Quantity or Quality of Life?

In recent years, we have seen how the large, strategic consulting firms have evolved their management approach, increasingly including issues that were previously considered soft in business management.

Despite this evolution within some consulting organizations and major companies worldwide, there are still companies that are unaware of the impact or power of the so-called "soft” issues.

The problem of what is called “soft” in organizations is due to myopia among the leadership that does not know or did not know how to manage this aspect and did not understand the contribution that this could generate.

From the Industrial Revolution starting in 1760 to the development of the consumer society, much of business management has been based on cause-effect processes. An example is the famous law of supply and demand. Although this is one of the bases of the economy, we are beginning to see that other economic characteristics were not normally taken into account until a couple of decades ago. One of these characteristics and particularly one that I am passionate about is the subject of behavior.

As such, human behavior was defined as something soft; however, I want to mention two examples of how what was called soft can be a competitive advantage if we know how to manage it.

The first example has to do with the world of human talent management and in this case, I refer to Jack Welch, one of the forerunners of knowing how to manage behavior based on pragmatic leadership principles. This successful businessman was able to break great paradigms by modeling the behavior of people in organizations.

The second example is more recent, when economists/psychologists, such as Daniel Kahneman, Nobel laureate in Economics, and Amos Tversky, authors of the book Thinking Fast, Thinking Slowly, recognized the power of understanding human behavior and translating it into the world in a simple way.

In both cases, we see how the issue of understanding human behavior becomes a competitive advantage. As a result of cases such as those mentioned above, we are beginning to see a series of innovations and business models based on behavior management. For example, social networks, the metaverse and NFTs are models that have something in common: they know perfectly well how to influence people and their habits.

This leads me to put on the table an issue that I believe represents a huge opportunity with an impact on humanity.

Recently, one of the main strategic consulting companies worldwide published a note in which it refers to the advancement of medicine and its impact on life expectancy. In that note, the writer mentioned that in the last 60 years and thanks to medical and technological advances, life expectancy has risen by 20 years.

However, in that same period, the proportion of healthy life of a person has not evolved equally. The note shows that an average person lives about 50 percent of his life in good health and the remaining 50 percent in gradual deterioration.

In other words, even though humanity may live longer, our habits and behaviors are not contributing to improving our quality of life.

An example of this is the exponential increase in cases of type 2 diabetes.

Starting in the 1960s, society changed its lifestyle. Today, we have become a society that consumes what is fast and disposable, prefers to move less and for which immediacy is a factor that influences decisions.

The consequence is more sugar, more carbohydrates, less physical activity, more stress, and, of course, more spending on caring for illness and less on investing in health.

Here is a question for you, the readers of this article: In your close circle of family and friends, do you know someone with a social disease, such as type 2 diabetes, or, rather, how many people in their circle suffer from this disease? If the answer is yes or more than one, ask yourself if you will be next or what you can do to avoid it.

As well as type 2 diabetes, several social diseases are based on the control or lack of control of habits that mark human behavior.

Thus, maintaining these social diseases represents a lucrative business for a society that has become accustomed to certain habits; however, it also represents social deterioration and unproductiveness for individuals, families, organizations and governments.

Where does the opportunity lie? There is a wide spectrum. The wellness market alone represents US$1.5 billion and the metabolic health market represents US$26 billion. New options for nutritious food, health coaching, wearables, sports and, of course, healthtechs (technological companies focused on health) are just some ways in which this situation is being addressed. The technological disruption in health issues is moving toward prevention; just as there is more and more awareness of the environment, there will be more and more awareness of health.

When things are seen in perspective, who would agree that soft and behavioral issues today represent tremendous opportunities for innovative and impactful business models?

I firmly believe that we can generate this positive impact by making the economy even more dynamic and with healthier people. Do you prefer to live longer or better? Me? Both!