Do not let anybody tell you that, to be a successful manager, you need to be as good an athlete as LeBron James, as forceful a leader as Larry Ellison, as entertaining as Robbie Williams, preferably as intelligent as Albert Einstein, and as good-looking as George Clooney. So totally forget all the conventional wisdom about how managers should be and all the claims about what they are actually like in real life. Management is about results, and the individuals who deliver them are as different as people happen to be in any other domain. Consequently, you can find every conceivable type of manager. Yet there is one common denominator that is crucial to the long-term performance and achievements of any manager, or for that matter of any human being, and that is good health.
Not everyone has good health, and some of the individuals mentioned in this book achieved great things despite health problems. But all of us make choices that can positively or adversely affect our health and thus determine our performance and the potential scope of our achievement.
This chapter is not about management in the narrow sense. Rather it is about a personal decision that may not make you a better manager per se but that will affect your ability to perform over the long term, namely the decision to try and be and remain healthy. Moreover, it is a decision that you do not necessarily make only for yourself, but to a certain extent, for others as well, both at work and at home.
Star chef Jamie Oliver (born in 1975) has set himself the task of arousing people’s interest in healthy eating. After concluding a deal with ABC, in early 2010 he presented a prime time reality show on TV in which the inhabitants of a small town in the United States were introduced to the art of healthy eating. The program, titled Jamie’s Food Revolution, won an Emmy Award, though the second series proved less successful. But Jamie Oliver is nothing if not tenacious, and in a bid to fulfill his dream of a healthier population on a broader scale, his next book, 30-Minute Meals, again drew attention to the subject and became an international bestseller and the fastest-selling nonfiction title of all time in the United Kingdom.
The cult status Jamie Oliver has earned down the years fuels expectations that his plan really will ultimately succeed in making a difference in the United States. After all, he learned a tremendous amount from his experience in the United Kingdom, where he strove to improve the quality of the food dished up at British schools, and he is perfectly aware of just how difficult, exacting, and in some respects impossible it can be to reform people’s eating habits.
And the problems he experienced in the United Kingdom arose despite backing from Prime Minister Tony Blair for the Feed Me Better campaign launched in 2004, through which Jamie Oliver planned to change the food served at model schools. Indeed, the government said it was willing to spend an additional £280 million on healthier school meals.
Jamie Oliver has become as famous as a pop star in more than 50 different countries thanks to the 14 million books he has sold, the fact that over 20,000 guests have appeared on his cooking show (making it the most successful of its genre), and his own innumerable TV appearances. He has also received countless awards and honors for his out-of-the-ordinary cooking skills and for his commitment to boosting health awareness. On top of that, he has won the GQ “Man of the Year Award,” in 2003 was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire, and in 2010 became the recipient of a prestigious TED award for exceptional individuals active in the areas of technology, entertainment, or design. But success has not gone to Jamie Oliver’s head, and he has never lost sight of the need for healthy—as well as hearty—eating.
Organizations in Western societies and Japan are characterized by aging workforces. This development will force these societies to abandon the idea of a fixed retirement age. Knowledge workers in particular will be physically able to work up to an advanced age, way beyond the traditional age of retirement. Increasingly, it will become the norm to speak about a working life lasting 50 years. Creating circumstances that support the health and well-being of people in an organization will certainly contribute to productivity and effectiveness, but will also show that the organization in question takes responsibility for what it can contribute to individuals’ health.
Against this backdrop it is worthwhile—for every individual, every organization, and for society as a whole—to think critically about how the issue of health needs to be tackled.
Make your own personal decision to try and age healthily and then take active steps to implement that decision.
What exactly do you plan to do and by when?