Wednesday, October 21, 2020

The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath

The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath is a solid read subtitled Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact. The book focuses on defining moments, or events we remember, with those moments typically high in elevationinsightpride, or connection

The first story told is of a school instituting a Senior Signing Day, taking the idea of national signing day for athletes revealing their school choice and applying it to all seniors, with them announcing in front of the school and their families where they'll go to college. This annual event creates defining moments for both those announcing their college picks and younger students seeing their example. The authors write about how we remember particular moments for the peak memories they've provided, with one business example given that of the Magic Castle hotel in Los Angeles. They have a Popsicle Hotline phone by the pool that hotel guests can use to request a popsicle, which will be delivered to them by a white glove-wearing waiter. The flip side of providing great customer experience is providing a great employee experience and the Heath brothers write about the First Day Experience program for new hires at John Deere. 

While a high school senior announcing where they'll go to college or employee on their first day at a job are peak moments, pits can also be the source of key memories or experiences. Something that's bad can be engineered to be better, with the example given that of hospitals making MRI machines for kids something fun, treating it like a spaceship rather than a tube to lay very still in while the machine makes loud noises. It's detailed in the book that transitions should be marked, milestones commemorated, and pits filled. 

Elevation is written of as leading to defining moments. Peaks can be created if one conscious of them and it's cited that a way to create peaks is to break the script, provide an unexpected experience, with the example given of how the son of a hotel guest left behind a stuffed animal, and hotel workers prior to mailing the animal took pictures of it enjoying it's stay there at the hotel. This story is instructive as it provided a peak moment for the hotel guest and his family, but also likely for the hotel employees providing it. Next is insight, moments that deliver realizations and transformation. One way to deliver these to help people get them for themselves, let them "trip over the truth" and come to a sudden realization. Also leading to insight is the idea of "stretching for it," going on the basis that action leads to insight more often than insight leads to action. Examples are given of people enduring hard times or moments, just putting one foot in front of the other. Another story told in the book is of students more frequently submitting paper revisions if the instructor challenged them to, wrote a note saying they're capable of doing something even better than they've already submitted. It's also noted that in work settings, mentorship can come from high standards plus assurance. 

Additionally are moments of pride, something that can be created by companies when they recognize employees for their effort and work. What's important is that it's authentic, personal, and not programmatic. Also key to remember and recognize are milestones, those marker points on the path to achieving something. Achievement is often simply stringing together milestones reached. Pride often comes from someone completing something that took a moment of courage, tackling something difficult and coming out the other side. Moments of connection are when we deepen our relationships with others. Creating shared meaning or experiences, especially working together with others on something difficult. Deepening ties is another way to create connection, listening to what someone has to say. People want to know they're understood, validated, and their needs cared about. The story is told in the book of how important it is to be able to express "what matters to me." It's a good book about this power of defining moments and how you try to provide them for people by thinking in moments and focusing on elevation, insight, pride, and connection. 

Monday, October 19, 2020

Endurance by Scott Kelly

 Endurance by Scott Kelly is from the retired astronaut who spent a year on the International Space Station, returning to Earth March 2016. It's a solid book that largely alternates chapters between this voyage on the space station, his second long-duration visit there, and the events of his life that led up to it.

Scott's twin brother Mark is also a retired astronaut (and Arizona Senate candidate) and was interesting how the two of them didn't seem to have an exceptional childhood, other than their parents drank a lot so the two kids were often on their own to entertain themselves and wander wherever they wanted. When they were with their parents, there was often fighting or other drama due to the drinking. Scott did note how when he was eleven, his mom decided to become a police officer, just like his father, and how proud he was of her for going through the process to become one, especially passing the difficult physical fitness test. 

Scott wasn't a good student when he was young, but did find something he interested in, working as an EMT while still in high school. He graduated in the bottom half of his class and while in his freshman year of college at University of Maryland, Baltimore Campus happened across The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. He was captivated by the idea of doing something immensely difficult, risking your life for it, and surviving. After reading the book, Scott had a goal to become a Navy pilot, landing on aircraft carriers, and perhaps even an astronaut. 

In his second semester of school, Scott signed up for a precalculus course, something that was going to be very difficult for him, and after putting in the work, he understood the material, with a B-. Out of this he saw that with effort, he could learn something difficult, and later noted how he saw it was just as easy to try to excel at something as to just do something halfway. He then transferred to the State University of New York Maritime College, a small, military-oriented school in New York City. He found that he liked the military discipline, something lacking while growing up. He then did well there, something that he kept building on. 

As Scott progressed through college he knew he wanted to pilot the space shuttle, with it the most difficult craft to fly and he graduated from Maritime in 1987. Having signed up for five years of military service in exchange for an ROTC scholarship, he was assigned to flight school in Pensacola, Florida, continued to thrive and was assigned to fly jets. He progressed to serving as a test pilot and was accepted into the astronaut program in 1996, at the same time as Mark. He got his first shuttle assignment in 1999, going into space on Discovery in December and later serving as commander piloting the shuttle. He notes how he a pilot, not necessarily a scientist, but understands how important the science they do is. The shuttle program ended in 2011 and Scott spent a 159 day stint on the International Space Station in 2010-11. While he on this tour, Mark's wife Gabby Giffords was shot in Tucson, Arizona and Mark three months later flew as commander of Endeavour, its last mission before being retired, with her urging him to complete the assignment. 

The ISS has been inhabited non-stop since Nov 2000, and has been visited by more than two hundred people from sixteen nations. A standard long-duration visit there was five to six months, but a year-long mission was announced in November 2012, with Scott and Russian cosmonaut Misha Kornienko as the two people sent for this stretch in large part to see how the human body would respond to a year in space, something terribly important if we're ever going to send anyone to Mars. Scott and Misha left in 2015 and it was remarkable reading of just how much work had to be done while on board, both in science experiments and ongoing repairs to things breaking on ISS. There were so many systems that had to be fixed and problems solved while they there, it's difficult stuff, this space thing. Recounted in the book are the multiple 7+ hour spacewalks Scott did to do necessary repairs to the outside of the Space Station. During their year in space, Scott and Misha saw a total of thirteen other people come and go from the space station and it was interesting reading of the interactions with crew and the views they experienced, with him noting that of the Bahamas from space. 

Sunday, October 11, 2020

His Truth is Marching On by Jon Meacham

 His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope by Jon Meacham focuses on the impact Lewis, who died earlier this year, had up through the passage of the Civil Rights Act, with Meacham citing the passage of the Act that he helped bring about as one of the key events of the 20th Century.

Lewis began his activism with sit ins trying to integrate lunch counters in Nashville and then he and fellow Freedom Riders pushed for integrated interstate travel throughout the South. It was remarkable how steadfast he and his compatriots were in their commitment to non-violence in pursuit of their just cause. Lewis was arrested forty-five times over the course of his life, suffered a fractured skull and repeatedly beaten and tear-gassed. He simply kept going, resolute in his belief that the world could be a just place, and he was willing to sacrifice himself to help make it so.

The image on the cover of the book is from the Bloody Sunday March in 1965, at the beginning of a trek from Selma to Montgomery to protest the exclusion of African Americans from the voting booths, a violation of the 15th amendment. Lewis and other non-violent marchers were attacked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama by police and hooligans, and images from it helped press President Lyndon Johnson to pass the Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing federal protection for things like voting rights. Just as Lewis was on the right side of history, people who opposed his efforts, like law enforcement officers Jim Clark and Bull Connor were on the wrong side; Lewis went to Congress, Clark went on to sell mobile homes.

Lewis was moved by love, not by hate. His was a belief in the beloved community, a concept spoken of by Martin Luther King, Jr. and described by Lewis as the Christian concept of the Kingdom of God on earth. It was truly noble sacrifice by the great man, giving of himself for a cause, and the epilogue of the book titled Against the Rulers of the Darkness and features an afterword by Lewis about what's happing in the country today.