Tod Maffin argues that intuition and unconventional thinking belong in business decisions, not just data. Four out of five workers experience symptoms that hurt performance, and depression causes 32 lost work days per employee yearly. He proposes concrete fixes: reward asking for help, start mentorship programs, and add a gut-feel factor to decision trees.
Chapters
Crazy can be productive. And there's some really good examples of some crazy people in business that I want to walk you through as well. But first, let's give out some money. Oh, now everyone's paying attention. Now everyone is like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Stop tweeting. He's giving out money." This is $50. Wait a minute. I'm not feeling so cocky anymore. This is $20. I will give this to the first person who can tell me what this is on the screen. No, not speakers. Not baby monitors. Air freshener. Ooh, aren't we all proud. No. Hearing aid? No. Oh, who said telephone? Who said telephone? No, not telephone. Anybody? It's going away. It's flying. Speaker:COLTON_OGDEN] Speakers, no. You can't just keep guessing the same thing and expect it to hit one day. Computer, no. A radio, no. This is— it's an iPad. But see, I mean, this is what happens. This is what happens in business every single day. You know, you go to call your boss, not to talk to her, but to leave her a voicemail, which in itself is crazy when you think about it. And then, stupid boss, she picks up the phone. Now what are you supposed to do? Right? And what we do, what we do, this is how crazy we've gotten. Techno crazy life. This is the conversation every single one of you have had. Are you ready? Oh. Oh, hi. I was just, I was going to— Listen. "Let's hang up. I'm gonna call you right back again, but don't pick up the phone." It's bizarre. You know why? It's because society— we always thought that society rewards business. Society, in fact, rewards busyness. We are financially incented to work more. Not work harder. Not work smarter. Not work more efficiently, but to simply work more. Or we ignore it and hope that it'll go away. In fact, what happens is it gets even worse. We even have a word for it now. Used to be absenteeism when you got sick. Now it's called presenteeism. You used to be— if you were sick, you used to take a day off. I know, it's a shocker. That was absenteeism. Now people go to work anyway, even though they're not feeling it. There's something they can't put their finger on. It's not quite right, you know. But they struggle in, they go to work anyway. Presenteeism. 4 out of 5 workers in this country say that they've experienced some symptoms that make it difficult for them to work. You will live longer in Canada with heart disease, diabetes, or asthma than you will with depression or workplace stress. And I combine the two because it's hard to find that sort of delineating line. For those of you who are business owners and you wanna talk money, 32 days is what depressed workers report, uh, 32 days in the previous year when their symptoms left them almost completely unable or partially unable to, uh, to work. Depression is now the leading cause, the leading cause of short-term disability claims around the world. Mental health claims, especially depression, have overtaken cardiovascular disease as the fastest category of disability costs. There are some ways, if you're a manager, or not even a manager, even if you are just simply someone who has some influence over your employee— or over your workspace, there are some things that you can do that I would encourage. First of all, create a culture where asking for help is rewarded. You know, we've gotta make this work. We've gotta be able to give more than lip service to this idea. And this means mentorship programs, right? This means job shadowings. God, get— print out those stupid Avery stickers and put 3 lines on it and tell every employee to find 3 people that they can call in case they need help. Simple things like this. I mentioned that I had a gut feel about one of the partners that we were with, and I didn't follow it up. Something wasn't right. I could almost smell it. But deals like that, as some of you know, happen on this kind of moving sidewalk. Once you step on it, on that path toward funding a publicly traded company, it just kind of takes off. And once you step on, there aren't really places to jump off. And it's just— a friend of mine has a PhD, Master of Science. She went to see Avatar. And I said, did you like Avatar? And she said, based on what criteria? What's criteria? Like, your gut. That's what criteria, you know? I mean, look, given a budget, an RFP, and some rudimentary math skills, a chimpanzee could come up with some basic decisions. But we, the so-called evolved species, can do what chimps can't, and that is to follow our intuition. And yet it's not built into the business process, and it needs to be. Here's an example of a business model that you work with all the time. Does the company have the ability to do the work? Is the company respected for their work? Does it fit in our budget? If so, you've got a pretty decent decision. But intuition, gut feel, is not factored into this at all, and that's a mistake because here's what our decision tree really looks like: ability plus reputation plus price plus, "I don't know, I got a funny vibe from that sales guy." The product of this equation will always be a better decision. Trust your gut. If something doesn't feel right to you, what should you do? Ask for help. It's okay to do it in the culture, right? Run it by a colleague. We have this incredible supercomputer in our head, and it's a shame that we only seem to value the data that's tangible.
