Polly LaBarre: When it comes to those four dimensions when you’re talking about ¬– physical sustainability, emotional security, self-expression, significance – is there any organization out there that’s the poster child? Has anyone fully grasped the multi-dimensional investment in the whole human being? And if not, who are a few of the folks who are at least moving forward on one or two of those vectors in a meaningful way?

Tony Schwartz: The first important thing to ask about an organization is, do they recognize that there is an integrated set of needs that human beings have and that you need, and that it’s critical to serve them and to address them? And if you ask me have I come across an organization that from the top down gets the idea that you have to invest in people across your organization in all of these dimensions, the answer is no. That’s a very, very advanced idea even from a Maslovian perspective. Right? That’s the top of the developmental ladder if you realize that all of these levels are critical.

Having said that, there are many organizations that address some of these to a greater or a lesser extent and what we see our work as being is a platform for any organization to create an environment in which those needs get addressed and then to build the deeper continuing work around any given aspect of it as it applies to the organization’s success, even something like strategy on that foundation.

So to your question about who has done it better than others? You know I have absolutely no doubt that Google is one of the most progressive about meeting those needs and in some ways that I find very exciting, we have done a lot of work there. And it’s interesting that even a Google would choose to do work with us because arguably of all the organizations we see, they’re the ones on a grading on a curve who need it the least. But they do a spectacular job of addressing people’s physical needs for example.

I think the idea of a large corporation completely subsidizing food for its employees is utterly ingenious. A great, great investment. It not only takes care of a core need, food, but it also takes care of an emotional need because food is something we use to make ourselves feel better. To eat food in a community, which everybody at Google does because the food is really good and why wouldn’t you go down to the places where it’s served, serves the business in a very powerful way.

So they have fitness, great fitness facilities. They provide massage. They’re really good about providing different kinds of spaces including napping pods where people can rest and renew if they choose to do that. So they’re great at that level.

I think along with a good number of other companies that had been very good about defining or articulating a vision that gets people excited and therefore at the spiritual level, addresses that need in people to have something they can believe in and care about and be energized by. The real place where organizations like Google, these very high-powered organizations that are nonetheless very progressive or are also progressive, the place where they inevitably run into trouble is around focus of attention. In other words, their ethic of more, bigger, faster is just as intense or more intense as any organization that’s more traditional. And I think one of the great values we've brought to Google and the 3,000 or more people who have gone through our work there is to really challenge that assumption that working continuously, juggling multiple balls at the same time is something you equate with high performance. But it’s a huge paradigm shift for driven, Type A people who have succeeded doing it that way to make.

So we’re still in the game of trying to find organizations either that already through their CEO instinctively get this or easily taken in; one of the reasons being that senior executives in businesses are among the less introspective people that you tend to meet. I'm not even saying it necessarily critically. It’s just the doing, the more, bigger, faster part of the equation is what got them there. So introspection, reflection, a bigger view is not something you see all that often in big companies.