Deepak Chopra was an interesting pick as Keynote speaker to open the Inbound 2018 conference. Deepak brings to mind meditation and alternative medicine more than cutting edge marketing techniques. But he had a few insights that we can apply to business within his message of consciousness and healing.
The Greatest Businesses are the Greatest Stories
I think the most profound thing he said was that “The greatest businesses are the greatest stories.” Why do I find that profound? Because, I’m at a marketing conference, and what I expect to hear is that the best businesses are the “greatest storytellers.”
We hear it all the time. Being good at telling stories is the key to successful marketing. And there is certainly truth in that, but this is about the business itself being the great story. Don’t focus on telling stories, focus on being a good story. This is the holistic approach to successful businesses.
Engagement is contagious.
One way you become a great story is to have fully-engaged employees who are passionate about their work. He reminded us that there is only one animal on earth where many of them are dreading Monday morning. He talked about how engagement is holistic and gave some research to demonstrate.
If you have just one friend at work who is engaged and happy, your engagement and happiness goes up 15%. This research gets a little stranger. If you have a friend, who knows someone else who is happy, even if your friend is not necessarily always happy, your happiness and engagement still go up, by as much as 10%. Engagement is contagious. Develop engagement at your company, and ensure those who are engaged are interacting with the rest of the company.
When your employees are engaged, your company becomes the great story.
Address the chronic issues.
Deepak also talked about his new book The Healing Self. He pounded on how modern medicine is focused on the acute problem, the urgent problem, and ignoring the chronic problems we all have. Being at a business conference, I couldn’t help but think how many businesses are focused on the acute and the urgent - the urgent sale, the urgent deadline, and ignoring the chronic issues.
Putting out fires is important, but just like we need to spend some time taking care of our bodies for chronic issues or it will eventually kill us, we also need to also spend some time taking care of our companies or our careers. We need to address the chronic issues. And when we do, there will be less fires to put out and our people will be more engaged and happy with their work. When we do that, our company will be the greatest story.
