At a recent immersive installation, the team at The Beautiful Truth filled an enormous room with one billion seeds. The installation stretched across the floor like a vast expanse, but when participants knelt down, individual seeds came into sharp focus, each one representing a human life. 

More than a hundred people gathered in a circle around this extraordinary sight, contemplating the scale of their shared work mission: to change one billion lives. The team leader stood at the centre and invited everyone to pick up a single seed from the sea before them. This seed represented a life they knew their work had already touched; one small part of the billion lives they could reach if they achieved their organisation’s goal. 

I watched as people carefully selected their seed, holding it in their palms. Around the circle, people began to cry. An abstract number became a tangible reality, strategic objectives became personal purpose. A billion ceased to be a statistic and became a calling. This is what happens when an organisation knows how to think in moments.

Memory: The Curator and Storyteller
 
You probably don’t remember how your day was two Tuesdays ago, or what happened at last month’s routine meeting. This is because the human mind doesn’t average our minute-by-minute sensations, it plucks moments from the continuous stream of experience that flows through it. These aren’t picked at random: they are what researchers call “defining moments,” short, significant experiences that get woven into the story of who we are. 

Most businesses operate as if this psychological truth isn’t relevant to how they operate. They focus their energy on the “mostly forgettable middle”: efficient processes, standardised procedures, smooth operations. Meanwhile, the moments that actually shape how employees see themselves, their potential, and their relationship to work pass unmarked. Research shows that most people go weeks at a time without experiencing a significant positive moment at work.  

 
But what if we recognised that an employee’s relationship with an organisation hinges not on daily tasks, but on a handful of intentional experiences that elevate them beyond the ordinary?

According to Chip and Dan Heath, authors of The Power Of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, organisations need to learn to think in moments and “recognise where the prose of life needs punctuation.” The business case is compelling: when business leaders consciously curate peak moments they can transform their workplace culture.

Employees at these organisations are 13 times more likely to be engaged and three times less likely to face burnout. Even a single well-crafted peak experience can fundamentally alter how an employee perceives their role, their colleagues, and their future with an organisation.  

Our Most Memorable Moments 
 
According to the Heath brothers, many of our moments are memorable because they are typically accompanied by heightened levels of emotion, which causes them to be encoded in the brain as significant.

These moments become the plot points that shape people’s identities: 

• Milestones: Moments defined by strong enjoyable emotions such as awe, joy or pride.  

• Pits: Moments defined by strong challenging emotions such as sadness or disappointment.  

• Transitions: Threshold crossing moments defined by endings and new beginnings.
  

Each of these moments occur within organisations all the time: when a team successfully completes a major project or tackles a crisis, when a company is navigating layoffs or restructuring, when a new leader steps in, when a new culture change initiative kicks off or a team makes it to the end of a challenging year.

Each one offers an opportunity for organisations to curate a peak moment: milestones can be commemorated, pits can be “filled” with meaning and transitions can be marked.

Organisations can also create peak experiences outside of these natural points too (more on that later).   

Designing Experiences for the Extraordinary 
 
Peak experiences in the workplace aren’t just happy accidents, they’re moments that can, and should be, designed for. However, creating positive defining moments requires moving beyond traditional approaches to workplace development and embracing a more transformative philosophy. This is where creative design meets human psychology; where experiences become catalysts for lasting change. The Heath brothers argue that a peak experience needs at least one of four key ingredients: 

• Elevation. Defining moments that lift us above the everyday and make us feel amazed, joyful or hopeful. They often surprise us or appeal to multiple senses. People instinctively reach for their cameras.
  

• Insight. Defining moments that offer us realisations and rewrite our understanding of ourselves and the world around us. These are the “aha” moments we discover, not the facts we are told.

• Pride. Defining moments that capture our best selves in action. These are moments of recognition that go beyond performance metrics to acknowledge character, courage, and contribution. 

• Connection. Defining moments that bond us to something larger than ourselves, not just a sense of belonging, but perhaps a shared struggle or a collective sense of meaning.

When we experience moments of elevation, pride, insight, or deep connection, something shifts in our minds. Psychologists call it the “broaden and build” effect. Unlike negative emotions that narrow our focus and limit our thinking, positive emotions expand our awareness and make our thinking more open and flexible. They build psychological resources such as resilience and problem-solving skills that can be drawn upon long after the initial experience has ended. This is why a single, well-crafted peak experience can influence someone’s perception of their workplace for weeks, whilst pit experiences fade much more quickly. 

When these four elements are woven together, businesses can create powerful, identity-shaping experiences that elevate the natural arcs of the organisation into profound defining moments. We work with businesses to create in-person gatherings by designing experiences that mark milestones through elevating, integrating and commemorating; leadership retreats that transform pits (such as periods of crisis, low-trust or restructures) into opportunities for insight, connection and meaning-making; and meaningful rites of passage to mark critical transition points (such as new initiatives or project completions).    

However, some of the most transformative peak moments occur outside of milestones, pits and transitions: team offsites, experiential workshops, thought leader dinners or appreciation events. We recently ran a breakfast workshop for business leaders on the power of trust. Far from an average business breakfast, participants found themselves in a sunlit, plant-filled room with a large and colourful sand installation across the floor. Throughout the workshop we used the sand as a playful metaphor for the journey organisations need to take from distrust to trust. We used the tactile medium to elevate people’s sensory experience, ground them within their bodies, and spark insights about the pervasive cultural narratives that limit our capacity to trust each other at work.