Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change

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FORMATHardcover LANGUAGEEnglish CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

Two leading experts on designing strategic conversations unveil a simple, creative process that allows teams to tackle their most challenging issues.In our fast-changing world, leaders are increasingly confronted by messy, multifaceted challenges that require collaboration to resolve. But the standard methods for tackling these challenges—meetings packed with data-drenched presentations or brainstorming sessions that circle back to nowhere—just don't deliver. Great strategic conversations generate breakthrough insights by combining the best ideas of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. In this book, two experts "crack the code" on what it takes to design creative, collaborative problem-solving sessions that soar rather than sink. Drawing on decades of experience as innovation strategists—and supported by cutting-edge social science research, dozens of real-life examples, and interviews with well over 100 thought leaders, executives, and fellow practitioners— they unveil a simple, creative process that leaders and their teams can use to unlock solutions to their most vexing issues. The book also includes a "Starter Kit" full of tools and tips for putting the book's core principles into practice.

Author Biography

Chris Ertel has been designing strategic conversations for fifteen years as an advisor to senior executives of Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and large nonprofits. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and daughter.Lisa Kay Solomon teaches innovation at the groundbreaking MBA in Design Strategy program at San Francisco's California College of the Arts. A frequent public speaker and guest lecturer, she lives with her husband and two daughters in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Review

Strategy is one of the most over-used, poorly understood words in the business lexicon. Ertel and Solomon set out to make it meaningful again, drawing on decades of experience running real strategic conversations. -- Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive SurplusIf you are even remotely interested in 1) having a team that knows what each other is doing, 2) delivering a complex message in a clear way, 3) making sense of the mania that passes for so much of "business thinking" these days, you must read this book. -- Dan Roam, author of The Back of the Napkin and Blah Blah BlahSolomon and Ertel get it. We need to move beyond the blah blah blah dominating our meeting rooms today. We need strategic conversations - this book shows you how to design them. -- Alexander Osterwalder, author of Business Model Generation and Business Model YouThey say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. I say that's also a pretty good definition of the typical business meeting. If you'd like to short-circuit the meeting loop and energize your team's ability to solve real problems and create new visions, then Moments of Impact is the book you need. -- Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell is Human and DriveSo many times organizations go to the outside to develop and refine their strategic plans when the answers lie internally. Moments of Impact gives you a roadmap to unlock solutions that are literally in the room. It provides powerful examples and a step by step guide to creating intense engagement and encourages diverse and unique points of view. This leads to a powerful shared vision and strategic plan coupled with a pragmatic execution plan. And, as a bonus, it is a great bonding experience for all involved. -- George Borst, CEO of Toyota Financial ServicesWhat if conversations at work actually mattered? Moments of Impact shows how they can, offering an actionable model for sparking creativity and driving change. -- Adam Grant, Wharton professor and bestselling author of Give and TakeConversations are how groups of people lear, collaborate and act together, but having powerful, coherent and strategic conversations takes active design and support. Chris Ertel and Lisa Solomon collaborators of mine for many years have provided a practical and insightful guide to shaping consequential strategic conversations. A must read for anyone shaping the decision environment of an organization. -- Peter Schwartz, author of The Art of the Long View and co-founder of GBNStories ignite understanding and engagement on our most important strategic challenges. Moments of Impact reveals how to go beyond data-driven meetings to generate new insights that help change our world for the better. -- Nancy Duarte, CEO of Duarte Design, author of Resonate and Slide:ologyWe've seen how the power of design can radically change experiences for the better. Moments of Impact shows how design can transform our strategic conversations, too. -- Scott Cook, co-founder of Intuit"…this is a guide every frustrated meeting-goer should read, with advice they should all implement." -- Publishers Weekly"Ertel and Solomon articulate the purpose, principles and practices of well-designed strategic conversations and support their ideas with a lively, convincing mix of social science theories and research, interviews with organizational leaders, anecdotes and case studies, and an invaluable 60-page Starter Kit…to enable you to put the ideas to work immediately." * Success Magazine *"Chris Ertel and Lisa Kay Solomon provide several useful tools for making sure all voices are heard--and empathized with--at strategy meetings. You can apply many of their tips to general meetings as well. Refreshingly, Ertel and Solomon remind readers that diversity comes in many forms--all of which are important in business settings." * Inc.com *

Review Quote

What if conversations at work actually mattered? Moments of Impact shows how they can, offering an actionable model for sparking creativity and driving change.

Excerpt from Book

Moments of Impact INTRODUCTION THE MOST IMPORTANT LEADERSHIP SKILL THEY DON''T TEACH AT HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL (OR ANYWHERE ELSE) The call came eight days before the meeting. The caller--let''s call him Bruce--was anxious. A senior executive at an international development agency, Bruce was about to host one of the biggest meetings of his career. Forty top economic-development experts from around the world were coming to Jakarta--on his invitation--to strategize about the future of Asia. As the date approached, Bruce was petrified that the two-day session might flop. We asked him a few questions: What''s the purpose of the meeting? What are the desired outcomes? "We just want people to come and talk, so they can learn from one another," Bruce said. "After all, they''re the experts." What important points do your experts already agree on? Where are they at loggerheads? "We figured we''d sort that out in the room. We haven''t had time to talk with everyone in advance." How will you set up the issues? "We''ve got a list of eight priority topics on the agenda. We figured we''d work through them one at a time with the group." What kind of environment are you creating to help them be productive? "The meeting is in a big hotel near the center of town. I haven''t been there yet, but you can check out their website. It looks pretty nice." What kind of overall experience are you hoping participants will have? "Er, what do you mean by that, exactly?" As we peppered Bruce with more questions--Who''s kicking off the meeting and what will he or she say? What kinds of insights and next steps do you want people to walk away with?--we could feel his stress level rise. Bruce hadn''t thought through some basic but critical stuff. Now, his time was running out. We shifted into triage mode to figure out what might be done in the little time remaining. Bruce had another idea. "Can you be in Jakarta on Monday?" DESIGNING STRATEGIC CONVERSATIONS: A CRAFT, NOT A CRAPSHOOT Bruce is an accomplished professional with a top-notch education and years of experience running meetings and events. Yet at no point in his career did he learn how to design a gathering like the one he was about to host--a creative, collaborative problem-solving session tackling a messy, open-ended challenge. That''s not a garden-variety meeting. That''s a strategic conversation. If you''re a manager on the rise or a leader in your organization today, you''ve no doubt been to or organized at least a few strategic conversations. At some point, virtually all leaders--at all levels, across all organizations--convene them to address their most vexing challenges. At these critical moments, everyone will be looking to you--not for all the answers, but to help them unearth answers together. Odds are, you have some ideas on how to set up a strategic conversation--but less than total confidence in how to get great results. Most leaders approach strategic conversations with a degree of anxiety because it''s a skill they were never taught. To our knowledge, no major business school or executive education program includes a course (or even a module) on how to design them. Think about it. We go to great lengths and expense to bring together our best talent, with different skills and backgrounds, to tackle our biggest challenges. Yet we have precious little guidance on how to do this well--either as participants or as leaders. It''s a bizarre oversight. Imagine if a professional golfer trained for all parts of the game--except putting. She can hit 250-yard drives straight down the fairway and chip with precision, only to stumble around the green. A pro golfer wouldn''t last long without the ability to putt. How can any leader expect to get far without the ability to spark productive collaboration around critical challenges? Because we pay little attention to this skill, every day an otherwise capable leader is hosting a strategy retreat without a clear purpose. Or a strategic planning session packed with presentations that lay out one fact after another without illuminating the choices at hand. Or a feel-good off-site where participants are asked to give their "input" though it''s obvious the leaders have already made up their minds. Or a freewheeling brainstorm session where "every idea is good." We could go on and on. But so could you, we suspect. Even when we get the basics right, things can still fall flat. The right people are in the room, the question is clear, the content is pretty good, and yet . . . somehow, not much happens. People talk around the issues but make no progress. In our work, this is known as slipping clutch syndrome. You think you''ve got the car in drive, but it keeps falling back into neutral. Bruce''s meeting in Jakarta went "okay," we later found out. The experts kicked around a few interesting ideas and made some new networking connections. But the energy level never took off. There was no follow-through. Afterward, people grabbed their bags, caught flights home, and that was the end of it. Bruce had his chance to be a hero at a key moment. Instead, he was just exhausted. Lots of strategic conversations turn out "okay"--neither home runs nor disasters. But okay strategic conversations are not okay. They carry an immense price. They waste precious time and money--in some settings, well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. They de-motivate participants and make them wonder if leaders know what they''re doing. Worst of all, they can lead to terrible decisions that put careers or entire organizations in jeopardy. By contrast, great strategic conversations can be powerful moments of impact that drive positive change in an organization. They generate novel insights by combining the best ideas of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. They lift participants above the fray of daily concerns and narrow self-interest, reconnecting them to their greater, collective purpose. And they lead to deep, lasting changes that can transform an organization''s future. We''ve seen it happen many times, often against the odds. Yet the difference between an okay strategic conversation and a moment of impact isn''t random luck. Designing strategic conversations is a craft--not a crapshoot. It''s a craft defined by a few core principles and key practices that can catapult a "been there, done that" meeting into a gathering that few will forget. Moments of Impact is a book with a mission. We want to eradicate as many time-sucking, energy-depleting strategy meetings as possible--and replace them with inspiring and productive strategic conversations. We aim to deliver the single most useful resource for managers and leaders who need better strategic conversations--now--to shape the future of their organizations for the better. NEIL GRIMMER''S MOMENT OF IMPACT Neil Grimmer is passionate about healthy food--especially when it comes to his two little girls. Grimmer is cofounder, CEO, and "Chief Dad" of Plum Organics, a baby-food company launched in 2007 with the goal of transforming the way small kids eat. The company offers sustainable, organic food (featuring unusual ingredients such as purple carrots) in innovative packaging, such as resealable pouches imported from Japan. By 2011, Plum Organics had built a loyal customer base, with annual revenues approaching $40 million. In early 2012, Grimmer felt that his business was at an inflection point. Other small competitors with similar approaches were popping up, threatening to crowd the market. Meanwhile, Plum had hit the radar screen of big market leaders such as Gerber and Beech-Nut. "Most of our gains so far had come from their losses," says Grimmer. "But you can only squeeze so much shelf space away from big players before they take notice and respond."1 Grimmer knew it was time to engage his board in a strategic conversation. Its five members--all successful entrepreneurs or major investors--had many more years of experience navigating tricky competitive waters than he did. He needed their advice and guidance. But to get it, he knew he had to take a different approach from what he had done in the past. "We had talked about the what-ifs of competition before, but it had always been theoretical and elusive," says Grimmer. "This time, we needed a more action-oriented discussion." At this critical point, most leaders would have reached for traditional business planning and strategy tools. Instead, Grimmer--a sculptor and designer by training--got creative. Rather than subjecting his board to the usual dense presentations and reports on Plum''s top competitors (which they''d seen before anyway), he came up with a war-gaming exercise designed to shake things up. With just two hours on a standing meeting agenda, Grimmer paired each board member with a Plum team member and assigned each duo the role of a Plum competitor. For the first hour, he tasked each pair to do some web-based research and come up with a plan to present to the larger group. Their assignment: find a way to steal Plum''s small but growing market share. To set the right tone, Grimmer introduced the activity with a slide that had just three words--"Baby Food Fight!"--and an image of a cute baby waving boxing gloves. Going into the session, Grimmer was apprehensive. As a former consultant, he thought the odds of success were good. But as CEO, he was les

Details ISBN1451697627 Author Lisa Kay Solomon Short Title MOMENTS OF IMPACT Publisher Simon & Schuster Language English ISBN-10 1451697627 ISBN-13 9781451697629 Media Book Format Hardcover Year 2014 Imprint Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Subtitle How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States DEWEY 303.34 Publication Date 2014-02-11 NZ Release Date 2014-02-11 US Release Date 2014-02-11 UK Release Date 2014-02-11 AU Release Date 2014-02-05 Pages 272 Illustrations 2-color t-o, approx. 20 illus t-o Audience General We've got this

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