LWCC Speaker Series: Daniel Pink Explores the Future of Business

Daniel Pink outlined five essential strategies to effectively navigate the future, focusing on adaptability, purpose, and actionable insights.

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Begin a Process Ritual

Cited research shows that employees are happiest on days when they feel they have made progress on meaningful work, but it is also easy to forget or overlook ways in which progress has been made. Make a habit to write down three ways you have made progress at the end of each day.

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Carve Out an Island of Autonomy

Creativity thrives in freedom. Some of our best ideas and most impressive work comes not from a structured task or assignment but from boundless opportunity and a lack of restriction. Creating an hour, a day, or more where employees are encouraged to pursue their own ideas outside of existing projects is proven to feed creativity and innovation.

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Focus More on Why and Less on How

Performance is at its peak when employees have a stronger connection to the meaning behind the work. In most work environments, there are countless meetings and reminders of HOW the work should be done. Far less common are reminders of WHY. Drive more conversations towards the why and workplace morale and performance will both increase.

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Schedule Regular Breaks

Too often, breaks are viewed as a deviation from work when they are, in fact, an integral part of it. In order to structure the most restorative breaks with the greatest positive impact, science has identified five principles:

• Something beats nothing (a one minute break is better than no break at all)

• Moving beats stationary (breaks in motion are more restorative than those that are sedentary)

• Social beats solo (breaks with other people are more restorative than breaks on your own)

• Outside beats inside

• Fully detached beats semi-detached (don’t spend your break on your phone)

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Employ this Decision-Making Technique

Fear often stands between us and life’s tougher decisions, while regret often makes us look back and wish we had taken the leap. How can we determine which leaps to take and which to avoid? In business, Daniel advises that we ask ourselves, “If I were replaced tomorrow, what would my successor do?” The answer to that question is the course of action you should take.

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Ultimately, we all want to feel that we’re positively impacting the world around us, particularly through our daily work. As we navigate a changing landscape that includes increased autonomy, less office time, and drastic shifts in methods of communication, we’re also finding that we’re required to take big leaps of faith in order to forge ahead successfully. According to Daniel, those leaps of faith are also essential to our happiness: “All of our regrets begin at a juncture in our lives where we can play it safe or we can take a chance. What I found with a database of 23,000 regrets worldwide is that overwhelmingly - not all the time, but most of the time - people regret not taking the chance.”

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