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

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 Moments of Impact, 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 60 page “Starter Kit” full of tools and tips for putting the book’s core principles into practice.

Our guest is: Lisa Kay Solomon, who is a bestselling author, strategic foresight designer, speaker, and award winning innovator. She is a Designer in Residence and Lecturer at the Stanford d.school, where she leads their futures work and teaches popular classes like “Inventing the future” and “View from the future,” that help leaders and learners learn skills to build agency and navigate ambiguity amid increasingly complex futures. She is the co-founder of award-winning civic initiatives like “Vote by Design: Presidential Edition,” The Team’s “All Vote No Play” civic programming for student athletes, and, “The Futures Happening: Democracy Edition.” She co-authored the bestselling books Moments of Impact, and Design A Better Business which has been translated into over a dozen languages.

Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who works as a developmental editor for scholars, and is the producer of the Academic Life podcast.

Playlist for listeners:

Imposter Syndrome

Belonging

Transforming Hispanic Serving Institutions for Equity and Justice

Black Woman on Board

We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States

Leading from the Margins

Presumed Incompetent

Working Toward Diversity and Inclusion

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