I was asked recently why after 20 years in business strategy, I never worked in restructuring with any of the big global consultancy firms. My answer? Well, I’d sooner cut off my own arm.

In 2003, Aron Ralston was climbing in Blue John Canyon in Utah when his arm got caught between the rockface and a dislodged boulder. After 127 hours of being trapped, screaming, out of food and water, in tremendous pain, bleeding, passing in and out of consciousness, and hallucinating, Aron made the painful decision to cut his arm off to save the rest of his body. He used a dull multi-tool, a crude and inefficient device, to painfully sever his right arm, and free himself to find help.

People in an organization are like parts of a body. Information and money are like oxygen and blood that keeps the various systems working together in harmony. The finance, manufacturing, human resources, and sales departments all work together to keep the organization working well. Until one day, when something in the market happens that the management did not anticipate, like a dislodged boulder, and the body feels trapped.

All too often though, leaders run to a brand name consultancy for help, where well-meaning consultants inevitably pull out the dull and rusty mid-1980’s multi-tool of job cuts, and begin hacking away at the organization in an attempt to save its life. Here’s the thing though: this is not Blue John Canyon, and companies are very rarely truly stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s more often than not a simple lack of imagination, combined with the short-term cash flow gains manufactured by a forced amputation of talent, that leads some consultancies to recommend redundancies to achieve budget savings targets.

They then write their hefty invoices, while patting themselves on the back for how much money they saved by cutting jobs, and it’s a bit like congratulating Aron Ralston on his rapid weight loss. A monumental adventure in missing the point. It’s crude and painful, and in high contrast to Aron’s bravery, it’s not courageous at all to cut people out of your community, just because they missed a few sales targets. Never mind the effect it has on the people that were cut off, what about the years of rehabilitation required for the parts of the body that remain behind? Do you think those left in the organization will trust their leadership after that? How long will it be before the remaining staff spend any less than 30% of their workday looking for a new job? How long until trust and transparency are recovered, until input seeking behaviors and quality decision-making are back up to peak operating levels? Years.

Discover Dr. Corrie Block’s meaningful insights such as debunking work-life balance,
unlocking the future of work, and creating a work environment where employees are happy and fully engaged.

This podcast was originally featured on Dubai Eye 103.

Dr. Corrie Block & George from Virtuzone discuss ‘Work-Life Balance’ and how it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

On Pulse 95 with Omnia Al Saleh and Hanny Balkis to discuss the future of work.

This podcast was originally featured on Dubai Eye Radio

On Dubai Eye 103.8 FM with Brandy Scott and Malcolm Taylor to discuss employee engagement and happiness.

Organizations should not look for ways to produce comfort, they should look for ways to produce MEANING.

The UAE is currently ranked number 21 in the world happiness report and Dubai has set its sights on becoming the happiest place on earth.

Happiness is now a national policy goal and as well as appointing a UAE Minister of State for Happiness and Wellbeing, Ohoud Al Roumi, A Happiness Agenda has been rolled out and is overseen by the Government’s Smart Dubai department.

“Today in order to become a happy city in Dubai we need to have a collaboration between all sectors,” explains Hamad al-Awadhi, Happiness Agenda leader at Smart Dubai.

“We have more than 47 happiness champions and they come from more than 40 government sectors or entities.”

“And their role is to implement the happiness agenda. We train them a lot directly or indirectly to change their mindsets and terminologies about happiness as I mentioned.”

Recently named one of the world’s best places to work the UAE ranked fourth in economics in HSBC’s Expat Explorer survey.

The top reasons for moving here included an increase in earnings, career progression and a better quality of life.

“Dubai really promotes a can-do attitude and amongst the Emirati’s and other people who choose to live here.” says one resident.

“I would say the environment over here makes you feel happier.” says another, “Where I’m from it rains a lot and is very grey and miserable. Here non-stop sun makes you feel good every day.”

Another says “I feel safe that’s one thing. It looks clean everywhere that’s also something different.”

The economic benefits of happiness
Advancements in social and data analysis have made happiness quantifiable and this has enabled governments to consider its economic value.

Business strategist and happiness expert, Corrie Block, says happier people perform about 50 percent better.

“They’re 50% more productive when they’re happy and they find meaning in the work that they are doing.”

“They’re also 88 percent more loyal and that’s because they find meaning in the 50 percent of their life that they’re spending in that business.”

Measuring Happiness
“All the planet experience happiness in exactly the same way,” explains Bloc. “Dopamine, Serotonin, and Oxytocin. It’s the combination of those three neurochemicals. Dopamine is the achievement, it’s the most addictive thing on the planet and every one of us produces it in our heads all the time.”

“Number two is Serotonin. That’s the honour chemical. That’s what you get when you know you’re playing a significant role in the society you are in. And the third one is Oxytocin. And Oxytocin is the belonging chemical.”

Thanks to AI technology from AI Directions there is also a way to measure it.

Using any camera, such as a laptop camera, the software first recognises the face and then the muscles on the face. It then analyses 64 frames a second and translates the movements in the face into one of seven emotions to see if you are happy.

The Happiness Meter is one of Dubai’s first strategic ‘smart city’ initiatives. It’s a world-first capture engine, used to measure wellbeing.

Currently rolled out in more than 40 Government departments it’s collected more than two million votes since it launched.

A target of 95 percent by 2021 has been set in the hope that Happiness will continue to have a positive impact on the city’s businesses and the economy.

Implications of disconnected executives continuing to inflate the intellectual capital bubble cannot be ignored, says GCC business strategist Dr. Corrie Block

The region is developing an economic bubble with significant financial implications and when it implodes, companies will be forced to face hard truths about the cost of fostering poor leadership.

The technological and process improvements of a company have become one of the leading indicators of differentiation from its competitors. From a long-term perspective, these improvements and innovations are what contribute to a company’s bottom line; essentially, its intellectual capital.

As cities become increasingly tech-savvy, intellectual capital begins to be classified as a capital gain for its companies. So, in a ‘Smart City’ that is driven to improve happiness and prosperity for its citizens and residents, keeping leaders who are disconnected from their business’s human and intellectual capital is unsustainable.

Before it is too late, hold a mirror up at your business’s leadership and determine whether the person staring back fits one of the following categories. If at least six of these ring true, then it is time to reflect some truth back to the top.

1. Your company’s leader is one of the most powerful executives in the country, governing the livelihoods of thousands of families and has been in the same organization since before its millennial staff were born.

2. Your leader views employees like ‘human capital’, but does not treat them as ‘human’ at all; they decline meetings with senior managers or cancels them based on their mood.

3. Your leader is just above middle aged, good at networking with people in their age bracket, yet yells at staff like a tantruming toddler.

4. Your leader is definitely a macro-leader, but not well read enough to know what ‘macro-leading’ means. In fact, they do not read much more than the news, ever.

5. Your leader outsources their social media accounts in order to look more ‘in touch’ publicly, but in reality is entirely disconnected from their end customers.

6. Your leader has not taken a training course in more than a decade, and refers to best practices from 2005 as ‘innovations’.

7. Your leader uses other peoples’ ideas as their own due to a lack of creativity.

8. Everyone recognizes your leader’s power and cowers when with them. People agree with your leader in public, but call them an idiot when out of earshot. No one considers your leader to be forward thinking or highly competent.

9. The closed door to your leader’s office is guarded by a beautiful young gatekeeper.

10. Your leader would not recognized themselves on this list, struggling to see even one common denominator.

Intellectual capital bubble
This list describes more than a few executives in the region. But what are the implications of them continuing to inflate the ‘intellectual capital bubble’? As executives with power continue to fight against the real leaders of the future – those with knowledge, capacity and competencies – the intellectual capital bubble will burst. We are already seeing this happening in Dubai, which is struggling to retain talent because too much money is being spent on the salaries of high-level management who lack the capacity to self-assess and self-improve.

Instead, we should be investing in talented individuals with the ability to drive profits by creating new products and processes. If those in power do not learn to empower others, then people with real competence will leave to places such as Silicon Valley, Tallinn, Beijing, Seoul, and Singapore.

The truth is that if you are not being empowered from the top down, then you have to empower yourself from the ground level up. Sitting idle is the real cost of bad leadership and results in catastrophic mediocrity within organizations.

The question is what can innovators do to get decision makers to take note and change? If you know a leader who needs to wake up before the bubble bursts, buy them books as a hint to start reading again. Invite them to the shop floor or challenge them to a Spartan Race to connect them with the labour class. Suggest articles to read or YouTube thought leaders to follow, and send links to their secretary. Be annoyingly helpful and, importantly, be persistent.

It is probably not a good idea to send your leader this article, but spend some of the time you ere wasting through being disempowered in your job on forwarding the resources that you think your out-of-touch leader needs to see. Think of it as intellectual empowerment. And, who knows? After 45 copies of Why Leaders Eat Last and a thousand subtle (and not so subtle) references pour into their offices, perhaps you’ll start to see the change – that you instigated – to their intellectual capital.

If you suffer under this type of leadership then you’re probably wondering how you get an executive that ticks any of those 10 indicators to hear your plea. That’s how we got here in the first place; leadership that’s disconnected and out-dated, but too arrogant to self-reflect.

This podcast was published in Digital Disruptors

Dr. Corrie Block has an impressive resume. He’s been a consultant and coach to business owners for nearly 20 years. MBA. PhD in Arab and Islamic Studies. Business School Professor. Published in media and academic journals. International speaker.

But to me, here’s the most impressive thing about him:

He’s joined the best of both Western and Middle Eastern business culture, to help his customers in a truly unique way. I honestly can’t think of any other local consultant with his skillset, academic credentials, and vast experience.

Dr. Corrie and I had a wide-ranging conversation at the Ubrik Media office recently. I had a bit of trouble coming up with a title for this episode. We covered so much ground.

The best, and most important, insight I got was the importance of thinking of business in terms of human relationships. Employer and employee. Client and vendor. Board members. Tribes. When you start to think and behave this way, according to Corrie, you activate the brain chemicals of happiness, trust, and fulfillment. It turns out to be very profitable for you in the long-run.

Enjoy the episode!

This article was published in Forbes by Dr. Corrie Block

There has been a lot of discussion about engaging millennials in the workplace, and CEOs and managers are often challenged with how they should best lead or retain them. Millennials spend, on average, two years with a company before bouncing to a new job.

Humans feel a need in their lives to make a unique and significant contribution to the world, and in order to live a “meaningful” life, millennials feel the need to accomplish something “significant.”

In our ultra-connected world driven by smartphones, where food, dates and transport can be arranged from the comfort of our couches, millennials have been led to believe that they can have everything that they want, now.

But achieving something significant requires the three things millennials have been programmed to avoid: dedication, patience and effort.

Millennials expect to be able have everything and anything they want, easily and without any resistance. The same is true for their jobs. They have been led to believe that they can achieve significance easily. They have not been taught the dedication, patience and effort that is required.

Here are 3 ways tips for millennials to achieve the significance they desire.

Choose fewer things
If you choose fewer things, then the things that you choose will become more important. Instead of making the number of “likes” you receive on your Instagram picture a goal, make it a goal to get “likes” from people whose birthdays you know. Instead of counting every country in the world that you’ve visited, try counting the number of countries where you have worked. Don’t count the number of books you’ve read, count the number that you’ve read more than once.

Make a commitment
When you choose something, somewhere or a career, make a commitment to pour your curiosity into it for up to ten years. Ask the deepest questions about it and research it. Pursue it until you’re tired of it, and then go back and do it again. Only then will you discover the depth of your relationship with a person, a role, a place, or even an idea, that deserves to be called significant.

Get your hands dirty
Play sport until your muscles hurt and learn until your brain becomes sore. Become passionate about crediting yourself for your effort level. Make each day’s maximum effort the next day’s minimum expectation. Imagine what you could do if you truly gave all of your energy to a few things but for a long time. You could be the best, the fastest, the Alpha.

Millennials, you will cure your schizophrenia of significance by doing something deep and meaningful with your life, but you need to give it time. Give it time, education, patience and effort.

Dr. Corrie Block is a business strategist, Director of Xische & Co, Professor of Strategic Management at Monarch Business School, and certified NLP Executive Coach.

This article was published in Khaleej Times by Briar Prestidge.

Dubai has long been a popular destination for holiday makers and professionals and with a booming entrepreneurial ecosystem, it’s not surprising that talent moves here from abroad. And with plans to become ‘the Silicon Valley of the Arab World’, there has been increased focus on entrepreneurship from the public, private and academic sectors.

The UAE government is continuously working on creating the best possible conditions for startups, alongside Dubai StartUp Hub and Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry. At the same time, the Dubai FDI has also been working tirelessly to encourage foreign businesses to set up in the UAE.

George Hojeige, CEO of company set-up Virtuzone, said they have seen “an increasing demand for company formation services among entrepreneurs in the UAE and abroad as well as from international companies looking to open up offices in the Emirates, across both free zone and mainland companies, with a particular appetite for consultancy and e-commerce licences.”

According to Philip Bahoshy, CEO of Magnitt, a data platform that connects investors with founders, 2018 was a positive year for the startup ecosystem. There was a “record number of investment deals across the whole of the region and a 20 per cent increase in funding, thanks to an investment made in Souq.com. The UAE is still the largest ecosystem and accounts for 30 per cent of all deals.”

Bahoshy expects to see this trend to continue through 2019 as more startups set up their headquarters in the UAE to act as a spring board to reach other markets.

In the private sector, the number of incubators, accelerators, startup competitions and co-working environments has gone up tremendously, encouraging collaboration between startup companies to share resources and space, enabling them to learn from each other’s successes and failures. However, it seems that despite all these positive changes, there is still much that can be done to improve the ease of setting up a business and to ensure a UAE startup’s success.

Improved processes
Dr. Corrie Block, a business strategist, executive coach and CEO of Paragon Consulting, said the number of steps it takes to start a business has been reduced by the Department of Economic Development and they’re also looking to make further improvements to the ease of this process. Dr. Block believes that government services, including registration, Dewa, civil defence and other licences required for certain industries, have become more streamlined, which has made it easier for new businesses to set up than before in the past.

More early stage funding
There are many family offices that are looking for later stage deals, but few who are interested in seed and Series A funding. Tarek Karbit, founder and CEO of startup Seez who recently closed a $3 million round of funding, said while there are accelerators and government initiatives that address this, there still remains a gap in the market.

Bahoshy commented that Magnitt had seen more maturity in the investment market, with more startups raising later rounds of funding than what was seen in previous years in the UAE. Fintech became the dominant industry with 21 investments made and it passed e-commerce to become the most active industry.

Dr. Block said it’s difficult for entrepreneurs to get funding from banks, and in the rare case that a bank does extend financing, it comes with 8 to 12 per cent interest. This is high for startups, who are often working with low margins in the first year of business.

Breached contracts
Despite contracts becoming more enforced, there are still real legal vulnerabilities that affect startups in the UAE. Dr. Block said there are still challenges to get a good judgement if a contract is breached and even harder to reclaim the money that is owed to you. For companies in their infancy, one crashed contract can result in a 2.5 to three-year delay to get justice.

Top talent
For Kabrit, finding talent for high tech roles is a challenge. Because of this, he believes that talent shouldn’t be limited by region and has hired some of his AI team from Denmark. With a ‘Silicon Valley’ style tech culture, Seez meetings are often conducted via video call. Having a balance between hiring regionally and internationally can assist in your search to scale and find top talent.

The writer is the founder and CEO of marketing and reputation building agency Briar Prestidge International. Views expressed are her own and do not reflect the newspaper’s policy.