COO Summit 2024: Come On, Get Happy - Mental Wellness And The Competitive Edge - video Dailymotion

Fortune

Ashish Kothari, Founder and CEO, Happiness Squad

Transcript

00:00Friends, I'd like to invite us to just start a bit differently.

00:04We've been hearing lots of content.

00:06So let's just start with taking one minute.

00:09And we're going to take five or six breaths together.

00:13So just plant your feet.

00:15I invite you to dim your eyes.

00:18And just follow your breath.

00:20Take a breath in and breathe out.

00:27Take another breath in and breathe out.

00:34Take two, three more cycles of breath.

00:38And then we start.

00:49I'll connect back to this simple one minute of a mindful start

00:54and why I had us try that.

00:58But before we do, let me start you with three simple questions.

01:03Raise your hands if this year's target

01:06that you're being asked to deliver

01:07are higher than last year's.

01:10Keep them up if the conditions under which you're

01:14asked to deliver them are harder than last year.

01:16You can raise them even up if you want.

01:19And finally, think about if at the end of four years coming

01:27out of the pandemic, with all the curveballs

01:29that you've been thrown, maybe you're

01:32feeling at the edge of all that's possible,

01:38maybe even a bit exhausted.

01:42Yeah?

01:43I've asked this question to 200-plus executives

01:46in the last 12 months.

01:48And I hear consistently the same.

01:52We are working harder than ever.

01:55We feel the need to continuously be on.

01:58And we're trying desperately to keep things in control,

02:02even in the face of volatility, uncertainty, complexity,

02:06and ambiguity going through the roof.

02:10Today, I want to offer you a different path,

02:14a path that allows you to truly take yourself

02:17and your organizations and be able to rise

02:20to the challenge of higher targets

02:22under harder conditions, not by doing more, but by being more,

02:27by truly discovering what I'm calling your fifth gear.

02:32And we do that through the science of flourishing.

02:35Because here's what we know over the last 20 years.

02:39We know that happier employees, we

02:42know happier individuals are more creative.

02:45They're more resilient.

02:46They're more adaptable.

02:48They live longer and are healthier.

02:52We also know that happier companies have 2x higher stock

02:57market returns, are 20% more profitable,

03:02are 12% to 30% more productive, 3x more creative,

03:06and 65% lower attrition.

03:09That's the business case for flourishing.

03:13Now, this is not just numbers.

03:16These are realities, because these companies

03:19who are achieving these levels of performance

03:23have truly learned something.

03:26They have learned how to unleash that human magic that often

03:30lies untapped in organizations.

03:34You can read all about it in The Best Buy Transformation,

03:37written by their former CEO, Hubert Jolie, a former McKinsey

03:42colleague.

03:43You see, I grew up in the world of operations.

03:49I led many of our largest transformations

03:52at McKinsey in operations.

03:54And I learned something during that time

03:57before I pivoted to the topic of human flourishing.

04:02I realized that we had a playbook

04:05that we have deployed over 50-plus years

04:09to drive scalable and sustainable transformations.

04:12We did it with Lean.

04:15Millions of people, many blue collar,

04:18upskilled in new ways of working, new mindsets,

04:21and new management systems that enabled

04:26them to drive productivity up to 80%, safety down to almost 0%,

04:30and quality down to almost minuscule levels

04:34in terms of errors.

04:36What if we could apply that to human flourishing?

04:40Because our current approach, despite increased investments,

04:44is not working.

04:47Despite all the engagement surveys that many of you

04:49probably run, global engagement is stuck at 20%.

04:54Stress and anxiety are 40% to 60%.

04:58They're not moving.

04:59So let's think a little bit about how do we actually apply

05:02what we know, what we already know, to this challenge.

05:07Number one, we need to truly take flourishing

05:11and put it at the heart of our strategies.

05:16GE didn't take Six Sigma as a productivity initiative.

05:21Six Sigma became the heart of how they transformed

05:23and disrupted industries.

05:26Toyota did the same with the Toyota production system.

05:30We have to stop treating well-being as a side hustle,

05:34as seminars, employee benefits, and really put it

05:37at the heart of how we run operations,

05:40how we incentivize leaders, and how we grow.

05:44Second, as operators, we love data.

05:48We measure it continuously.

05:50We benchmark within units.

05:52We benchmark across units.

05:54We benchmark across companies.

05:55Why?

05:57We are constantly looking for every basis point

06:00of improvement that we can from our physical investments.

06:06So why are we OK measuring our human assets once a year,

06:12maybe every six months, and then using one-size-fits-all

06:17interventions?

06:18We're going to have everybody go through a meaning journey.

06:21Why?

06:21If there's somebody who actually finds meaning

06:23in what they're doing, it's a waste of their time.

06:27So here's the insight I had.

06:30The same losses that apply for machines apply for people.

06:35Availability losses for people show up

06:38in absenteeism and attrition.

06:40In machines, they show up as unplanned downtime.

06:43Performance losses show up because only 20% of frontline

06:49and managers are engaged, and they find meaning at work.

06:54Stress results in lower productivity.

06:57How many of you spend 80% of your time

06:59in back-to-back meetings?

07:02Did you know back-to-back meetings drive 40% higher risk

07:05of errors and result in 8% to 12% lower productivity?

07:10Because we are multitasking, because we've

07:12got to get work done.

07:14Psychological safety and trust is another driver.

07:17Keith talked a lot about this, around how we are not

07:20collaborating enough.

07:21We might have high engagement scores,

07:23but we all know those meetings where

07:25we keep talking about the same thing over and over again.

07:29And then quality losses show up in terms

07:31of poor errors that show up, or quality decision biases,

07:36because we don't have the right information, right?

07:39So the second big thing that I want to introduce for you

07:42is these five pillars, similar to Lean,

07:44that we can apply to this data, data around losses

07:48that we measure.

07:49And those are purpose, energy, awareness, relationships,

07:54and life force.

07:56We call this the Pearl Model.

07:58Dream with me for a minute.

08:01Imagine if every employee at your organization showed up,

08:06and they found work as a source of meaning and fulfillment,

08:10not just a way to earn a paycheck.

08:13Think about what becomes possible.

08:15Imagine if work wasn't a grind, but left you with more energy

08:22at the end of the day.

08:23It was because gratitude and compassion

08:25was weaved into how we work.

08:27And we taught people how to have conflicts the right way

08:30rather than avoid them.

08:33Think about what becomes possible

08:35if we truly trained our leaders to navigate in complexity.

08:42Only 20% of leaders today, according to work at Howard,

08:45are at a stage of development that allows

08:47them to thrive in complexity.

08:50For the rest of us, we can just survive.

08:53Imagine if the fabric of your organization

08:57was so psychologically safe and deep in trust

09:02that people were afraid, not afraid,

09:04to give you their best ideas, their most creative ideas.

09:09And finally, life force.

09:12Imagine if we could train our leaders

09:16to redesign their work in neuro-friendly ways

09:21and truly make stress an ally.

09:23That one-minute breath is a powerful way.

09:27It's a moment when we are in back-to-back meetings

09:30accumulating stress to give ourself a recharge,

09:34just like we charge our phones.

09:35Somehow we feel we don't need to do that with our human bodies

09:39and our brains.

09:42So it's about choosing the right interventions with our teams,

09:46just like we do with Lean, so they

09:47can choose the right intervention for that team.

09:51And the last, excellence, performance is a mindset.

09:57We do that with Lean.

09:58We don't have to tell people what to do.

10:00We help shape identities, and they take action.

10:04We do Kaizen events once a month, if not every other week.

10:08When was the last time we ran a Kaizen on our own ways

10:11of working, using the data to come up with small experiments

10:17that we can try to improve our efficiency, our effectiveness?

10:23And friends, this is what we are finding with this work

10:25as we use this model to deploy it.

10:28When we do this, we can truly make

10:32flourishing our competitive edge.

10:35And here's what we unlock.

10:392% to 3.5% higher alpha year over year

10:43for our shareholders.

10:45We can truly use flourishing to grow the pie

10:49and not worry about splitting the pie

10:51and how much goes to employees versus shareholders.

COO Summit 2024: Come On, Get Happy - Mental Wellness And The Competitive Edge

Category

Transcript

Recommended