Building Moonshots

WAY 14Anchor in a Better Future: Defining your moonshot change by positive outcomes opens minds and opportunities.

About the Way

Presenting a better future requires more imagination than a doomsday prediction. Although fear tactics are useful in certain professions, such as politics and movies, research shows that negative scenarios produce endless feelings of anxiety and helplessness—the opposite of what a moonshot team is trying to achieve when changing the world. So, although it may seem obvious to state, an essential moonshot practice is to anchor a moonshot in positive outcomes that show a better future. Showing a golden past is also counterproductive for moonshots. Teams should learn lessons from history, but living in the past revives old thinking, plus causes others to dwell in nostalgia, neither of which helps to propel change needed for moonshots.

Humans naturally bias to what they first hear. Behavioral economists found that people tend to overly rely on information received early in a decision‐making process.¹ This anchoring bias becomes a subconscious point of reference that influences future decisions from shopping deals to courtroom judgments. By anchoring a moonshot in a better future, a moonshot team starts with a positive expectation. This reference point helps to widen the gulf for other groups who are not contributing to real change or just shouting about their version of apocalypse.

Moonshots are big ideas that declare big impact. Once anchored, teams acting ...