your own scripts. Play with them, poke at them, disrupt them. Not all the time—just enough to keep those brown shoes looking fresh.

  By breaking the script, we can lay down a richer set of memories. As the authors of the book Surprise put it, “We feel most comfortable when things are certain, but we feel most alive when they’re not.”

  MOMENTS OF ELEVATION

  THE WHIRLWIND REVIEW

  * * *

  1. Moments of elevation are experiences that rise above the routine. They make us feel engaged, joyful, amazed, motivated.

  • Examples: Birthday parties, weddings, football games, public speeches, or spontaneous road trips.

  2. Some activities have built-in peaks, such as games or recitals or celebrations. But other areas of life can fall depressingly flat.

  • High school principal: “We run school like it is nonstop practice. You never get a game.”

  3. Here’s our three-part recipe to create more moments of elevation: (1) Boost the sensory appeal; (2) Raise the stakes; (3) Break the script. Usually elevated moments have 2 or 3 of those traits.

  • The Trial of Human Nature has all three parts: (1) Sensory appeal: The costumes, the real courtroom. (2) Raised stakes: One side will win and capture the glory. (3) Break the script: Everything about the Trial defies the normal rhythms of school.

  4. The third part—break the script—requires special attention. To break the script is to defy people’s expectations of how an experience will unfold. It’s strategic surprise.

  • The Ritz staffers broke the script with their playful photo album for a boy’s lost “Joshie” toy.

  5. Moments that break the script are critical for organizational change. They provide a demarcation point between the “old way” and the “new way.”

  • VF Corporation ended its leadership meeting after a few minutes and challenged people to “go outside,” participating in surfing classes or improv comedy.

  6. The most memorable periods of our lives are times when we break the script.

  • Recall the “reminiscence bump,” a period full of novelty: our first kiss, our first job, etc.

  • Novelty actually seems to slow down time. That’s why we feel like time goes faster as we age.

  7. Caution: Even with the simple three-part recipe, moments of elevation can be hard to build. They are no one’s “job” and they are easy to delay or water down.

  • Beware the soul-sucking force of reasonableness: “Couldn’t we just put the Popsicles in a cooler by the ice machine?”

  8. But building peaks is worth the struggle. They provide some of the most memorable moments of our lives.

  • Eugene O’Kelly, in his dying days, found fulfillment in his “Perfect Moments.”

  Clinic 2

  How Do You Refresh a Meeting That’s Grown Rote?

  Note to readers: This Clinic and the three others that follow later are designed to model how you can use the book’s core framework (Elevation, Insight, Pride, and Connection) to create defining moments. They are not specific to the chapters you’ve just read; we want them to cut across the sections and remind you to keep thinking about the full framework.

  The situation: Rev. Matthew Frey is the rector of the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer in Eagle Pass, Texas, a town about a mile from a border crossing with Mexico. Every month he meets with the vestry, the church’s board of elders. It’s the kind of meeting that will be familiar to many nonprofits and religious organizations: As Frey said, “We review the old business, then the new business, then the treasurer’s report, and then we talk about how much money we do not have. We fall into the same patterns.”

  The desire: Frey wanted to breathe new life into the meeting. How could he make the meeting exciting—the source of new ideas—rather than feeling like an administrative obligation? He was particularly keen to get the vestry thinking about ways to improve the experience of first-time visitors to the church.

  How Do We Create a Defining Moment?

  What’s the moment? (1) In this case, there’s no mystery—Frey should choose to do something special at one of the scheduled vestry meetings. (2) Of course, Frey should also be alert to other key transition points in the life of the vestry, for instance when new elders join and others rotate off. (3) For the sake of this Clinic, we will focus on the meeting. Note that we will introduce principles below that we will discuss in greater detail later in the book; some of the terminology may be unfamiliar but you’ll get the gist.

  Add ELEVATION:

  1: Break the script. That’s what Frey did. When the vestry showed up for the meeting, he greeted them with pads of paper and pens and sorted them into groups of two or three. He gave them a challenge: Imagine that you are visiting this church for the first time. Roam the grounds for 15 or 20 minutes. What do you notice? The elders came back with a range of observations:

  a. We have bilingual services but all our signage is in English!

  b. There was an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting going on in our building—we had no idea so many people attended it. Are there other ways we can open our facilities to the public? And how can we make sure they know they’re invited to worship with us?

  c. I’d forgotten how beautiful this church is!

  2: Raise the stakes. Frey could have gone further. What if he had challenged the vestry, based on their observations, to make recommendations to the congregation about improving the visitor experience? That might have added some pressure/accountability.

  3: Boost sensory appeal. Frey’s challenge to walk the grounds already added a sense of play to the moment. What if he had also given them a “character” to role-play during their observations? For example, “You are a 28-year-old Hispanic single mother with two children, and you’ve just moved here. You’re anxious about school choices and a friend told you about our day school. You wonder if it’s right for your kids.” That might have made it even easier to see the church with fresh eyes.

  Add INSIGHT:

  1: Trip over the truth. Frey’s activity allowed the vestry to discover insights for themselves. The resulting ideas (adding signage in Spanish, inviting other community groups to use the church’s facilities) became their ideas as a result. They might have been more resistant, or less excited, had those same ideas emerged from a congregational “suggestion box.”

  2: Stretch for insight. Frey might use a future vestry meeting to challenge the elders to become visitors themselves, perhaps by attending another church or a community meeting. What does it feel like to be the new person in the group? Which groups do a good job of integrating you quickly, and what can we learn from them?

  Add PRIDE:

  1: Multiply milestones. The vestry could celebrate certain moments of accomplishment—say, the first time a new member joins after having discovered the church at a community meeting hosted on its grounds.

  2: Recognize others. The elders could recognize and praise parishioners who go out of their way to be hospitable to visitors.

  Add CONNECTION:

  1: Role-playing, as suggested above, is a way to create an empathic connection between the vestry and parishioners whose life situations might be very different.

  2: Create shared meaning. Frey could build connections among the vestry. For instance, Frey could have started a meeting by asking the vestry to reflect on times when the church had been at its best—and at its worst—in accommodating visitors. Those kinds of shared personal reflections can reconnect people with the meaning of their work.

  Final r
eflections: Frey said that the “roaming the grounds” exercise had a powerful effect: “People are still talking about the things they saw that day.” 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.

  Moments of ELEVATION

  Moments of INSIGHT

  Moments of PRIDE

  Moments of CONNECTION

  Introduction to Moments of Insight

  * * *

  What if a defining moment in someone’s life is not a moment of elevation? What if, instead, it’s an awful moment?

  Asked about a defining moment in his career, one man wrote: “In my first job I was rated at the bottom of my starting class and did not get the ‘parity’ raise that all my peers got—which meant I was making less than the incoming class of hires. It was the first time I really failed at something and it was a wake-up call that the skills I had mastered in school were not the skills that would help me in the work world.”

  Now, that sounds nothing like a moment of elevation! He’s not feeling joyful or engaged or “above the ordinary.” He’s been blindsided by negative feedback. Yet it’s not just an emotional low point, either. It’s a low point that holds the promise of a better future path. Ouch—I need to change things to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

  Moments of insight deliver realizations and transformations. Some insights are small but meaningful. At your favorite coffee shop, you sample coffees from South America and Africa and you notice how different the flavors are. That adds insight to a transactional experience. At a rehearsal dinner, you tell a funny story about the groom that also reveals something about his character. That adds insight to a social experience.