The Moonshot Effect: Disrupting Business as Usual

Leaders often believe it’s their job to come up with big ideas. Consider instead that your role as a leader may be to challenge and inspire others to find a moonshot.

Status meetings are especially ineffective when people spend too much time reporting activities, and too little time reporting results, sometimes in an effort to inflate activity to compensate for a lack of results.

Effective leadership requires a focus on results rather than simply managing activity. Success depends on developing and nurturing the talents of the individual team members. The inevitable setbacks and breakdowns offer opportunities to hone leadership in tough situations.

Summarize so that others focus on wins, specific requests, or proposed solutions to problems.

A moonshot has three essential elements woven into its very fabric: IT’S UNEXPECTED: Because it lives outside of business as usual, the moonshot is surprising. IT’S HARD: You cannot transform a business by doing more of what you’re already doing. A moonshot demands breakthroughs and disruption. IT’S WORTH IT: Achieving a moonshot represents a major

Even when faced with overwhelming change, day in and day out we fall prey to the enormous gravitational pull of business as usual. Despite the best intentions, business leaders spend the majority of their time focusing on tactical issues, delivering short-term results to investors, and managing daily fire drills rather than shaping strategy and def

Build a business case for the moonshot such that it will meet the business impact requirements you defined. Build the case on the assumption that, if approved, the team will have a specific timeline to implement. Short projects work best. Six months is ideal. Allot no more than 12 months to achieve a breakthrough milestone, such as shipping a produ

Some words and phrases diminish the certainty of statements, effectively draining power. For example: “I only want to …” “It’s just that …” “I’d like to …” “I think …” “It seems like …” “In my opinion …”

We defined a moonshot as a complex, large-scale objective that can be accomplished only when teams abandon “business as usual.” Moonshots require significant breakthroughs in attitude, innovation, leadership, processes, management, and technology. They demand extraordinary execution and are often marked by seemingly unrealistic time lines. Most moo