Moments of Impact

Moments of Impact:  How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change by Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon, Simon & Schuster 2014

Quick, radio the nearest superhero that there’s been yet another disruptive technology attack, an aggressive new competitor is gathering on the horizon, the customers are restless and drifting off, and nobody’s listening!  What, no superhero in sight?  Switch to Plan B - assemble the best talent in the room, get them somehow working together, and fix it, move it, capture it!  Sound like the healthcare rollout?  They didn’t have a superhero there either!

But let’s talk about what authors Ertel and Solomon have to offer that is not dependent on Technicolor superhero moves, starting with what they call strategic conversations under pressure to solve a high-stakes challenge. Although there is no roadmap for these sudden eruptions of chaos, Ertel and Solomon offer a 60-page Starter Kit!

There are three ways to use the Starter Kit –  One, as a virtual coach, two as a checklist and handy reference, and three as a shared playbook for teams.  The Mill Girl loves the shared playbook idea because this is a very different approach to managing change and unexpected challenges.  Take a look at my favorite chapter, “Make It An Experience,” starting with “An Agenda Is Not An Experience,” because, say that authors, we spend a lot of our time on autopilot and strategic conversations must be memorable experiences to be retained.  Using a key example from Intuit, read through and think about “Key Practice 1, Discover, Don’t Tell” and then follow how Joseph O’Sullivan designed a scavenger hunt on Main St. in Half Moon Bay to break the frame and locate a geocache in the shrubbery using a military-grade GPS.   Wow, The Mill Girl loves this!  We need more – this is not Powerpoint or Command-and-Control or Michael Porter or Management by Objectives, this is real fun stuff in the Digital Age – love it love it!