10-Minute Workouts?

As I type this, I’m toggling between my blog and an NPR web chat about the benefits of mini workouts, and the potential for integrating 10-minute workouts into the workplace. Thus, the recess at work I’ve written about countless times! One of the experts answering chat questions is Dr. Toni Yancey of UCLA’s School of Public Health, who NPR refers to as a “minibreak crusader.” She’s running a cool program out of UCLA called Lift Off!, which encourages workplaces, schools and other organizations to incorporate brief bouts of exercise into their daily schedules. In order to get companies to make daily exercise a priority, Dr. Yancey notes how important top-down leadership is for bottom-up support. She goes on to suggest things like a “sitting ban” during meetings and alas, recess! Currently involved in a study looking at how employees fare at more than 70 work sites instituting mini break programs across Los Angeles County, Dr. Yancey expects to have new findings about the link between exercise and productivity within about three years.

I agree with everything Dr. Yancey is saying, but I question whether her method alone is the right one to make sustained change. Every company culture is incredibly different, and I think a mini break program needs to be adapted to fit every culture. For some, this may mean that the culture encourages and embraces employees going for walks at lunchtime. For others, it might be a company aerobics class or ultimate frisbee game or round of Wii Tennis in the afternoon. And for others, it might mean integrating fitness into meetings and everyday work. People in the web chat have suggested things like walking the halls in their office during the day and taking hula-hoop breaks! A one-size-fits-all approach won’t work, and I think companies need to acknowledge that they need to spend time and resources to take an honest look at their employees’ interests and goals, as well as their company culture’s opportunities and challenges for support.

My approach differs from Dr. Yancey’s in that I really want to see organizations changing their cultures to enable employees to make personal changes and stick to them (physical, emotional, and structural changes alike). This involves a period of discovery, during which employees are observed, interviewed, and encouraged to offer feedback. Management are evaluated for their commitment to their own health and the health of their employees. This is followed by a period of synthesis, after which, themes and ideas can drive the design of a program appropriate to the corporate culture. In order to really address the issue of the failing health of the US population, companies need to truly understand the problem’s causes in order to design a sustainable solution. And because I really support what Dr. Yancey and her team are doing, I hope Lift Off! is a strong solution for many of today’s wellness-oriented organizations.

OK, enough toggling…I’m heading back to the web chat full-time now…

Treadmill Time

Since I’ve been in Canada, my daily runs have shifted from traversing the lovely paths surrounding the Stanford campus to pounding out mile after mile on the treadmill. Although treadmills make me a little batty and I end up playing insane mind games to somehow accelerate the perceived speed of time, I am overwhelmingly thankful for them. After all, I seem to think better — and think differently — when I’m moving. The faster, the better. During my run this morning, the article about heart health (see my previous blog entry) continued to dance in and out of my thoughts, and as my speed increased, so did my enthusiasm and idea generation. No wonder all those VC guys (and women) have meetings on their bikes!

I quickly consulted trusty Wikipedia to learn about the link between exercise and cognition, and I was interested in both short-term and long-term cognitive effects, as well as creative versus analytical effects. Wikipedia’s info was fairly basic, but did confirm that exercise is beneficial to the brain by increasing chemicals that help cognition (dopamine, glutamate, norepinephrine, and serotonin). A quick Google search on physical exercise and creativity returned a study conducted by Rice University faculty that physical exercise did indeed result in a 2-hour period of increased creativity. I knew it! I’m going to research this a bit more…it helps me make my argument for recess at work!

How can we free up our MDs to do what they do best?

An article in this morning’s Globe and Mail (my go-to paper while I’m here in Canada) told me lots of things I’ve heard before, but the facts keep coming back to me long after I’ve closed the paper and had my last sip of morning coffee. Calling Canada a “heartsick nation,” the article announces a proposed Canadian Heart Health Strategy and Action Plan asking Ottowa to invest $700-million in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease. It’s not new news that heart disease is a huge issue around the world, and especially in North America. It’s Canada’s top killer, claiming more than 70,000 lives each year….and the US numbers are even more bleak.

My point here is not to repeat what we’ve heard countless times before, but to give some thought to who is responsible for helping to better our cardiovascular (and overall) health. According to a 2003 Canadian Community Health Survey (this is the one the article cites), prevalence of heart disease risk factors among the general Canadian population include:
– Physical Inactivity (46.9%)
– Overweight (33%)
– Smoking (19%)
– Obesity (15%)
– High blood pressure (16.4%)
– Heart disease (5.6%)
– Diabetes (5.2%)

The top four risk factors listed here — although often viewed as in the purview of physicians — are lifestyle issues. Physicians today are dealing with more and more lifestyle issues, rather than focusing their energy on real physical issues like blood cells and aortas and cancers. These lifestyle issues are often detected by a physician, who then refers the patient to some sort of dietary, exercise, or smoking cessation counsel, often without follow-up to determine whether the patient actually acts on this advice.

We can do so much better than this. So, so, so much better. And I really believe that the way to do it is to reach people in environments they are in every day — the best, and most wide sweeping, one of which is the workplace. Just imagine a world in which preventive health and behavior change services are available in every company in the country. Doctors would then get to take care of the physical (not environmental or behavioral) issues they spent years of training learning how to treat.

Hotrodding Stilletos and Tadpole Bureaucrats

I just got back from a lecture at the Ontario College of Art and Design, where Natalie Jeremijenko from NYU shared her past and current work in the realm of socio-technical change. During the lecture, I oscillated between being utterly fascinated and inspired and asking “so what?” As I write this blog, I am trying to sort out the “so what?” and distill which parts of her talk and work I can apply to my passions.

Natalie’s most recent project is called the Environmental Health Clinic, which is a “clinic” and lab at NYU dedicated to “diagnosing” and “treating” environmental health concerns. I put these words in quotes because the clinic operates operates very differently than a traditional (medical) clinic. It shifts the focus from internal causation to external causation, and the treatment (or prescribed action) from individual to shared. Prescribed actions include things like data collection, participatory projects, lifestyle experiments, behavioral protocols, advocacy, and involvement in broader social change efforts. Many of the actions are intended to get people talking about the issue at hand — to ignite real, face-to-face conversations about key issues. That’s pretty exciting, I think.

As someone who is passionate about issues such as obesity, wellness, stress, and work/life balance, Natalie’s lecture made me wonder how this model of external causation and collective sensemaking followed by collective action could lead to innovation in these areas. I like the clinic’s model — patients decide on their own whether or not to address an issue, they formulate their own concerns and questions, and they voluntarily come to the clinic to figure out how to address these concerns. The clinic offers resources and expertise, but it’s still up to the patient to determine whether to follow through or not.

Might big companies each be able to have a clinic for well-being, or something to that effect? Could they have places where employees can come to express their concerns and get recommendations about how to go about individually and collectively addressing their issues? Could these clinics really start igniting conversations about health and well-being…and in turn, action? This thinking helps to direct my thinking about a new model for how organizations can incubate social and behavioral change. More to come…

The Value of Control

I’m in the middle of reading Stumbling on Happiness, a book that brings together the fascinating fields of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics to provide insights about what actually makes us happy. It’s a great read, and it has made me consider my stage in life and my perspective on what I’ve done in the past and what I’d like to do in the future.

The book cites lots of studies, one of which was very simple, yet really impacted me. In a 1976 study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers gave elderly residents of a local home a houseplant. They told half of the residents that they were responsible for the plant’s care and feeding (high-control group), and they told the remaining half that a staff member would be in charge of the plant’s well-being (low-control group). Six months later, 30 percent of residents in the low-control group had died, compared with 15 percent in the high-control group; a follow-up study confirmed these findings. This study, and others like it, points to the importance of control — or perceived control — on one’s well-being. It’s a really simple concept, yet something I have spent very little time thinking about.

I thought this topic was worth mentioning in my blog about organizational design, transformation, and wellness because I think the issue of control is very real for employees at all levels of an organization. In order to feel (dare I say) “happy,” employees need to have some sense that they are responsible for the delivery of their work, the satisfaction of their customers/clients/colleagues, and the design of their day. This translates into simple, yet critical, exercises in project scoping and short- and long-term goal setting. To be most effective, these goals should encompass not only work responsibilities (although these are obviously at the top of the list), but also life goals and responsibilities. If people know that their work — and all of the opportunity and challenge that comes with it — is a conscious choice over which they have some level of control, will they be happier? More productive? More fun to be around? More balanced? More well?

One of my grad school professors touched on this from a personal perspective, when she shared that she and her husband re-visit their situation (where they live, where they work, how much they work, how much they earn, how they parent, when and how much they exercise, etc) on an annual basis not necessarily to revise goals (although I’m sure this happens too), but moreover, to re-confirm that they are being mindful of the way they live their lives. Knowing that life and work involve trade-offs, they are deliberate about these compromises because they know that being in control of their choices — easy or difficult — helps them continue to move forward effectively. This speaks strongly to what Daniel Gilbert is getting at in his book — control. From an organizational perspective, this is a worthwhile subject for management to explore with each other and with their employees.

In today’s faltering economy, is wellness a priority for businesses?

I can’t believe two months have gone by since I last posted. Finally, after a whirlwind few months of finishing my thesis and practicum to graduate (whoo hoo), visiting family during the holidays, and getting organized to spend two months in Toronto while Sean works here to set up Better Place Canada, I am settled in Toronto until mid-March and focusing again what it is going to take for companies and their employees to get serious about working well.

Anyone who knows me has heard rant after rant about what immense potential companies have to incubate positive change. Businesses are poised to create cultures in which their employees, clients, and customers are motivated and able to be and do their very best. And it’s my very strong belief that if they take hold of this opportunity, businesses can change the world through the impact they have on their human capital. Many people I have talked to lately agree that this argument makes a lot of sense in boom times when companies have the bandwidth (financial, staff-wise, and emotionally) to focus on creating a culture of wellness. However, skeptics abound in tougher economic times, and people have been asking, “do companies really care about this stuff when they are worried about keeping their lights on?”

This is a fair question, and I would like to share my response to it. Predictably, I think it is indeed worthwhile for companies to care. Here’s why:

Wellness is good, cheap fun.
Creating a culture of working well — physically, emotionally, and logistically — doesn’t have to be expensive. Companies need to invest in understanding their constituents (through observation, interview, surveys, etc) so that they can design for the challenges their constituents are facing. Sure, this might involve bringing in a consultant (I know a great one), but many of these insights are likely to be applicable to broader HR-related questions and may drive long-term HR strategy. The solutions — support systems, planning tools, workshops, etc — also need not be expensive. In the wellness world, companies can still get a lot of bang for their buck.

When times are tough, employee productivity is critical.
During challenging economic times, employees have a lot on their minds. They are faced with constant uncertainty about the future of their jobs, their partners’ jobs, their 401k plans, their dependents, and their overall well-being. All of these concerns can take up valuable mental space, sucking the creative energy and the sharpness out of even the best employees. This brain and energy drain can be combated by a stronger focus on physical health, stress reduction, and more innovative ways of working (flexible workweeks, work-from-home options, etc) — many of which also have the potential to save money. Particularly when budgets are tight, employers are well-served by keeping employees at the top of their game.

Wellness is socially responsible.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) platforms can demand significant budget, some of which could be compromised in a difficult financial climate. Wellness — taking care of the physical, emotional, and structural needs of one’s constituents — is one way for companies to both nurture their human capital and act in a socially responsible manner. I’m not talking about bringing in a treadmill and a nutritionist here — I’m talking about designing solutions that enable employees to work better while addressing other CSR issues (commuting footprint, community involvement, etc). At each of their best, wellness programs and CSR initiative should intersect.

I will continue to explore the case for 21st century wellness (this may need to be re-named because “wellness” is pretty 20th century) in this blog over the next few months. I truly believe that companies have an enormous opportunity to shape and inspire the many people they touch each day, and I am committed to figuring out how to help them make positive changes — for richer or for poorer.