Unhappiness to Agency: How Leaders Can Build Cultures and Societies of Thriving

“The survey I remember is one I didn’t finish. It was with a man, middle-aged, who was sounding somewhat down… I asked him, “Were you happy all day yesterday?” He suddenly began to cry. Not weeping of sniffling but flat-out sobbing. Then he hung up. I decided not to call back because I could sense his humiliation.” ?Gallup Interviewer ?

I am a data fanatic and pretty much drop anything I am doing when Gallup writes or analyzes many important worlds around us. Unlike so much that is being politized and spun these days, they let the data and facts take them where they do. As a business leader and civilian, I have pulled on more and better strings and changed my own biased views with them by my side.

Some years ago, I attended a talk where one of their team laid out a tour de force overview of the trends in the world. My ears perked up early on when they focused on the Arab uprisings – an issue then and now very near to my heart and interests. They shared this slide, which was commonly understood:

It, of course, raises an obvious question that economists and even historians like Crane Brinton – a legend in understanding revolutions decades ago – tried to unsuccessfully explain. How is it possible when economic indicators are rising, often that is the moment when revolutions begin? The speaker than showed this chart, and there is the foundation of an answer:

?Beneath the important statistics of GDP growth, GDP per capita, and unemployment lurks something even more important. Are people happy? Do they believe they are thriving despite the statistics? Do they, as Ronald Reagan famously said, feel they are doing better now than they were four years ago? More importantly do they expect to be doing better in the future?

In a way, anyone focused on this chart would not have been surprised by the Arab Uprisings. The numbers were almost identical in Tunisia. By the way in 2006 and 2007 both in Tunisia and Egypt the answer to “how is your life going” was in line with the global average. By 2010 it had dropped off the table. And yet most of us were surprised.

The spelling-binding speaker those years ago was Jon Clifton, now CEO of Gallup, and he has unpacked their learning and expertise – over five million interviews across 170 countries worth – into as important a book as you can read this year: Blind Spot: The Global Rise of Unhappiness and How Leaders Missed It.

The core of his thesis is that any policy maker, any CEO, cannot get to the root of what is going on around us unless we give equal weight to the sentiments of real people we deal with. It is not just about predicting better where trends are taking us – seeing the Arab Uprisings coming when traditional data suggests otherwise. It is about building the culture and environment to allow people to thrive.

As one would expect from Gallup, the book is jammed packed with data. Some of it isn’t surprising – countries like Afghanistan, Lebanon, Iraq do not have citizens high on the thriving scale. Some of it is wonderfully surprising – places like Central America and the Philippines have very high happiness rankings. Clifton underscores an important distinction – how people see their lives (how much money they have for instance) versus how they live them (how much people laugh, smile, express less anger) says a great deal about a country or any organization.

And as the positive feelings show encouraging trends, negative sentiment can be cancerous. He quotes behavioral scientist George Ward: “How people feel affects how they act. If there is a relationship between negative emotions and civil unrest or populist attitudes, it should capture the attention of leaders everywhere.”

Why does this matter? Because it pushes us to seek unobvious and often uncomfortable conclusions. For example, we rightly focus on getting people jobs but how often are we asking are the jobs allowing people to thrive? There are 7.7 billion people on the planet, 5.4 billion of whom are adults.?3.3 billion want a great job, but less than 1.5 billion say they have a good job. But only 300 million say they have a great job – 3 BILLION people don’t have what they aspire to. Maybe, then, the task of society isn’t just to fill jobs, but to also get the highest percentage possible of great jobs.

As we debate the future of AI – which is often and unfairly focused on job destruction – isn’t it incumbent upon us to focus on what kind of jobs humans can not only do, but thrive in?

Clifton underscores that there are five elements of a great life and at one level they are unsurprising also: work, finances, physical health, communities and relationships with family and friends. A surprise, however, is that while a certain amount of money is essential as a foundation, most people aren’t equating the five elements with wealth. They want the ability to have great work, safe communities with basic infrastructure without fear. And there is a pride in place. I was stunned that in many countries – China and India are core examples – a near majority would not recommend their communities to a friend, but a massive majority cannot imagine living anywhere else over time!

Clifton notes that at a policy level there is a clear play book: Sustainable Development Goals should include happiness and well-being analyzing trends in life evaluation, negative experiences and positive experiences; they should report regularly and with large surveys as much or more as they do unemployment and GDP statistics; they have to be willing to hear what they hear, and not what they are trying to spin for their political ends; they should focus not only on unemployment but the quality of employment and “great” jobs as people define them (understanding different countries/communities may have their own definitions); and they should move beyond economic growth alone to reflect broader dimensions of life that cause extreme anger, sadness, worry, stress and physical pain.

CEO’s can do the same not only within their organization but across their constituencies. We all survey our teams, customers, suppliers, broader communities on our products and “satisfaction” with our service. But how often do we unpack, beyond these important rational indicators, their delight in what is being offered holistically – the ease of engagement, the sense of respect, the sense of reliability. My former head of sales used to say, “People buy who they like buying from.” That truism can be measured and tests our culture and execution across everyone we touch.

I would have liked to see more unpacked here a sense of reciprocity. The research and book felt a little top down – what we as leaders can and should do. Fair enough. At the same time, I suspect there is a new compact where we all bottom up – in society and in our companies and organizations – can make decisions about ourselves and our environments that will make not only us happier but those around us. How we choose to react on social media, or judge another’s opinion, or act in our offices, or react to circumstances and people around us is what I think underlies one of the greatest goals this book hopes to achieve: agency.

And, as we have seen too often at least in America, the goal of “happiness” becomes entitlement or a hammer to hit colleagues and employers or an excuse to avoid the hard work required to build great nations, companies and institutions.

There is, however, a place to start: acknowledging our blind spot.