Are Happy People Dumb?

by Shawn Achor

"Happy people are not the smart people."

I was talking to a stock trader shortly before giving a lecture at a large bank in New York. I think he thought I was a fellow trader, but I felt a little awkward at this turn in the conversation... as my lecture topic was the research case for happiness.

"Happy people are the ones who don't get it," he continued. "Happy people just don't understand how the markets are working or how the company is not working..."

These sentiments are not uncommon. I believe we have a cultural assumption that happy people are anti-intellectual, delusional, or shallow. We've all heard the saying that "ignorance is bliss."  But, in truth, society has a fundamental ignorance about bliss.

Here's part of the problem. Everyone knows someone who is brilliant and unhappy. And everyone knows someone who is successful and not happy. I encountered both types frequently in my research at Harvard and in Fortune 500 companies, and when you see these two types of individuals, it is easy for us to assume that happiness has nothing to do with success or intelligence, or is even antithetical to it.

On the contrary, a decade of research suggests that both of those individuals (smart/unhappy, and successful/unhappy) are actually significantly underperforming what their brain can do. We know this partly because if you raise their levels of positive emotion, their cognitive abilities and success rates go up. The real story of happiness is that every person has a range of potential — in terms of intelligence, athletic ability, musicality, creativity, and productivity — and we are more likely to achieve the upper bounds of our brain's potential when we're feeling positive, rather than negative or neutral.

For instance, dopamine, a neurochemical released by our body which helps us experience enjoyment and happiness, has an ancillary benefit: it activates the learning centers of the brain, allowing our brains to become intellectual sponges.
You've seen this in the past. If you crammed for a test in school and were stressed about it, you probably do not remember the information even three days later--even if that information would have been helpful at your job or if you had to battle Watson on Jeopardy.

But you probably remember song lyrics from a decade or more ago, and your brain retained that information even if it is useless to you (unless you do a lot of karaoke). You remember that information partly because of the musical patterns and partly because your brain's learning system was activated by dopamine.

In psychological experiments, a "prime" causes a person to experience an emotion; then we see how that new state affects their performance. You can prime people to become more altruistic by giving them something small yourself. When you prime a four year old child to be happy — by asking them to think of their happiest memory — their spatial memory increases dramatically, allowing them to put blocks together up to 50% faster than children at neutral. Doctors primed to be positive come to the correct diagnosis 19% faster when primed to be positive as opposed to negative. Salespeople have 37% higher levels of sales when optimistic. In fact, a meta-analysis of employees at companies reveals that nearly every single business outcome improves when a brain is positive. Happiness is a significant advantage.

In fact, happiness is the single greatest competitive advantage in the modern economy. Only 25% of your job successes are predicted based upon intelligence and technical skills, though we spend most of our education and most companies hire based upon this category. The "silent 75%" of long-term job success is based upon your ability to positively adapt to the world: optimism, social support creation, and viewing stress as a challenge instead of as a threat. 

Perhaps that stock trader meant that happy people are shallow and just don't realize that there are problems in the world. We often erroneously think that the "deep" people are the ones who brood. The darker the movie, the less redemptive the ending, the more artistic people think it is. The more messed up the painter or the musician's life, the more creative we assume they were. But this is not true. It requires an incredible amount of depth to be positive and hopeful in the midst of adversity. In truth, negative emotions stem from the most primitive part of the brain that responds to fear and threat. Seeing the negative is easy; formulating a cognitive strategy about how to positively respond to challenge requires much higher-order functioning in the brain.

Researchers like Barbara Fredrickson have found that when we are negative, our brains resort to "fight or flight" thinking about the world. But when we are positive, our brains "broaden and build" allowing us to create new patterns of success and widen the amount of possibilities our brains can process.

If you want to see what your brain is capable of today at work or school, try to raise your level of happiness before tackling a challenge. For a list of suggestions for happiness boosters, check out this video or this list.

Given all the research about the happiness advantage and how positive brains reap higher business outcomes, the conclusion is clear: it is smart to be happy.

Should I Become an Entrepreneur?

By Jeffrey Bussgang

When to become an entrepreneur is a common quandary for many. For whatever reason, this issue has come up a great deal recently (recession-driven workforce dislocation?), so I thought I'd share a few thoughts that might help frame this critical decision.

I have concluded that being an entrepreneur is an irrational state of being. If human beings were purely rational, evaluative, value maximizing individuals (see HBS Prof Michael Jensen's paper on self-interest and human behavior (link PDF)), they would not start companies. If they sat down and did the expected value calculation by laying out the probability-weighted outcomes of being an entrepreneur as compared to taking a safe job, it would not pencil out. 

Yet, entrepreneurship is not simply a rational journey. It is one that is defined by passion and personal satisfaction that transcends purely financial analysis. And, of course, there is always the hope for the big payout, no matter how long the odds.

Despite popular wisdom to the contrary, age is not a major factor in the decision to start a company. The Kauffman Foundation reports that the median age of founders is 39 - right at the midpoint of a typical professional career - and 69% are 35 or older. Another study by Washington University professors of 86,000 science and engineering graduates showed that age was not a significant predictor of becoming an entrepreneur.

So when should you become an entrepreneur. Here are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself:
Do you have an idea that no one can talk you out of? When you bounce your start-up idea off your spouse, friends and trusted advisors, are they able to raise enough objections that you begin to doubt whether the idea has merit. Getting honest, objective advice can be hard because the people you are likely to go to care about you and may be afraid to tell you what they really think for fear of offending you. Thus, you need to get feedback from objective parties (e.g., advisors, experts, prospective angel or VC investors with whom you don't have a deep personal relationship).
Do you have a partner you trust with complimentary skills? Starting a company is a lonely adventure. Having a partner that you can trust and whose skillset and experience is complimentary to yours can be a huge functional and emotional benefit. 

Are you prepared to endure with modest or no salary for a few years? Founding a company often means making personal sacrifices and below-market cash compensation. All the talk about "lean start-ups" (which I'm a big fan of) sometimes obscures the practical reality of what it means to eat through your personal savings. 

Are you bored with your current work environment/life situation? There is nothing boring about being an entrepreneur. More apt adjectves might include stimulating, engrossing, obsessive, exhilarating, nerve-racking - but not boring. If you are tired of viewing your work as a chore and if every day is a bit of a grind, then entrepreneurship is for you. I find that the intrinsic motivation behind an aspiring entrepreneur is sometimes the simplest - because it's fun. Seeking fun can transcend all other factors.
Do you perform best in the absence of structure? In my book, Mastering the VC Game, I describe a metaphor for the three stages of a start-up: the jungle, the dirt road and the highway. In the earliest stages of a venture - the jungle - there are no clear paths available and the skills required are to thrive in the midst of the chaos. For those who possess that makeup, being a start-up executive is an excellent fit. But for those that like clear paths with little uncertainty and a great deal of structure - the highway - an early-stage venture will feel like a very uncomfortable environment. 

Reflecting on these questions, I find it intriguing to reflect on what kind of environment - either from the perspective of parents raising their children or policy makers thinking about encouraging entrepreneurial ecosystems - can be created to foster more entrepreneurship? HBS Professor Noam Wasserman is writing a book called Founding Dilemmas which is coming out later this year (I've read early drafts and believe it will be a must-read for entrepreneurs). In it, he quotes career guru Dr. Tim Butler who points out that signals from parents, mentors and local leaders have a large influence on whether people chose to become entrepreneurs. "We receive very powerful messages [from those around us] about what's important, what success is, what failure is, what counts for achievement and what doesn't. "

Celebrating entrepreneurial success stories in our culture and putting folks like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page (the new Google CEO!) and even more accessible, local heroes on magazine covers and in front of audiences is obviously a huge factor. Every college kid in America looks at Mark Zuckerburg and thinks, "Why not me?" Why not, indeed? 


Jeff Bussgang is a general partner at Flybridge Capital and an Entrepreneur in Residence at Harvard Business School. He is author of the book, Mastering the VC Game.This post originally appeared on Jeff's blog, Seeing Both Sides

How To Measure Success

By Simon Sinek

This journey I’m on is a deeply personal one. When I put words to this thing called the Why, it completely changed the direction of my life. Not a single thing I’m doing these days -- not the speaking, not the book, not even this column -- was a part of any plan. How could they be on a plan? I couldn’t even imagine them. With all that has happened in the past few years, someone asked me a question recently that really made me think: “How will you know when you’re successful?”

I know there’s a difference between being successful and feeling successful. And if you ask me if I feel successful, the honest answer is “not yet.” By most standard measurements, I am enjoying more success now than at any other time in my life, but I still don’t feel successful. This is what makes the question so fantastic. If the goal is to feel successful, what is the measurement we should use to achieve that feeling?

The most common standard measurement is money -- our bank accounts. That’s how so many people measure their success today, so perhaps it works?

I went to an event for high-performing entrepreneurs and the question was asked of the room, How many of you have achieved your financial goals?  Amazingly, 80% of the room raised their hand. Then the question was asked, “how many of you feel successful?” and 80% of the hands went down. This example alone shows that there is little to no connection between the standard measurement of success and the feeling of success.

I for one have never been motivated by the money.  Most years, if you were to ask me how much I make, the genuine answer is that I have no clue. I usually find out the answer to that question once a year, at tax time, when my accountant tells me. And if money were the only measurement, we’d all have a number in our minds that, if we reached it, we’d stop working. And most of us don’t. No matter how much I make, I don’t want to stop working. Money doesn’t help me answer that question.

Some would argue that you’re as successful as the company you keep. Certainly there is a connection between our friends and who we are. James Fowler talked about it a couple of years ago in a piece called “Do Your Friends Make You Fat?” But can we really measure our success based simply on the company we keep? For example, are Vincent Chase’s buddies in the HBO series Entourage successful because they hang out with someone rich and famous? Most of us would say no. Sometimes the opposite happens. Sometimes spending time with someone who is perceived as “successful” can make us feel less successful. The irony is that regardless of how successful we think someone is, we don’t actually know if they feel successful.

Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with people I never imagined even meeting. At two events this week, for example, I shared the stage with The Tipping Point author, Malcolm Gladwell, and David Bach, author of The Automatic Millionaire, respectively. It was so exciting to spend time with them and it was fantastic to get to soak up some of their genius. I cannot dispute that having the opportunity to work with them certainly is an indicator that things are moving in the right direction, but it didn’t make me feel successful. For me, the best thing about spending time with people I admire is the opportunity to ask them questions and learn from them. Though spending time with them doesn’t make me feel successful, their ideas and their thinking absolutely contribute to making my own work better, which, of course, helps me advance. But it doesn’t yet answer the question.

My friend Georgia Hurd is not famous. She’s not rich. And she’s not yet attained the success she desires. She moved to Los Angeles to become an actress and has been working really hard to achieve her dream. She has been through some hard times. Money has been tight. Her work schedule often hurts her social life. But she perseveres. Her work ethic and her drive are amazing. She is so focused on where she wants to go. It is inspiring. After a couple of years of pushing and lots of wondering if it would ever happen, she’s starting to get some momentum. This week alone, she was called in to do a modeling job for American Apparel, she had some fantastic auditions and people are starting to take notice of her. What Georgia has found is momentum. It is that momentum that makes her feel good. It is the momentum that makes her feel successful.

This is my measurement: momentum. That’s what I want to track and measure. Money and the people I meet are stepping stones, indicators that momentum is building -- but it is the momentum that makes me feel good.

Studies show that over 90% of Americans don’t feel fulfilled by their work. Think about that. The vast majority of Americans go home at the end of the day without the feeling of success. I imagine a world in which that statistic is reversed. That most people go to work every day to a job they love and go home at the end of the day feeling fulfilled. That’s the world I’m working to build. My contribution is to share a message that can help make that dream a reality. But only when others join me in this cause; to help spread the message; to build the companies that people love to work for; and to choose jobs based on how the job makes them feel, not simply how much it pays, will this dream become a reality.

I know momentum is building. That, more than any other measurement, makes me feel successful. So what of the original question, “How will you know when you’re successful?” The answer:  When I reach a level of momentum when the movement can advance without me -- then I will feel successful.

Where Do Ideas Come From?

I thought today's Seth Godin blog was worth re-posting.  If you're not currently subscribing to his feed or following him on Twitter, you're missing out.  Catch him at @thisissethsblog and/or at http://sethgodin.typepad.com.

Just a reminder, to follow and learn from blogs, my recommendation is set up your Google Reader and subscribe to as many as you can handle.  Then set up iGoogle as your desktop where you can plug in the Reader, your blog, and other things like ESPN.com.  You choose.  What I like about the reader is I can research hundreds of articles at a glance, yet read only what applies to my interests - all without cluttering my inbox.

Where do ideas come from?

1. Ideas don't come from watching television

2. Ideas sometimes come from listening to a lecture

3. Ideas often come while reading a book

4. Good ideas come from bad ideas, but only if there are enough of them

5. Ideas hate conference rooms, particularly conference rooms where there is a history of criticism, personal attacks or boredom

6. Ideas occur when dissimilar universes collide

7. Ideas often strive to meet expectations. If people expect them to appear, they do

8. Ideas fear experts, but they adore beginner's mind. A little awareness is a good thing

9. Ideas come in spurts, until you get frightened. Willie Nelson wrote three of his biggest hits in one week

10. Ideas come from trouble

11. Ideas come from our ego, and they do their best when they're generous and selfless

12. Ideas come from nature

13. Sometimes ideas come from fear (usually in movies) but often they come from confidence

14. Useful ideas come from being awake, alert enough to actually notice


15. Though sometimes ideas sneak in when we're asleep and too numb to be afraid

16. Ideas come out of the corner of the eye, or in the shower, when we're not trying

17. Mediocre ideas enjoy copying what happens to be working right this minute

18. Bigger ideas leapfrog the mediocre ones

19. Ideas don't need a passport, and often cross borders (of all kinds) with impunity

20. An idea must come from somewhere, because if it merely stays where it is and doesn't join us here, it's hidden. And hidden ideas don't ship, have no influence, no intersection with the market. They die, alone.

A Thought

Life is not a journey to the grave with intentions of arriving safely in a pretty well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming ... WOW! What a ride!

Serving the Customer in Every Patient

By Gregory VandenBosch, President & Co-founder, MedDirect

There is a fundamental change occurring within the healthcare industry that is rapidly shifting more of the financial responsibility for medical services to patients. In fact, patients’ payment responsibility has grown by 300 percent in the last five years and most providers are only just beginning to experience the impact that this shift has on their finances and operations. As consumer-driven products (HSAs, HRAs and other plans with high deductibles and high levels of co-insurance) and other retail health initiatives continue to gain traction, some experts project patient payments as a percent of a provider’s total revenue will increase to approximately 40 percent by 2012.

This change presents a major challenge to providers because compared with health plan payments that generally arrive quickly and reliably, payments from patients require more work and often necessitate specialized software and staff.  Unfortunately, most healthcare organizations to date haven’t developed the adequate business-to-consumer tools and processes required to manage a large number of highly diverse patient payers and have failed to address the fundamental reasons why patients don’t pay – poor communication and education, confusing invoices/data and limited payment options.

It may sound a bit odd to talk about managing your patient’s “experience” when you're attempting to collect a debt, but in fact, that’s just what one must do. A lot of companies have said that it can cost five times more to acquire new customers than the cost of retaining current customers. In fact, many healthcare organizations now consider the lifetime value of their patient base as a primary financial lever in capital transactions and debt ratings. So, even when collecting a debt, it’s important to make every effort to avoid losing a good patient.

This makes loyalty a key focus, particularly in a mature industry such as healthcare. In healthcare, a zero sum game is in effect. It’s not just that you lose a patient – it’s that your competitor gains one of your former patients. In this case, patient loyalty becomes an even more critical component of your long-term profitability picture.

The right solution must bridge the gap between the need for patient payments and delivering a good patient experience. This raises the question: What communication and contact strategies can you employ to consistently deliver a positive experience without compromising your collections performance? In fact, these two elements are not mutually exclusive.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE

Traditional methods of communication, such as contact center agents and direct mail, play an important role in customer communication, but they are not capable of shouldering all your communications. With more than 90 percent of the U.S. population communicating via mobile phones and text messaging, healthcare providers need to adopt a communications strategy that makes use of all technology channels.

For example, automated communication through voice, email and text not only compliments your existing resources, making them more efficient and profitable, but also provides you with a more cost effective way to engage your patients and solve several business problems, many of which you may not realize exist. Such solutions also enable you to tailor each message to a particular demographic segment, even down to the level of an individual patients’ preferences.

                 

WHY USE AUTOMATED PATIENT COMMUNICATIONS?

When we discuss using automated outbound calling solutions, one of the most frequently asked questions we hear sounds something like this: “C’mon, people don’t really listen to those automated calls, they just hang up, right? Why would my patients want to listen to a robot voice– it’s tough enough getting them to listen to our agents?” Of course, if the answer to that question were “Yep. They hang up,” then we wouldn’t have the success we’ve been having.

Using this approach, companies can routinely achieve results far above the numbers achievable when using agents to manually call patients. Why? In our deployments, we have uncovered three main factors:

• First, when dealing with a live agent, patients will sometimes make promises to pay just to be done with an awkward conversation.

• Second, an agent could be aggressive in getting a promise over ending the call without a commitment from the patient. Automated communications does not ‘push’ promises to pay, but offers patients the option professionally and courteously at exactly the right time, as defined by best practices and business rules.

• Third, patients are less likely to lie to an automated call.

        

We have even heard that patients might prefer automated communications, for many of the reasons above. According to a study commissioned by Varolii, Inc. last year, 77 percent of consumers would welcome a personalized call in the form of an automated phone call or message. 

Interactive communications are always consistent, professional, easy to listen to and never have a “bad day”.  They perform exactly as designed, each and every time. The benefit is clear. Each time the system communicates with your patient, it is as though they were speaking with one of your best patient representatives.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Working effectively with patients who owe you money is a tricky proposition. But, it’s more important than ever to enhance your communications efforts to retain your patients.  It’s critical to success that healthcare providers deliver the right message, in the right tone of voice, saying the right things, at the right time, to the right patient. Using automated communications in your contact center will allow you to reach more customers and, in an affordable way.

What Design Can't Do

by Christopher Simmons

September 01, 2010

Years ago, inspired by something I heard Terry Irwin describe, I created a diagram to explain to clients just where design fits into their business plan. It was as much about managing expectations as it was about selling the value of design. This is how it works:

At the center of any organization is its leadership—an individual or small group of partners on whose vision the organization is founded. The leader is the heart. The core.

Next are the people—the managers, directors, employees, members, volunteers, etc., who believe in the leader’s vision. They contribute their own qualifications, expertise and perspectives to the organization, but most importantly they participate in a shared purpose.

After that is the product. The product is the thing that the people make. They make it well when they share a common purpose. They share a common purpose when the leadership unites them around a compelling vision.

The product (which can also be a service) must be supported by a strategy. The strategy is the plan that will help deliver the product to the right people in the right way.

Finally, there is design. Design is the language that supports the strategy that promotes the product, which is imagined by people that believe in the vision.

If you want to be a brand, I tell clients, you must work from the inside out. A great logo isn’t going to make a shitty product any less shitty, any more than a hard worker is going to make a bad boss a compelling leader. In this model, the inner layers affect the outer ones, not the other way around (with the possible exception that a well-articulated brand can help employees feel pride in their organization which can, for a time, boost morale).

Critics will say that this is an outmoded view of design—one that relegates the designer to the role of a stylist who merely dresses up an idea after all the hard decisions have been made. They will argue that design—particularly “design thinking”—should permeate all levels of an organization, that designers should have a seat at the table. That’s true. And it’s false.

It’s true because a design methodology can be useful in identifying need, discovering opportunity, developing insight and driving innovation. It’s false because the elements that drive the success of an organization are two layers deeper than most designers are equipped to go. Generally speaking, we don’t have the skills to train bosses to be leaders. Generally speaking, we don’t have the skills to truly, fundamentally inspire a workforce or volunteer base. That’s the leader’s job. To make it ours is both presumptuous and undermining. The designer who wants a seat at the table must first acknowledge who put the table there in the first place. And who built the room it’s in.

This doesn’t mean that designers are simply form-givers, and it doesn’t preclude us from developing deeper engagements with our clients. Companies and organizations routinely and necessarily rely on design to capture and attract people to the truth of who they are. Graphic designers do this visually. Interaction designers do this by creating experiences. Architects do it with spaces. And so on. The accomplished designer, then, is expert at utilizing their skills to enroll others in a vision that radiates from the inside out. That inside out part is key. It’s a conclusion I came to based on observation and intuition, but which, it turns out, is supported by science. Simon Sinek’s recent TED talk is probably the clearest and most compelling explanation of the biology of why this is true, and Debbie Millman’s well-researched presentation “Why We Buy, Why We Brand,” also dovetails tightly with this concept. I recommend seeing them both.

What design can do:

The designer occupies a powerful space, mediating the interface between brands and the context in which they live.

Where this model is deceiving is that it suggests that design comes in at the end of the process. In fact, there is another ring beyond design where the consumer lives. There is a ring beyond that that represents the affiliations of that consumer, then a ring for society, then a ring for culture and so on. Design, then, is at the center of another process—that of mediator between consumer and product, between message and audience. It is a position of such profound influence and such limitless potential that I’ve never understood why so many designers seem so reluctant to fill it.

This article was originally published on Christopher Simmons’ blog for his class at the California College of the Arts.