…in just seven grueling months. That’s right. You too can lose a pound and a half of fat every week for 28 long, difficult, arduous weeks. Interested in learning the secret formula? I used a recipe so simple that anyone, from any walk of life, with even the poorest genetic predisposition, can achieve exactly the same results. Getting in shape didn’t require a degree in medicine, biology, chemistry, exercise physiology, nutrition, biomechanics, or even statistics (Everything requires statistics these days. Except, apparently, losing 42 pounds and 71 cholesterol points in 7 months.). It wasn’t complex or confusing. It required no math. I didn’t need books, videos, pills, potions, shakes, juices, smoothies, chewing gum, spandex, or bad club music. I didn’t need a dietician, clinician, or physician. I didn’t count calories. Nothing wrong with those things. You just don’t need them. Ready for the formula? (you probably know where this is going..) . I worked my keester off. It really wasn’t that hard to do. I just worked exceptionally hard. Consistently. I didn’t accept excuses from myself. I held myself accountable for my results. And when I reflect on it, the same theme characterizes every other worthwhile accomplishment I’ve ever attained. My guess is I’m not alone in this regard. There really isn’t any mystery to success in life, business, or wellness. It all has the same formula. Napoleon Hill: Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price. Victor Hugo: People do not lack strength; they lack will. John St. Augustine: People simply need to trade their wishbone for a backbone. Theodore Roosevelt: Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. I actually came to love the painful, difficult, uncomfortable, humbling, tiring process of getting in shape. The incremental changes were fun to observe, but the actual process of doing something difficult, mastering myself, and learning to dwell calmly with burning muscles and screaming lungs – as warped as it may sound, that was the real reward. So why is all of this in a wellness and productivity blog for business owners and human resources professionals? Six takeaways: Nothing you say or do is likely to motivate your employees to make such a significant change. When it happens, it will come from within them. For those who do ultimately make that choice, an important purpose of your physical wellness program is to offer an available vehicle for them to use when they’re ready. But don’t sugarcoat the level of effort necessary to make a significant change. Deep down, we all know that there are no shortcuts, and your employees will respect an honest approach. Besides, the work becomes its own reward. Your employees don’t need to make such a radical personal lifestyle change in order to have a significant positive impact on your healthcare expenditures. A little bit of exercise with a little bit of consistency can go a very long way over time. Boredom kills an exercise program. Constantly varying my workouts kept me interested enough to continue. Your wellness offering needs to provide a change of scenery and something to look forward to. Don’t chase lagging indicators. My cholesterol fell because I got in shape. I didn’t get in shape by lowering my cholesterol. Same thing for blood pressure, resting heart rate, and base metabolic rate. I demanded more of my body, and it responded the way it was designed to respond. Rarely is pharmaceutical intervention for any of the famous health risk indicators appropriate. Blood cholesterol levels rise in response to the body’s inflammatory healing mechanism, not because you consumed fat. High blood cholesterol, over time, leads to high blood pressure. But the quickest way to treat the symptoms is to remedy the cause: poor basic musculoskeletal and cardiovascular fitness. You can’t count on a company-wide commitment to fitness at a high level, but you don’t necessarily need to. Not all wellness initiatives require sweat for success. Reducing stress yields a decrease in stress hormones, and a corresponding decrease in the pro-inflammatory eicosanoids responsible for the cellular responses associated with increased risk of diseases of all types. The chemical component of emotion brings unexpectedly complex physiological responses to stressors. Helping your staff relax has powerful second- and third-order health effects – which also adds profit and productivity to your business. Voila. All that’s left is the doing. As Napoleon Hill said, “success requires no explanations.” And as Guy Kawasaki says, “you’ve just gotta grind it out.” Up next: Going Primal – Look Backwards for the Future of ... Read More

Employee productivity is often paradoxical. Which explains why it’s so tough to get it right from an employer perspective. It all stems from the counterintuitive truth that how productive you are while at the office is largely dependent on what you do away from the office to prepare your mind and body for workplace challenges. That truth often clashes with an employment mindset based on the traditional American grindstone mentality – employers often think the key to productivity involves keeping shoulders to the wheel. Working hard is both birthright and touchstone in American culture. Statistically, only one nation (Japan) works employees harder than the United States. Not surprisingly, American workers produce efficiently and effectively. But at what cost? And could we get more productivity out of the hours our employees spend at work? At what point does working harder produce fewer returns? Many businesses are already operating at the point of diminishing returns – that is, more effort produces worse results, not better. What most post-recession businesses need is a fundamental shift in their approaches to old and new industry-specific challenges, not marginal and incremental adjustments to a tired modus operandi. “Just like this, only better, and with fewer resources” is pure madness. It’s an even crazier manifestation of Einstein’s definition of insanity (repeating an action with the expectation of a different outcome). But it’s the approach many business owners have taken in response to the apparent scarcity confronting them. We’ve learned, in this regard, that conventional wisdom really isn’t. Slowing down often gets you there infinitely faster. I have never regretted taking time to gain perspective on a workplace challenge, because it has unfailingly produced a better approach to solving the problem. Just like in art and in life, perspective on business problems only comes by adding two ingredients: time and distance. You can’t understand the nature of a thing with a limited viewpoint of it – physically or conceptually. Only with distance, and the time to observe, does the broader context emerge. More often than not, that broader context also contains the key to solving the short-term problem – or proves it to be irrelevant to attaining the business goals you’re serving. But the view from the grindstone doesn’t permit significant insight. How does that truth translate to a systematic approach to enhancing long-term employee productivity? This is the hard part. You have to expect your employees to be at work less. You have to provide time and means for other life activities. And you have to promote destination vacations among your workforce. Getting away from work isn’t enough – in order to restore perspective and productivity, employees have to get away from the daily rigors of the rest of their lives as well. If you’re having a hard time convincing a frustrated CFO or CEO that when employees go away on vacation, they come back better and more productive, here are a few facts & figures to help: 82% of executives believe vacations improve productivity. Regular vacationers are less likely to become tense, tired, depressed, or stressed. Vacations improve alertness, cognitive ability, and motor skills – all of which reduce risk and improve productivity. Vacations spark creativity, innovation, and inspiration. Vacations prevent burnout. Employees who take regular vacations are happier, more content with their work situation, more productive, and less likely to make mistakes. Without time and distance from the daily grind, workers are unable to gain perspective, develop new coping strategies, nurture important relationships, or restore motivation and dedication to their work. Is time away really that important? Yes. One of the premier New York design firms takes an entire year off every seven years. They view it as their strategic advantage. And consider that both the iPod and the yellow sticky were invented on vacation. Productivity is much more than work hours thrown at a problem. Quality bests quantity more often than not. It pays to take a closer look at the wonderful paradox of doing more, and doing it better, by doing ... Read More

Too many of us in the executive suite have bought into the notion that better processes, smoother systems, and smarter number crunching can propel business growth. They usually can’t. Chasing efficiency is usually the hallmark of a shortsighted executive, swiping at the low-hanging fruit of business growth and employee productivity. Don’t get me wrong – technological and process-enhancing tools are certainly indispensable for rectifying inefficiencies and identifying misaligned efforts, which are necessary preconditions for profit in any economic environment. But your leadership efforts can’t stop there. Long-term growth, profit, and productivity ultimately hinge on messy, organic, seemingly random, human activities. People innovate, produce, inspire, grow, win market share, and add value to the marketplace. Your business’ degree of employee productivity, engagement, pride, and motivation will determine your profits down the stretch. Customers take process efficiency, data fidelity, responsiveness, and service for granted – you must do those things right, or you don’t stand a chance. But thriving in business takes inspiration, which is a uniquely human and decidedly non-institutional attribute. Compare Dell to Apple. While both are obviously successful technology companies, Apple’s level of continuous, market-defining inspiration sets them an order of magnitude apart. The rest of the computer, music, and telecommunications worlds spend years catching up to Apple’s endless stream of innovations. It’s not an accident. Apple’s employment policies, compensation, employee benefits, workplace norms, and company culture are all carefully crafted to support a strategic investment in their most critical business asset: the emotional, unpredictable, variable, perfectly non-systemic humans that power their world domination. Are ... Read More

I had a ham and cheese omelet the other day. I thought about that old joke – the cow and the chicken were involved in making my omelet, but the pig was committed. If you’ll indulge a bit of a low-brow analogy, it struck me that executives and business owners have much more in common with the pig than the chicken. We’re married to our business outcomes, and personally committed to our results. The same isn’t always true of our employees, which gives rise to what I call the “Pride Gap.” While everyone clearly has a vested interest in company success, there’s often a big difference between owners/executives and employees from a passion, commitment, inspiration, and motivation perspective. It’s natural for business owners to take great pride in our work; it’s less common to find employees who do the same. The difference is the “Pride Gap.” I believe that an executive team’s ability to bridge that gap is the best predictor of long-term success in any market. Bridging the “Pride Gap” is one of the fundamental employee productivity and business profit challenges. Motivated, committed, inspired employees clearly produce more, stay with your company longer, and generate better business results. You’d fill your staff with them, if that were possible, but employee motivation and productivity fall under a normal distribution just like all other human attributes. You can’t turn everyone into a model employee, but you can raise the average substantially. How? Inspire. Lead. Care. Motivate. Not by extolling the virtues of your product, service, workplace, etc – though some of that is necessary, it certainly can’t be the cornerstone of your leadership stance. Some people will be passionate widget makers. Most won’t. Bridging the “Pride Gap” – inspiring your employees to extend, stretch, innovate, and produce as passionate widget makers – only begins when you demonstrate your passion for their lives and wellbeing. There aren’t any leadership shortcuts, and you can’t fake it (they’ll know). If you don’t care about them, they won’t care about you, and they certainly won’t care about your business. There’s an aloof formality that has come to replace the atmosphere of genuine teamwork in many businesses, and while it might be politically correct and contain all of the proper HR-approved terminology, its sterility and distance sap the life from your business. Its effect is precisely the opposite from its intent – bland generalization and neurotic attempts at total non-offense dehumanize the workplace. Too little passion causes too little profit. I’m not advocating inappropriate workplace behavior, and I’m well aware of the problem of the very small number of opportunistic malcontents who might eagerly take advantage of a slip-up. Protect yourself by being professional, and comply with standards. But you have to show that you care about the messy, entangled, encumbered, and complicated humanness that we all bring to work with us. How, specifically? When you truly care, you’ll instantly and magically know how to make a difference for your staff on a daily basis, in a way that is uniquely your own as well as uniquely meaningful to the people who work for you. It’s as if the universe rallies to help you make your employees’ work life better. If you demonstrate tangibly and consistently that you care about your employees, your employees will come to care about you. And when they do, they will naturally begin to care about the things you care about. Profit, productivity, innovation, efficiency, market share, and customer loyalty will all follow. That’s the only way I know to bridge the “Pride ... Read More

I’ve become convinced that most businesses fail because of poor leadership. Occasionally, market forces will make a product line or service obsolete, or a competitor will outpace your offering, but those are recoverable circumstances – if your business has the proper leadership to adapt. What relatively few business owners and executives appreciate is that every business is a people business. I grew up flying fighter aircraft in the Air Force. It’s demanding, technical, athletic, and exhausting. As you might imagine, there are more than a few entry barriers to a career as a fighter pilot, and plenty of opportunities along the way to be “invited” to pursue a different line of work. The most meaningful realization I made during the course of my career in fighter aviation had no relation to technical skills, athletic endurance, courage, or book smarts. The most important revelation – the one that had the biggest positive impact on my success – is that flying fighters is a people business. It’s all about leadership, plain and simple. The only magic formula is to do whatever it takes to help your people succeed. If you’re worried that an up-and-comer will take your job, the organization will suffer from your selfish perspective. If you’re not actively seeking ways to make the work environment more conducive to productivity, creativity, and adaptation, expect to be overwhelmed by the competition. In the long run, the winners in your industry (whatever industry that may be) will be the ones who foster the strongest team relationship among their staff. The culture you foster at your business will ultimately determine how productive your employees are, the caliber of talent your work environment attracts, and how profitable your business becomes. If you can develop a pervasive attitude of teamwork and loyalty, you’ll have most of the battle won, no matter what form your business challenges may take. What’s the easiest way to set your business apart in this regard? Demonstrate understanding and appreciation that your staff is twice as effective, motivated, and productive when work and life are appropriately balanced. Structure your workplace environment flexibly, and provide a Vacation Wellness™ benefit. Protect your employees’ home and family from workplace intrusions, and jealously guard their private time for them. If you care for them – tangibly, continuously, and programmatically – they’ll take care of your business. Life is, after all, a people ... Read More