With our national focus on productivity and financial gain, we carefully measure Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and other metrics related to our economic outputs. Yet as our economy remains strong, our nation suffers greatly in other categories.
Suicide rates have skyrocketed in recent years, while the opioid crisis has torn apart families and communities. Venom spews from politicians on both sides of the aisle, with our citizens more divided than ever. Divorce rates are up. Life expectancy is down. Childhood obesity climbs, our prisons are overfilled, racial tensions have been exacerbated, our environment is imperiled, while fear and anger are the norm. Despite incredible advances in technology and a booming economy, it seems our overall happiness and well-being has plummeted.
Makes me wonder… are we measuring the right things?
Perhaps we can learn something from the tiny country of Bhutan. Located high in the Himalayans between China and India, these 750,000 citizens beat to their own drum. Their key metric isn’t coal production or lumber output, but rather GNH. That’s right – Gross Domestic Happiness. According to the official governmental website:
Gross National Happiness, or GNH, is a holistic and sustainable approach to development, which balances material and non-material values with the conviction that humans want to search for happiness. The objective of GNH is to achieve a balanced development in all the facets of life that are essential for our happiness.
The broader measure is broken down into nine core components, including community vitality, health, psychological well-being, time use, cultural resilience, and environment. Their balanced approach to measurement has the country focused on more than just the financial bottom line. The results? A thriving community. In fact, Bhutan is one of the few countries on earth that is carbon-negative. By all environment metrics, this country makes our planet healthier instead of sick- a rare condition in our increasing polluted world.
In our businesses and communities, we track our Key Performance Indicators with surgical precision. As they say, what gets measured gets improved. But are we missing some important key metrics? What about quality time spent with our kids? Exercising and getting ahead of health problems before we have a problem? Reading, learning, and expanding our minds? Caring for others, volunteering, creating positive impact for those around us?
Let’s take inventory of what matters most- how we want to be remembered. From there, we can set “Metrics that Matter” in addition to the standard measures of today. If we track the right things, we’ll elevate more than just our financial wellbeing. Like Bhutan, we can leave a positive fingerprint on the world.
About Josh Linkner:
Josh Linkner – who started his career as a jazz guitarist – personifies creativity, entrepreneurship and disruptive innovation. He has been the founder and CEO of four tech companies, which sold for a combined value of over $200 million. Josh is the author of two New York Times Bestsellers: Disciplined Dreaming: A Proven System to Drive Breakthrough Creativity, and The Road to Reinvention: How to Drive Disruption and Accelerate Transformation.
To Learn more about Josh contact [email protected]
Derek Sweeney is the Director of Speaker Ideas at The Sweeney Agency. www.thesweeneyagency.com. For 15 years Derek has been helping clients find the right Speakers for their events. Derek can be reached at 1-866 727-7555 or [email protected]
Daniel Burrus – Bestselling Author, Global Futurist & Innovation Expert: Over the next five years, exponential advances in technology will transform (not a change) every business process including how we sell, market, communicate, collaborate, innovate, and educate. Rapid advancements in both Cognitive and Deep Learning supercomputers and our ability to access them using intelligent agents from our smart mobile devices will allow anyone to have focused access to the actionable knowledge and insights they require at the moment of need. This is one example of how work will change in the next five years.
Richard Worzel – Futurist & Business Visionary: AI—Artificial Intelligence—is finally coming on very quickly after decades of hype and false starts; and, it’s going to be a game-changer in a lot of ways, both personally and in business. It will change transportation, as we’ve seen with all the headlines about self-driving cars, but also self-driving transport trucks. And, it will change business by helping us identify trends, make use of Big Data in better, more insightful ways, and perform strategic planning and marketing campaigns that are far more complex, are far more granular (i.e. more customized to each customer’s needs), and take into account a much greater range of factors. It will be like having a second, more analytical brain providing insight and advice.
Mike Walsh – Futurist and Authority on Digital Trends: Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) have been talked about since the 1950s, but only now—with the exponential increase in data being generated about the world, and the exponential decrease in computing costs—are we starting to see applications that will transform the future of work. Many repetitive, routine tasks, will be replaced by AI—but the robots are not coming for all of our jobs. The real question is not whether we should fear machine intelligence, but rather, what might be the true potential of human intelligence in the 21st Century?
Scott Klososky – Technology Futurist & Internet of Things Expert I think what will change the way we work the most will be massive increases in the flow of data that we do not have today. Today we are virtually blind to things going on around us, at our office, at our home, with our kids, with our employees. In 5 years we will have ten times the flow of information coming to us about these things. We will simply be less blind—in real time. That will have a huge impact on how we work, when we work, and where we work.
Michael Rogers – Author and Speaker on Technology & Future Trends: In five years, we will be connected to the Internet all of the time. Smart glasses, for example—far better than the failed Google Glass—are on the way. The next generation of smart watches will be curved OLED bracelets—one continuous screen. If we’re not wearing our screens, we will be surrounded by them: video displays will become large, inexpensive and ubiquitous. Our broadband connection will be seamless, never dropping as we go from house to car to office. In short, we will have to teach our kids what “off line” means, because online will be the normal state of life. And thus the line between work and home will become even more blurred. Whether that means more personal freedom, or just non-stop work, will be up to us.
Mike Abrashoff
