The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath

The Heath brothers, authors of Switch, Decisive and Made to Stick, have a new title which will be published soon.  It is called THE POWER OF MOMENTS and they will be speaking locally about the book on October 24 at 7:00pm at North Shore Country Day School, an event coordinated with FAN and The Book Stall. 

In THE POWER OF MOMENTS, the Heaths describe “’thinking in moments’: to recognize where the prose of life needs punctuations.” Clearly, these transitions, milestones and pits could be weddings or new jobs, birthdays, even funerals, but also they could be special rituals whether secular or sacred – moments that someone has created. In THE POWER OF MOMENTS, there are numerous stories like the one about the General Electric engineer, Doug Dietz, who designed a new MRI machine to be more powerful and efficient and ultimately re-designed it so that the pediatric patient experience was transformed from something scary to an adventure.

Chip and Dan Heath (who teach and consult at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Duke University's CASE center, respectively) argue that defining moments have one or more of these four elements:

         - Elevation – they are extraordinary, above expectations and often accompanied by added sensory experience or surprise;
         - Insight – they help change our understanding of ourselves, of the world, or of our relationship to it;
         - Pride – they are moments of achievement, fulfillment, courage; and
         - Connection – they are shared with others

At the end of each chapter, the authors offer a clinic such as one on Retail Banking where they ask, “[in your work] are you missing opportunities to offer support, congratulations, or counsel at critical times? Are you thinking in moments?”