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Ever wondered why your successes can seem so empty or your failures so unfair? One driver is that we rest our sense of satisfaction, happiness, and fulfilment on acquiring transient things or experiences that are outside our control. We WANT something in the future - a nice house, good job, career advancement, people to like us, peak experiences. To get these things, we work out what we think we have to DO - work longer hours, save aggressively, play the corporate game, maintain a carefully curated social image. After we've DONE all the tasks to get what we want to HAVE, the world responds according to its own rules - others want that job too, some play the corporate game better, that new BBQ area is nice but already the decking needs re-oiling. We either HAVE or DON'T HAVE what we wanted, and very quickly, that moment slides into the past. This cycle is like walking up a down escalator - exhausting and ultimately unsatisfying. We keep striving for the next moment, the next pay bump, the next wine price bracket, only to watch each achievement quickly slip into the past.  Even worse, this approach often sabotages our success in life's MOST IMPORTANT areas. Things like joy, connection, and meaning can't be acquired by directly pursuing them.
What if we shifted our focus? Instead of fixating on external markers of success, what if we applied a process focus - starting with who we want to BE? For instance, the best way to HAVE relationships of value and trust is to BE trustworthy and valuable. You cannot force genuine connections or build them insincerely. When you focus on being fully present and authentic, meaningful relationships naturally follow. Similarly, career fulfilment comes not from chasing titles or salaries but from bringing your authentic self and full presence to your work each day, which tends to improve your chance of career advancement anyway. Today, identify one area where you've been chasing outcomes and experiment with a BE-first approach instead. Ask yourself: "What way of BEing, if consistently applied, is likely to build success AND feel right along the way?" You may find that this brings you closer to the results you've been seeking all along. Either way, your happiness is not outsourced to factors outside of your control. Diversity of perspective and method is the most consistently powerful way of getting closer to an optimal solution. This means that you have different brains, experiences, and methods all contributing to the solution to a problem. The science is clear – whenever you add diversity, you reduce error.
Scott Page, Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, has extensively documented this phenomenon through his "diversity prediction theorem." This mathematical proof demonstrates that collective error decreases as cognitive diversity increases. Diversity produces innovation through recombination of ideas and perspectives, creating new solutions that are closer to optimal that exceeds the individual capability. Diversity of Preferences however can cause problems. Preference diversity is where you have people who want or prioritise different outcomes. For instance, my daughter's music preference is different to mine. She's Taylor Swift and others, I'm a little more old-school metal, rock and blues. These diverse preferences when deciding what to listen to in the car can cause a problem because there is no way to parse them without compromise. There is no optimal solution, only compromised ones. Well, in reality, it means we listen to Taylor Swift when she's in the car – very much messing with my Spotify algorithm and causing my music app to make some truly bewildering recommendations! When in disagreement with someone, it can be really powerful to consider this difference. If you can find out whether your differences are about preferences (what you each prefer) or perspective (your view on how to achieve a given outcome) then you can generate higher quality insights and conversations. At home, recognise that preferences are just that. It isn't 'wrong' to prefer Thai food over Italian (or vice versa) – there is no optimal. That my preference for a happy daughter outweighs the discomfort (only just!) I experience from letting her choose the music in the car (much to my disgust, I even catch myself singing along at times). The practical implication is clear: High Performing Leadership Teams cultivate cognitive diversity while establishing shared goals. This balanced approach harnesses diversity's problem-solving power while maintaining decisional coherence. By distinguishing between these forms of diversity, teams can strategically incorporate different perspectives and methods, and powerfully deploy them toward common objectives. AF: “Middle managers are the pressure point for workplace law interactions”
A couple of weeks ago, at a business forum on employment risks [thanks to Cutcher Neale, Jenkins Legal and AoN], I left with one burning question: Why would anyone employ people at all? Yes, plenty of businesses do treat employees terribly. Yes, there are legal and moral obligations to provide safe workplaces. But the tsunami of new legislation has made it increasingly risky – and costly —especially for smaller businesses without HR departments or established policies. Today's target: the newly legislated obligation to provide psychosocial safety. At first pass - WTF? Looking closer, the intent becomes clear:
What does "psychologically safe" actually mean? People arrive at your workplace with vastly different mental resilience. One person shrugs off the rude and obnoxious, while another crumbles when asked about their performance. People also bring their entire lives to work—complete with personal contexts, belief systems, and traumas that shape their psychological safety and resilience. Don't misunderstand—I value mental health deeply. My entire business revolves around developing emotionally fit leaders who prioritize their team's mental wellbeing as a strategy for success. This shift demands businesses apply the same rigorous risk management thinking to psychosocial safety that they use for physical safety. No more dismissing poor leadership as "being direct" or writing off incidents as "shit happens." The Middle Manager Pressure Cooker One statement from the forum by speaker Tereska Zai [AoN insurance] hit home for me; "Middle managers are the pressure point for workplace law interactions." Bang on! These managers deal daily with an array of personalities showing various levels of emotional robustness. They face pressure to deliver but may lack training in effectively influencing people or navigating difficult conversations. The data is sobering. Alyce Stones [Cutcher Neale] presented evidence that mental health claims have more than doubled over the past decade. The average claim costs over $72,000 in 2023/4, meaning a SME business with just 2-3 claims spends around $200,000 annually. Even more alarming: productive time lost from mental health claims averages 37 weeks—nearly a full work year. The 10% Solution What if middle and senior managers were just 10% more emotionally mature and capable of respectful, calm interactions with their teams? How much would that reduce workplace mental health claims? What if employees were just 10% happier in their own skin? What difference would that make? What if these costs—both explicit and hidden—could be halved by improving people's emotional fitness? Wouldn't that be worth investing in? Emotional fitness (aka happiness) has always been a smart business strategy. Now it's also a crucial risk mitigation strategy—the fastest way to cutting through the noise and getting things done. |