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emmett@wellnessownership.us
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Emmett Pickett Wellness Ownership is striving to form (mission statement) an insightful organization to develop an innovative design and training dojo, content production studio, and healthier ecosystems research lab at Location Green. Dojo represents The Place of The Way to Wellness Ownership through biomimicry.
Biomimicry is a science that studies nature’s models and then imitates or takes inspiration from these designs and processes to solve human problems. Nature should be seen as a model, measure, and mentor. Sustainability is emphasized, including better environmental, community, and financial sustainability, as a principal objective of biomimicry.
The bottom line result is the ongoing implementation of educational and financial impacts that can also co-generate positive environmental and community regeneration rooted in a 4P approach (Purpose, Planet, People, Prosperity).
Emmett Pickett Wellness Ownership has developed regional focuses specifically around emerging practices in:
– San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Silicon Valley, and Santa Cruz & Monterey Bay Area(s) regions;
– Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Paso Robles, and Central California;
– Hawaiian Islands;
– Portland, Seattle, and Pacific Northwest region;
– West Coast of the United States and Canada;
– San Diego and Southern California region; and
– New York City, Washington, D.C., and the greater Northeast Corridor region (Princeton, Philadelphia, Boston, and Baltimore), and beyond.
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Archival Information:
Preparing People for Concierge Medicine for The Rest of U.S.
Creating The Revenue Model(s)
Doing Good Is Part Of Our Code (Firefox-Mozilla motto posted at the front of their San Francisco location)
Employers and others paying for related healthcare should instead pay a fraction of those costs to treat diabetes more experientially, in exchange for positive clinical outcomes.
One of these emerging, balanced approaches is called “social wellness” by a company called ShapeUp, Inc., founded by doctors who are also involved with implementing pragmatic healthcare solutions starting on the east coast of the U.S. (including well beyond; the aligned Blueprint Health accelerator located in New York City is a charter member of the Global Accelerator Network started by TechStars).
Social wellness is a strategy for healthy behavior change that specifically harnesses the power of trusted social networks to provide support and motivation — and accountability — through turning wellness program marketing campaigns upside down by tapping into grassroots from the bottom of an organization’s hierarchy upward, in terms of initiating recruitment and engagement, and towards generating a groundswell of enthusiasm amongst employees and core populations that represent real culture change within your organization.
ShapeUp’s model for social wellness has been studied specifically by the Weight Control and Diabetes Research Center at Brown University Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island, in New England, and four peer-reviewed research studies have shown their model produces clinically-significant health outcomes.
Also, one of ShapeUp, Inc.’s clients reported saving more than $1 Million in employee and related healthcare costs, with a more-than-reasonable upfront investment for the financial, and other organizational and stakeholder benefits received.
Further, based in California, the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm is investing in enhanced lifestyle support technologies and coaching, and Kaiser Permanente healthcare system’s venture arm is joining in some co-investment.
An example of this alliance is reflected in Omada Health, which has built one of the first digital therapeutics: a clinically-validated, peer-reviewed, reproducible, and scalable way for people to treat a condition over an Internet connection. Omada’s “Prevent” product blends the online and offline to achieve clinically meaningful behavior change through a combination of friendly social weight loss “gamification” (which can be different than “gaming” by itself), social networking, and mobile “app” (application) elements, proper exercise and diet tracking, positive motivational calls and texts, and a wireless scale (importantly, a wireless scale that does not permit manual entry of weight data to the Facebook group-like Omada Prevent interface). This tangibly encourage, yet also accurately verify approach is beginning to result in more measurably sustainable weight loss and reduction of diabetes risks.
However, according to a Towers Watson people and benefits management survey, fewer employees (year-over-year 59%, down from 65%, and by direct inference, their families, and with aggregate impacts, communities) have taken action to improve their health, which is a financially and additionally concerning surprise given the rise in chronic conditions.
27% state that they will not participate in wellness efforts without incentives.
The painful healthcare impacts of depression are also escalating. The World Health Organization says that by the end of the 2010s, not too far away, depression as a real illness will increase in the volume of people effected to become second only to heart disease in health risks and costs. These costs will be serious for those paying the bills in one or more ways, including employers, organizations, communities, families, and of course, the individuals impacted personally.
An inspirationally innovative example towards Emmett Pickett’s Integrated Innovations in Wellness Ownership is San Jose-based Brocade Communications Systems, a significant technology company specializing in data and storage networking products, which is engaged in a comprehensive, multi-year employee-wellness effort called “WellFit,” including, yet also well beyond the traditional concept of healthcare as just physical health.
WellFit has been chartered within Brocade with its own employee and executive council for greater work-life integration, and very prominent brand and icon. WellFit’s focus is on physical health and wellness, emotional and mental health, financial health, sustainable health, and family health.
This includes a stress-awareness month, daily stress-reduction and exercise breaks (such as the “Stretch Your Stress Away” Brocade campus lawn activity), bicycle challenges, financial fitness seminars that address both emotional and financial health (both onsite and through Webinars), health food tasting tours, and special events focused on losing weight and overall wellness — including the Brocade cafeteria in San Jose implementing the “Healthy 600″ (calories) main dish plus sides, tasty mix and match eating selections, going well beyond just offering nice fitness equipment for employees to use.
Much of this is implemented and assisted by a private, online social platform at Brocade called “B-Hive,” tapping into the healthy, creative energies of employee groups worldwide. B-Hive was created by RallyOn, a Menlo Park/Silicon Valley-based gamification company that specializes in employee wellness challenges, and whose social gaming programs average more than 70% engagement.
Yet the cost to Brocade, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal, is only just over $100 per employee per year, and that largely includes the management of their fitness center (by a company named MediFit, which provides a further, robust fitness calendar of events for body toning, Tabata interval-training, and more). Brocade has also enjoyed great success with low-cost incentives such as t-shirt and stress ball giveaways, and other awards.
The return on investment (ROI) over the past several years has been excellent compared with competitors and others, including no benefits cost increases to either the employer, Brocade, or its employees and their families, and the indirect, but potential (and sometimes very real) costs in communities in which they reside (including potential organizational tax impacts).
Healthcare for family dependents often drives higher costs than for the employees themselves. This understanding goes to the heart of why Brocade organizes family-fun fitness challenges, where points and awards are gained by exercising with family members, as well as a kids’ healthy-living “activity art” calendar (showing whether the kids are eating healthy or playing sports, for example), Global Healthy Living photo contest, and encouraging families to go for walks together after work and read before bedtime. The point is to get family members talking about what it actually means to be healthy overall, and how you and yours can be healthy in your communities, also including organization representation and employee team pride routinely participating in the Silicon Valley Turkey Trot and various local walks against cancer.
A healthier overall environment tends to keep the healthcare financial claims down, directly tying into saving money. Brocade shares the savings with employees as part of the rewards of a consciously high self-esteem, friendly-competitive company culture. For example, 12 executives challenged groups of 12 employees. Employee engagement levels have ranged between 15% and 50%, and the executives have lost challenges, which has been further motivation for many at Brocade. In the first year alone of WellFit at Brocade, starting in late 2010, the number of WellFit Members was over 600 people and climbing.
Brocade does business in more than 160 countries and has over 4,000 employees worldwide. It has been ranked as one of the “Top 10 Best Places to Work” in the San Francisco Bay Area and one of the “Bay Area’s Healthiest Employers.”
“We are the architects of the future, not its victims.”
– R. Buckminster Fuller, architect, systems theorist, author, designer, and inventor
“Any useful statement about the future should at first seem ridiculous.”
– Jim Dator, Director, Hawai’i Research Center for Future Studies and Political Science Professor, University of Hawai’i at Manoa – and Jim Dator’s quote has been prominently featured on the front window of the Institute for the Future (IFTF) building in downtown Palo Alto, California
“Our business isn’t (just) renting the house. Our business is the entire trip.”
– Brian Chesky, CEO, Airbnb
While too many of today’s organizations remain “stuck,” people continue to change, increasingly rapidly. Actively listening to consumers provides important examples. A powerful, profitable example is when people first think of what is now reported (especially in the business media) as the “sharing economy,” a subset of the greater “collaborative economy,” featuring images of technology-laden young hipsters. However, often driven not (or not so much) by altruism — but instead by pragmatic sense (and real dollars saved) for themselves, people now share through technology across many age, and other demographics and personal circumstances.
What ends up making this “sustainable,” including effective for people’s wallets, are marketplace experiences like discovering healthy foods that
actually get consumed because that food must also taste good. Or families on tight budgets, or otherwise, who are now foregoing “cookie-cutter” hotel stays when they travel — and instead using Airbnb host sites of other people’s residences, coordinated through the Airbnb smartphone app.
Hundreds of dollars per visit are being saved by travelers who are self-described “families on a budget,” while they are still enjoying the amenities they feel they need and positively unique experiences they want. More common taxi rides are also being replaced with Lyft friendly-themed rides — or Uber rides, some of whose attractiveness is that there are no credit cards or cash to fuss with, or those seen as “cranky cabbies” to hail, perceived negative experiences replaced by a few clicks on a more convenient mobile app that actives what is perceived by the consumer as a consistently better value for their time and money.
This sharing economy is rapidly emerging and disrupting a wide range of industries from hiring professional services through TaskRabbit, oDesk, eLance, and beyond to repurposed clothes from Poshmark, Threadflip, Rent the Runway, Bag Borrow and Steal, which all offer women’s fashion at much less than retail prices, yet providing opportunities for women to look amazing in brands that are “in style.”
We are witnessing powerful movements of GLocal Sharing Economy and (somewhat) Co-Ownership, substantially changing the relationship between customers and companies, and other types of organizations as well. Technology is helping to facilitate these movements, but technology should not be why we are engaged with these movements because in today’s strongly experience-driven marketplace, once technology becomes the focus, the customer becomes secondary and therein is the exact problem.
So how is Wellness Ownership “unlocked,” and innovated and integrated — for individuals, families, and communities — and specifically, how is Wellness Ownership effectively and sustainably incentivized?
Depth of Intention and breadth of vision are literally keys. By contrast, willpower is merely about getting temporary “fixes” — and not often rooted in more continuous physical, mental, and financial fulfillment, and therefore actually happier personal efforts for individuals and families — which can compatibly serve our communities and environment more sustainably.
Value(s)-Added Services refer to extra features that go beyond the standard expectations and provide something more, while adding little or nothing to cost. Value(s)-added features give competitive edges to companies which could have otherwise more expensive products. – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_added
You need to professionally develop towards re-imagining, innovating, and re-engineering the profitability of your activities and relationships in an age of “4P,” quadruple bottom line (Purpose-driven, your why, what, and how, for the Planet, People, and Prosperity) challenges and responsibilities, yet also opportunities for thoughtful, specific Lean 4P culture, Lean start-up, and further, tangible change management.
New technologies can enable individuals to experience the future effects of present-day behavior choices. Although building prototypes is exciting, and even possibly launching a spin-off technology and/or entity can be a “buzz,” transforming an organization, your organization, is something else again.
Does churning out “initiatives” address the symptoms, but not the lasting root causes, of serious challenges like executive and organizational employee healthcare impacts? The human costs of “churn” are high, and approaches that under-value time, context, and trust are wasteful and unsustainable.
What is needed beyond “augmented self” technologies is, indeed, “augmented perspective.”
“Average” is over. Today an average business will generate below-average results. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote, “What was average performance in the past will not earn an average grade, an average wage, or a middle class standard of living.” Tom Friedman recommends that all of us need to raise our game.
In other words, just make it great.
Strive for excellence in everything your organization does and everything you stand for.
“Perhaps the history of the errors of people is more valuable than that of their discoveries, all things considered.”
– Ben Franklin, America’s first Co-Ownership “Rock Star”
“Whether you succeed or fail, endure or get eliminated, depends more on what you and your organization do than circumstances that arise, or what others do.
Never surrender. Be willing to change tactics, but never give up your core purpose. Be willing to kill failed business ideas, even to shutter big operations you’ve been in for a long time, but never give up on the idea of building a great company.
Be willing to evolve into an entirely different portfolio of activities, even to the point of zero overlap with what you do today, but never give up on the principles that define your culture. Be willing to embrace the inevitability of creative destruction, but never give up on the discipline to create your own future. Be willing to embrace loss, to endure pain, to temporarily lose freedoms, but never give up faith in the ability to prevail.
Be willing to form alliances with former adversaries, to accept necessary compromise, but never—ever—give up your core values.”
– Jim Collins, best-selling author, including How The Mighty Fall — And Why Some Companies Never Give In
As an executive, are you a divider or an exponential leader with
a multiplier mindset?
A crumb-rationer or tasty, healthy, prosperous pie baker?
Too many of today’s organizations are still using a 1900’s command mindset messed up with the tools of the 21st Century presented as decoupling-to-liberating technologies.
Instead, will you personally join The Movement of Wellness Co-Ownership RockStars?
Will you unlock your organization and your employees as Wellness Co-Ownership RockStars?
Emmett Pickett Wellness Ownership 