What’s EVOLution Got to Do With It?

A few years back, I was fortunate to share a cab during a downpour of Biblical proportions with MAPP lecturer and well-being expert, Dr. Isaac Prilleltensky, in which we talked about Positive Psychology’s impact on business. One of us was going to the airport and one of us to the train station – I can’t remember who was doing which. What I do remember is our brief conversation, the question I asked him, and the answer he gave me. It’s a question I’d been seeking a definitive answer to across my own decades-long careers both inside the corporate system as a manager and outside as a corporate coach. Here it is: “Is there any real evidence that if a company invests in the well-being of their people, it will impact that company’s financial performance?” “Ha!” Dr. Prilleltensky said. “We all want the answer to that! That’s the Holy Grail. Let me know when you find it!”

Well, I’m happy to report that we may well have found it in MAPP 2015 alumnus Andrew Brady’s absorbing new book, For the EVOLution of Business.

Peter Drucker has said, “The greatest danger in times of turbulence is not the turbulence. It is to act with yesterday’s logic.” In For the EVOLution of Business, Andrew Brady rescues us from applying “yesterday’s logic” to today’s turbulent demands for social, political, and economic transformation. His central metaphor: Evolution. Literally. By drawing upon Evolution – the Darwinian kind – Brady deftly explores the principles that will result in measurable success for businesses and in greater well-being for the people who work in those businesses, who do business with those business, and who are impacted by those businesses. In other words, for all of us.

Brady, President and CEO (that’s Chief Evolutionary Officer) of Rochester-based The XLR8 Team, Inc. — a company dedicated to aligning culture, people, and purpose — organizes his book according to a series of evolutionary “lenses” through which we may reframe how we see the on-going concerns of any organization: things like culture and purpose, growth, group dynamics, innovation, and scale. Most importantly, these evolutionary lenses can ultimately help us view our collective future in a new light.

Brady puts his research where his metaphor is, and you don’t go far in the book before understanding that when he says “Evolution,” he means it. In writing that is accessible and with logic that is unassailable, we are led to connect biologist William Muir’s experiments to create “superflocks” of chickens to the value of group cooperation as a driver of productivity. We are shown how the evolving size and beauty of a peacock’s tail — a signal to attract peahens on the basis of robust health and vitality — actually came to divert energy and health away from the peacock’s vitality. Through this evolutionary tale (pun intended), we are led to see that as today’s corporations fixate on maximizing share price at all costs, they divert resources away from the health of the rest of the system: their values, purpose, and culture.

Chickens, peacocks, bees, monkeys and even cancer, provide fascinating evolutionary cautionary tales, all in service to Brady’s theory that “... what is true in nature is also true of human nature.” Brady’s mission with this book is no less than to impact the paradigm shifts the world is currently experiencing. Brady says, “We need to change systems at the root…Once we see individuals, organizations and society through the lens of evolutionary theory, that new lens will fundamentally change what we see and will begin to reveal the path forward…”

Since this is a book about evolution, it begs the question of how this book itself evolved. That takes us back to the beginning—of both the book, and, it seems, of Brady. His book is dedicated to his mom and dad, crediting his mother with “tireless, unconditional love,” and his father with his unwavering belief that “love belongs in business.”

Brady describes himself as having internalized the best of both his parents at an early age. “My dad started XLR8 when I was just seven years old. At the time, my mom worked for Xerox in Human Resources. If you ever saw that George Clooney movie, Up in the Air, that was her job -- basically flying around the country laying people off. Over time, she just couldn’t accept that level of burnout.”

By that point, Brady’s dad’s business was taking off and his mother joined him at XLR8. Andrew says he absorbed lessons in leadership, sociology and organizational theory at the dinner table. “My mom is thoughtful and selfless, loves us all to be together.” He describes her as “a rock.” “From her, I got the courage to go out and explore. My dad has always been restless, always trying new things, learning new things. He’s entrepreneurial. He’s always operated at the intersection of psychology and sociology with business. From him, I get my curiosity, my love of education and ideas.”

It was Andrew’s father who encouraged him to take his base of knowledge into the world to evolve theories of his own beyond the dinner table, to put his stamp on something. To this end, Brady received an undergraduate degree in Economics from Cornell. When he learned about Penn’s Masters in Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program, it struck him that there was enormous potential in layering positive psychology on top of his foundation in economics. His MAPP capstone, The Evolution of Business: Cultivating Flourishing for Organizations and Their Stakeholders, laid the groundwork from which this book has evolved. His capstone advisor was none other than Raj Sisodia, co-author of the seminal Firms of Endearment and co-founder and co-chairman of the Conscious Capitalism movement.

When Brady wrote his capstone, he was asking the question, “Where can business go?” He says, “People finish reading Conscious Capitalism and say, ‘Okay, I’m in. How do I start?’ For Brady, Evolution provided the missing piece.

Brady describes his love of learning as both a gift and a curse. He reads books, watches TED talks, and listens to podcasts – all indirectly related to business; it’s a trait he picked up from his father at an early age. The gift? “There’s a lot of great stuff out there.” The curse? He says it always takes more time than he expects to explain the ideas he zeroing in on. “There are so many puzzle pieces I’m trying to snap together. When I’m exploring my interests, especially in writing the book, I’m like a computer display with lots of tabs open.”

Along the way, Brady came across Harvard biologist and emeritus professor Edward O. Wilson’s The Social Conquest of Earth. A lightbulb went off. Says Brady, “That book helped me see everything that Positive Psychology could become when applied to business. I immediately saw how diving into Evolution and its principles tells why conscious capitalism works.” Evolution provided Brady with an organizing principle for how businesses could dive more deeply and make Conscious Capitalism work for them, and, by extension, for all of us.

By leveraging Evolution, Brady calls for nothing short of a revolution in how organizations view their choices, choices that he believes are pivotal drivers of cultural, political, and economic change. In Brady’s hands, businesses can dispense with “yesterday’s logic” to meet the demands of these turbulent times, all the while collectively evolving toward a capitalism that is more conscious and more sustainable, with inclusive prosperity for all. “For the love of business,” he says, “it’s time for the EVOLution of business.”

Dr. Prilleltensky, take note.

References

Brady, A. T., (n.d.) For the EVOLution of Business. Unpublished.

Brady, A. T., (2020, May 6). Why inequality hurts us all, even those at the top. TEDx Allendale Columbia School. Retrieved from https://www.ted.com/talks/andrew_brady_why_inequality_hurts_us_all_even_those_at_the_top

Brady, A. T., (2018, March 13). Capitalism needs a reboot. TEDx Allendale Columbia School. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZAqpvdkMw&feature=youtu.be

Brady, A. T., (2015). "The evolution of business: Cultivating flourishing for organizations and their stakeholders.” Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Capstone Projects. Retrieved from http://repository.upenn.edu/mapp_capstone/81

Mackey, J., & Sisodia, R. (2014). Conscious capitalism: Liberating the heroic spirit of business. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.

Sisodia, R., Sheth, J. N., & Wolfe, D. B. (2014). Firms of endearment: How world-class companies profit from passion and purpose. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Wilson, E. O. (2013). The social conquest of earth. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of W.W. Norton & Company.