Recently I (Matt) was invited to speak at the annual retreat for a large CPA firm. As I was sitting in the back and waiting to present to the partners, I listened as the president addressed the group. He spent 30 minutes going over the objectives for the three-day retreat. This was a typical retreat designed to help organizations to align, strengthen, and communicate the direction the organization is taking to move forward into the future.

Before I speak to any group, I make sure to interview the organizers, meeting planners, and executive team to tap into what outcomes they want from my presentation and consulting. The tough part is transparency. We usually get the superficial answer that sounds great, but we often fail to hear the exact pain points and initiatives of the entire organization. At the CPA firm retreat it was different, and it was as clear what obstacles were in the way.

The president discussed all the challenges and obstacles. Retention and talent were the unanimous front runners. Staff engagement wasn’t far behind, and the common dialogue of how to work with millennials and the next generation was something on their minds. Retention and talent were so important that I remember one slide that included the word retention five times. The consistent theme was that many of the struggles and opportunities centered on people. I didn’t hear much discussion of technology, systems, computers, or software.

As I was getting closer to my time, I was wondering, “Do they know that these are the outcomes we help drive? Do they know these challenges are what every organization has? Are they going to do what every organization is doing or are they going to think differently?”

This was the perfect setup; they were already talking about the problems they were having and were desperate to find a strategic solution. Little did they know these are the problems I mention to start off my presentation, and I was going to give them the solutions.

It was now my turn.

I started with “Isn’t every organization trying to be better just like you?” They all laughed and agreed—yes, this is an obvious statement. From there I asked, “What is the definition of an organization?

Now they looked at me with the look of someone who has already heard this message, but it wasn’t going to be the same message; it wasn’t going to be the same solution. I was going to go at the source of the problem and to do that, you must ask better questions!

“So, if we are trying to become better as an organization, let’s first look at the definition of an organization:”

or·gan·i·za·tion

noun

1. an organized body of people with a particular purpose, especially a business, society, association, etc.

It’s simple. All organizations are people with a purpose.

My next statement was “So, if I asked you what is the most valuable asset of your organization, what would you say?”

The entire room said people. I have never had an organization or leader tell me that people are not their number-one asset. If this is the universal answer, the next question we need to ask is, “What is the most valuable asset of your people?”

The entire room went quiet when I asked this question. Nobody wanted to shout out an answer; you could tell they didn’t get this far yet.

I said, “It is their health; your people’s most valuable asset is their health. To build the best organization you must build the most valuable asset of your most valuable asset.”

You could see the bomb go off in their heads; it is so simple, so obvious, but so far from the direction most organizations are going. To expand capacity of your people or organization it is essential to build foundational health.

1. What is the most valuable asset of your organization? What would you say? Our people
2. What is the most valuable asset of your people? What would you say? Their health
3. To build the best organization you must build the most valuable asset of your most valuable asset.

You may be thinking, “Another wellness book, another book on a soft skill, another book on something else we need to do.” After you read this book you will realize this isn’t just another thing to do; this isn’t a soft skill that has unmeasurable ROI, and this is not a wellness book. This book was designed after 30 years of work helping people perform at their best; this book was created to shift the thinking to help organizations unlock their true capacity, their true potential.

This book will not have all the answers or solutions to your problems and opportunities. What this book is designed to do is to allow you to think differently about the future of your people and your organization. Simply, this is the foundational blueprint to building the most optimized person and culture to fulfill your established purpose. This book is one of the first written by a baby boomer and a millennial to help all generations and all organizations improve the one thing that will always matter: people.

Our definition of healthy is to be your most optimized self. Without comparing you to others or peers, we can help you optimize the gifts, talents, and attributes you have.

Not a Priority

It was late spring of 2009, I (Matt) had just completed my last round as a college golfer for Grand Valley State University. I graduated with a major in corporate fitness/wellness and a minor in entrepreneurial business. I knew what I wanted to do. I had always known I wanted to help organizations be better by improving the health of their people, but I really didn’t know what this career path looked like.

Maybe my passion started when I was 14 or 15, riding in the car with my twin sister and Dad to and from school, listening to the audio version of the famous business book Good to Great by Jim Collins. Now don’t get me wrong, this was extremely boring at the time and I would have much rather listened to music on the radio, but I still remember being fascinated with organizational structures and the growth and scale these organizations could have.

Dad is an amazing mentor. He is a health guru who has consulted thousands of people and hundreds of organizations. He devoted his life to helping individuals be healthier, and he created his company along the way called On Target Living.

At this point after college I was blessed to have unique experience in the world of health, but where could I make the biggest difference? During college, I watched as my dad would travel the globe speaking and training organizations and their people, so it was promising that there was this desire out there for organizations to get their people healthier. This is what I saw as my opportunity or biggest impact—helping organizations improve the health of their people.

My first jumping-off point came when I had a breakfast meeting with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. He was interested in meeting with me because health-care costs were going up, and he could tell the health and performance of his people were going down. He thought it would be wise to create a wellness program for the company’s 5,000 employees. This seemed to be right in my wheelhouse—a chance to help people inside a large organization. I was ready to blast off, but there was one slowdown: The CEO wanted me to learn the business before I could create a health and wellness strategy. I agreed and was eager to learn.

Things were going great; I was working and learning how the company functioned, and I received amazing skill training on industry communication, Outlook, Excel, business writing, workflow, customer service, and teamwork. The only problem was that I wasn’t doing what I loved: helping people get better and be their best. So, I would intermittently continue the dialogue with the CEO: “When can I create this wellness strategy?” The answer would always be the same: “I think it is important, but not a priority right now.” So, I just continued to do my work and built some wonderful relationships with my workmates.

As I continued asking, I kept hitting the same roadblock: “We think it would be nice, but it isn’t a priority.” I wanted to emphasize that I was extremely grateful for what this company provided me, but I knew there was a better way. The health-care costs and the health of the people were not going in the direction they should or could. Although the company’s financial success and growth looked good on paper, I knew that it could be so much better. People could have been happier; their energy could have been higher; they didn’t have to suffer through their pain and disease. I think they had a lot more potential.

Not long after that, I was presented with an opportunity to work at On Target Living with my dad. On Target Living had grown to a point where Dad needed help scaling, managing, and creating new programs, so I made the leap. Again, my recent experience with this Fortune 500 company was a great jumping-off point in my career. It triggered questions on why and how to get organizations to want to be healthier.

When I started my new position at On Target Living, I thought it would be fulfilling, challenging, and extremely rewarding. Boy, did I have a lot to learn. I was right about one thing—the challenge. It felt sometimes like I was pulling teeth. When I approached organizations about their wellness plans, I kept hearing the same thing I heard at my past company: “Yes, we are interested, yes we have these challenges, but it isn’t a priority right now” or “We don’t have a budget for this.” Mind you many of the organizations we were speaking with were multimillion- or multibillion-dollar organizations—hence, they had plenty of money.

We would have fantastic success with groups of employees; then we would arrange a meeting with the senior leadership, HR departments, and benefits people to create a strategy, and they would tell us all their challenges. Prescription drug costs are high, people are low on energy, morale is down, engagement is lousy, obesity is running wild, and stress is out of control. We would say, “We can help. We can help make your organization healthier.” (Remember this statement, because up until now I would lead the conversation with we want to help you with your employee health and wellness.)

Let’s bring our attention back to the purpose. Like we pointed out, organizations are people with a purpose. Over the last several years the popularity and strategy of communicating one’s purpose, mission, and vision are at an all-time high. Studies have shown that people want to fulfill their purpose; people also want to buy from organizations with greater purpose. These organizations are spending millions of dollars creating, communicating, and advertising their purpose. I would say this is not anything new, and most of you know about having a purpose that is communicated to your employees and customers.

So, if we have this purpose thing figured out, why don’t we invest in people the same way? That is a much more complicated piece with a lot of moving parts. It’s like creating a to do list; it feels good when you can complete something. In regard to purpose, you can complete this task. In regard to people, the work and investment never end.

Attracting talent is a top strategy for almost every organization in the world. Here are the common features of an organization seeking to attract talent:

1. New hundred-million-dollar office building
2. Amazing cafeterias with sushi and executive chefs
3. Big-screen TVs
4. Cutting-edge technology and data
5. Incentives for their people
6. Fitbits, wearable technology, gadgets
7. Ergonomic lighting and desks
8. Lobbies that look like museums

Look around, is this your organization? The ability to offer this is a privilege and will help you attract the best talent and people. This is a fantastic strategy to attract talent, but it will not build talent.

MINDSET SHIFT

The definition of insanity is to do the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. On Target Living kept running into the same story when meeting with business leaders: We want to be the best organization, we want better performance, we need to get more productivity from our people, and we can’t keep paying for this health-care elephant—but they continued to have the mindset that health and wellness were not top priorities and that wellness is not a business strategy. I finally stepped back and said, “What am I missing?” I went back to my Entrepreneurship 101 roots and the first question we learned to ask in my business program: Is there a problem? (Yes.) If so, do you have a solution to fix it? (Yes.) But the decision makers of these organizations didn’t want this solution. Even more profound, they didn’t believe it was a solution to their problem.

Conclusion: We must ask better questions!

At that point, we had worked with hundreds of companies and thousands of people, and helped improve health outcomes, lower health-care costs, increase engagement, and make the culture healthier. Despite this, we continued to struggle making it a business strategy or solution. Most often it was a one-off, feel-good event, with no strategy or long-term vision.

This was our aha moment: It wasn’t that the organizations didn’t see the value; it wasn’t that they didn’t agree it helped. The problem? It wasn’t truly what they wanted; we weren’t giving them exactly what they wanted.

Over the past 10 years, we have worked with, researched, and studied hundreds of public and private, large and small businesses; government agencies; hospital systems; and military services, and have come up with the question and answer that shifted the mindset and the solution.

What Do All Organizations Want?

It is not that this is a novel idea. It isn’t an overly sophisticated idea, but it is a paradigm shift in the mindset of how you look at the performance of your people and why you want to look at this different mindset for the future success of your organization.

What every organization is looking for is how to optimize the people they have and the people they will have. It boils down to three performance outcomes.

Focus | Energy | Drive

These three performance outcomes lead to an organization that has the infinite capacity to fulfill its purpose. I didn’t say that wrong: an infinite capacity to do what it is your organization is set out to do.

You might be saying, Matt, you have oversimplified what organizations want. My organization wants to increase profitability, secure the happiness of its shareholders or board of directors, develop groundbreaking innovations, have a world-changing impact, and even reduce risks. Those are important and attractive desires, but they won’t get you very far.

What we have found is that when you define what an organization is, you start to see why and how focus, energy, and drive will lead you to become the best organization you are trying to be!

A light bulb went off in my mind when I first read this. It was so simple.

People with a purpose

Every organization—no matter the size, scale, or resources—has a purpose; this is why it exists. This could be to make the best automobile, to make money for the founders’ family, to cure cancer, to serve underprivileged people or anything and everything. Every organization has a purpose. The key element is that it is always people who make up this purpose; this is what we hope you take away from this book: how to improve your performance and that of your people to raise the tide of your organization.

If you want to have the most impactful, successful, and innovation organization you must start with the people.

Peter Drucker, considered the founder of modern management, said this so elegantly in his book Effective Executive:

Self-development of the effective executive is central to development of the organization. Whether it is a business, government agency, research laboratory, hospital or military service. It is the way toward performance of the organization. They raise the sights of people—their own as well as others.

Thus, the organization not only becomes capable of doing better. It becomes capable of doing different things and of aspiring to different goals.

Improve the People, Improve the Organization

Organizations are just people with a purpose, and we are going to show you how to improve your people’s most valuable asset—health.

Let us walk you through how to help yourorganization create laser focus, boundless energy, and an unstoppable drive to achieve the purpose you have set out to fulfill.

Ask yourself: Do organizations want a health strategy, or a strategy that targets their people’s focus, energy, and drive?

This was the critical moment; we changed the mindset on performance. Organizations don’t connect the dots of health and wellness to performance, but when you say focus, energy, and drive, they want to know when and where to start.

Your most efficient way to become the best organization is to build the best people. If you have a purpose to fulfill, you will always want to build your people first. And start with their number- one asset: health.

It is not optional to build your people. If you do, you will succeed; if you don’t, you will fail.

We were working with a CEO of a large insurance company; during his tenure the participation in our training was close to 99 percent. We asked him, “How do you get this kind of participation?” He laughed and said, “Because it is important.”

If you make something a core part of your strategy, it usually gets noticed. If you make something optional, what is the point of even doing it?

Don’t make building your people’s health optional; make it a core part of your strategy.