The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact by Chip and Dan Heath

We start with a story of two high school teachers who have their classes engaged in a trail of William Golding on his views of human nature based on his novel The Lord of the Flies. This provides a peak moment for the students comparable to the prom. Here the authors focus on the elevation element of creating a positive moment. To elevate, you need to boost sensory appeal, raise the stakes, and break the script. This means you violate expectations about an experience. They also build a case for companies shifting focus from eliminating negatives to elevating the positive experiences they create.

The script here means a stereotypical experience. To break a script you first have to understand what it is. If you break it you will be more memorable. Also, if you break a script too often, people will adapt and see it as what is expected. A bit of randomness can help. One example is giving employees the ability to give something away to people they like. Another is creative wisecracks that can create peaks. The key is that disrupting routines can create more peaks. Surprise stretches time or at least makes the event seem longer. You need to go through your own scripts so you can play with them from time to time. This will allow you to lay down a richer set of memories.

This chapter starts with a story about bringing latrines to villages where people defecated openly. When they just built nice latrines people wouldn’t use them because they were nicer than their homes. When they simply demonstrated how feces on the ground found its way into their food via flies, the people saw the problem and were compelled to take action. They essentially tripped over the truth and disgust is the number one trigger.
If you want people to confront uncomfortable truths, you need to have a clear insight, a compressed time frame, and the audience needs to discover the truth. Rather than spell out a solution, you need to dramatize the problem. Once the problem becomes vivid, people will turn to solutions. The chapter ends with a story of how a professor forced other professors to see how their curricula had little to do with their goals. This is a great lesson for teachers.

Mentors push, mentees stretch. There are several excellent stories here that promote this concept. The best one for teachers features a study where some students were given a note with feedback that said: “I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know you can reach them.” These students were twice as likely to revise their papers. High standards plus assurance is a powerful formula. Great mentors also add direction and support. It’s like taking off the life vest while standing by offering support.
Another story tells of the woman who invented Spanx, the pantyhose without feet. When she was growing up her father would ask her and her brother once a week “What did you guys fail at this week.” He would be disappointed if they had nothing to tell them. The idea is to normalize failure so that failure loses some of its menace. It’s like you have been inoculated against it.