Why Business Mindset is Killing Your Business

Photo by Robert Lange

Everything we create in business—be it a marketing campaign, new product launch, annual plan, or even a complete overhaul of the company—is first conceived in a meeting.

Meetings seem like a great place to originate important initiatives. In theory, we are getting key players together in a room, talking about what needs to be discussed, and getting down to brass tacks. In reality, the foundation on which we are building—the meeting—is rotted with disease.

Before we diagnose this disease and shed light on its cure, let me start by sharing why I believe that all meetings should start by cannonballing into a swimming pool.

Every year, my friends host a party called “Never Grow Up.” It’s always smack in the middle of a Tuesday and has become such a big deal that it has its own merch. There is live music and a DJ, a bar adorned with coconuts and unicorn straws, tons of games and food including throwbacks like Ho-Hos and Twinkies, and a giant pool full of oversized animal floats. Everyone has to cannonball into the pool at least once. This event also happens to be attended by some of the most successful business owners, executives and entrepreneurs in the city.

Why on earth would a serious business person play hookie on a Tuesday to go jump in a pool?

Because they understand the power of play.

“Never Grow Up” is a declaration of the importance of play. And if we want our businesses—and our people—to thrive, we need to take play seriously.

There is a ton of scientific research that shows the power of play. The experience of play changes the connections of the neurons in the prefrontal cortex of our brain, which quite literally enables us to see things differently. It is through these perception shifts and ability to make remote connections that gives us the capacity to be creative and forge change.  

Guess what’s on the opposite end of the play spectrum? A work meeting.  

Therein lies the disease that plagues our meetings. I call it ASD: Adverse Serious Disorder. Our serious business mindset that we bring into a meeting sabotages the meeting’s potential before it’s even begun. When we bring ASD into a meeting, we operate from a proving mindset instead of a learning mindset. We aim for accomplishment instead of growth. We are heads down instead of heads up. We are all work and no play.

Obviously our cure isn’t to literally do cannonballs into a pool in suits. Swinging the play pendulum all the way to the other side doesn’t work because it is so disjointed from business that people don’t understand why they’re playing. They have fun in the moment, and then they  just return to ASD. This is why people are completely fresh when they are on vacation, and then quickly slip into the glow-less grind back at the office.

There is a constant balance. A golden ratio of work and play that creates an optimal mindset for growth. If meetings are the foundation of so much we do, we must be adamantly determined to find the balance and cure our meetings of ASD.     

Otherwise, we’re just building a big, fancy house with rotten wood.