John Marshall (00:32)
Welcome to another episode of the present professional. Today, we have a special guest with us, Scott Crabtree, Chief Happiness Officer at Happy Brain Science. Scott is an expert in applying brain science, behavioral science, and game design to help teams thrive at work. After a career leading video game and software development, including a senior leadership role at Intel, he founded Happy Brain Science.

to help organizations build happier, more engaged teams. And with that, I’m super happy to have you here, Scott. I’m very thrilled for the audience to be able to hear all of the insights that you’ve had from your work in the past, from your journey to where you’re at today and how you are supporting leaders and their organizations today. So with that,

I want to hand it over to you to see if there’s anything that I missed in your introduction that you would want the audience to know.

Scott Crabtree (01:29)
That was fantastic, John. I wish every morning started with somebody like you introducing me like that. I think I’d be in an even better mood every day. So you got the gist. Thank you.

John Marshall (01:39)
wonderful. Wonderful. So just to kick us off here and really let the audience get to know you, I’d love to hear a little bit more about what’s gotten you to this point in your journey, some highlights and turning points throughout your life and career that ultimately make up where you’re at today with happy brain science.

Scott Crabtree (02:02)
Awesome.

So I almost literally bumped into the science of happiness. I was a leader at Intel, as you mentioned, and my wife, Sarah, was walking into a bookstore in Portland, Oregon, where I lived at the time, and said, you want to come in? And I was like, yeah, I don’t have anything to get, but sure, I’ll come in. And there was a book turned sideways by Professor Sonya Lubomirski called The How of Happiness. And I picked it up and looked at the back cover, and there was a quote from a Harvard professor that I knew that said, unlike every other book on happiness,

This one is based on experimental data and will work. And I thought, okay, good enough for the Harvard professor, I know, good enough for me. So I bought that book and I read it and it was my introduction to the fact that there is a real solid peer-reviewed science of happiness.

A lot of our happiness comes from the choices we make, and some choices are gonna lead to more happiness than others. And happier brains fundamentally work better most of the time. So a partial list of benefits that come with happiness, according to smarter scientists than I. So this is not my research, but I’m grounding everything in research. Happier people are more engaged, they’re more creative, they’re more resilient, successful, they’re better people, they treat other people

they’re more kind, they’re generous, and if all that weren’t enough, our health improves and our longevity goes up. So I finished this book and I was like, I want all of this. I need all of this. I was not terribly happy in my role at Intel, to be honest, some of the time.

John Marshall (03:19)
Mm.

Scott Crabtree (03:29)
I had had some family members of mine who were deeply unhappy. I lost a sister a few years ago, to be honest, who struggled with mental illness and some physical illnesses. And I had been sad at other times in my life as well. So I was like, I want this, my sister needs this. A bunch of people around me at Intel need this. I wanna remember this and I wanna tell other people about this. And about two seconds later, my brain said, you’re not gonna do that, Scott, you’re gonna forget.

John Marshall (03:29)
Mm.

Scott Crabtree (03:56)
98 % of this in six months the way we do most books if you don’t do something with this. So how can you not forget this? So I happen to be the kid of two teachers. So I thought if you really wanna learn something, you should teach it. So I started volunteering to give talks like the Science of Happiness in Video Game Development, because I had come from a video game development background as you mentioned, and the Science of Happiness in Software Development, because I was leading software teams at Intel, and conferences kept saying yes.

And that experience essentially went viral in a non-internet kind of way. I always had a perfectly fine career, but up until that point I didn’t have people stopping me in the hallways at work going, dude, wait a minute, I heard you did this workshop with this team that was mind-blowing. Can you come and do that for our team at Intel? I was like, sure, I’d love to, because I love doing this. And long story short, that led to me quitting Intel in early 2012 and doing work like this full-time since.

John Marshall (04:52)
Wow.

So when it comes to your happiness, right? What are, what are some of the things that you do to fill your own cup? So you can keep pouring into others and all of these workshops.

Scott Crabtree (05:08)
Thank you for reminding me to think about these things. Because honestly, John, the world is not a terribly happy place right now, depending on who you are and where you are in it. And I’m not trying to bring you and all the listeners down here, but I had a person in a workshop recently.

raised their hand. This was a workshop about change and transitions, but I briefly covered the science of happiness because we need to boost morale during change and transitions. And a guy raised his hand in the keynote audience and said, I hear you Scott, but this is not a happy time in the world. And I said, I know you’re right and I’m not going to argue with you. Now we

can choose more happiness no matter what level we start at. So this is not about constant bliss. This is not like, I am always happy all the time and life is amazing. Those people drive me crazy too, kind of, to be honest. So I focus on things we can do regardless of the world circumstances, regardless of our current mood level. This is largely about being happier.

John Marshall (06:01)
You

Scott Crabtree (06:13)
Not weee, blissed out, but happier even in tough times, right? So what do I do specifically? The first thing I did was to promise myself I would never let three days in a row go by without exercise. Because getting physical activity is directly shown to boost not only mood, but reduce stress and boost cognition as well. So it’s, let me make abundantly clear John to you and everybody listening, I am not a mental

John Marshall (06:26)
Hmm.

Scott Crabtree (06:40)
health professional. So I ground everything I do in science, but I want to caution people. I’m not licensed or trained to diagnose or treat depression or anything like that. I mention that because I’m about to mention depression. All that qualifier given the evidence is that physical exercise is as effective as antidepressants in treating moderate depression in the long run.

John Marshall (06:50)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Crabtree (07:03)
I run a little hyper sometimes and I noticed there was a pattern going on.

for me. I’d get really busy in my work at Intel so I wouldn’t have time to work out. So I’d start getting grumpy and then my brain wouldn’t work as well. And then I’d feel more scattered and behind. So I’d get grumpier and busier. And it’s this vicious cycle. So for me, the virtuous cycle, if you will, is get some physical activity almost every day. And that was one of the first things I’d done. And I’ve stuck with it for 15 years and I’m not perfect, right? There are days I miss, but

I don’t think three days have gone by without at least a good long walk and hopefully a run and a workout. The other thing to mention before we go any further, for most of us most of the time, the number one factor in our happiness and resilience and more is the quality of our relationships with other people.

John Marshall (07:39)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Crabtree (07:58)
So whenever someone asks me, okay, I’ve just got 10 seconds, what should I do to be happier? Invest in relationships. Investing in the quality of our relationships is probably the smartest investment for most of us most of the time. Everybody’s different, but for most of us, that is a fantastic choice to focus on quality of relationships.

John Marshall (08:21)
Certainly, especially backed up by the Harvard study of adult development, right? The number one finding for that. That’s something that a fact that I never forget is the number one finding that came out of that study. The longest longitudinal run study in the world is that investing in core relationships, those that you can call in the middle of the night.

Scott Crabtree (08:26)
Exactly. Exactly.

John Marshall (08:46)
keeps you happier, healthier, and longer, no matter your circumstances, poverty level, location, diet, whatever. So I 100 % agree with you there. So just to that end, when it comes to something that you actually do right there, is it pick up the phone and call a friend? Is it, you know, sit down and have a real one-to-one present conversation with your partner?

When you say invest in relationships, what are the things that people can practically do?

Scott Crabtree (09:20)
Yeah, it starts with reaching out and being human, right? I mean, it’s right there in the name of your organization, Humessence Like, let’s be human with each other, which is way easier said than done when technology is amazing and largely taking over life and interactions, right? So let me make abundantly clear, I’m not anti-technology. I’ve been a video game developer, I work at Intel, I’m talking to you over a computer right now, right? Love technology. And…

What we need most is direct human to human in real life face to face communication. If we can’t get that what you and I are doing looking at each other over video conferencing, that works really well too. If you can’t do that, phone calls work great. If you can’t do that, texts work well. But we have to be careful about social media and technology like it. I was at the International Positive Psychology Association World Congress, if you’re not a geek like me,

means happiness conference a couple of years ago and it was the first time I heard the phrase anti-social media which is not a bad

of what that technology does to us too often. So it’s largely about dosage, right? I’m on social media a little bit. I connect with people like you on social media. That’s a good thing. But if you’re endlessly scrolling, instead of talking to your partner, instead of getting lunch with someone, instead of calling someone,

It’s a problem. And Jonathan Haidt’s research, H-A-I-D-T, for those who don’t know, brilliant scientist. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing, presenting, and interacting with. I was introduced to him through a wonderful book called The Happiness Hypothesis. But his most recent book is The Anxious Generation. And it shows how social media is causing anxiety and depression, especially in young females, but for all of us, if the dosage is wrong.

One other thing I wanna quickly mention, if I may, on investing in relationships is practicing forgiveness. Now, I have to be careful here because I’m not in somebody else’s shoes listening to this. Somebody listening may be like, well, you don’t know what that guy did to me. It’s unforgivable. I get you. These are choices we all have to make for ourselves. But the world is…

feels pretty angry lately to me. Like a lot of us are holding grudges and it’s, it’s those people over there who ruining the world. no, it’s you people over there who are ruining the world. Unfortunately, we’re wired to hold grudges pretty well. We’re wired to think of the world and us as us and them pretty well.

The data, the science suggests if you can find yourself to forgiveness, you enjoy the benefits. So I think this quote might be attributed to Buddha, but a lot of quotes that go back that far are actually 12 different people who said them, so take that with a grain of salt. But there’s a great quote, trying to punish somebody by holding a grudge is like trying to kill somebody by taking poison.

So when I talk about this in keynotes or workshops, I say, anybody perfect? Anybody raise your hand if you’re perfect, come on down here and tell us all about it. And of course nobody does. And then I say, so why don’t we give each other a freaking break, right? I mean, I’ve made mistakes today. I make mistakes every day. I’m a human being. It’s part of the human experience. Let’s give each other a break. Let’s let each other be human and let’s assume positive intent.

to invest in relationships by saying, you know what? I didn’t love his exact phrasing in that meeting, but I can get over that. He’s a good guy with good intentions.

John Marshall (12:50)
Assume positive intent is something that comes up in a lot of our workshops at humessence as well. And we do, we do a lot of work with organizations when it comes to culture and the skills to be able to put that culture into practice. And when it comes to resilience, communication, relationships, that phrase assume positive intent comes up a lot.

Scott Crabtree (12:57)
Excellent.

John Marshall (13:15)
And we work through certain self-awareness and self-regulation exercises to notice when we’re not assuming positive intent, to notice first and then make another decision. But I’m curious from your perspective, when we say assume positive intent, how can people start building that muscle where it starts becoming

Scott Crabtree (13:25)
Nope, good.

Well.

John Marshall (13:41)
maybe not automatic at first, but you start increasing the ratio of times where you’re assuming positive intent and start to build that muscle. How would you talk someone through that process?

Scott Crabtree (13:54)
love your approach so much, John. It sounds so good. You likely know there are, ⁓ this is a model. There’s a quote I love from statistician George Box, I think his name is, all models are flawed, some models are useful. What does that mean? It means anytime you make an abstraction of reality, it’s gonna be imperfect. But some of those models are really helpful in our understanding, right? So here’s one of those. There’s four stages of behavior change. Stage one, you’re unaware of some negative behavior

thought pattern you have. Step two, you’re aware but still doing it. You’re catching yourself, right? Stage three, you’re consciously overcoming that to exercise a new behavior. And stage four, it’s a habit. And that takes time, right? So stage one is your workshop, a Humessence workshop, or one of mine where we talk about…

assume positive intent and what it’s here to address, which you likely know, but for listeners who don’t, scientists call it the fundamental attribution error. What is the fundamental attribution error? It’s other people’s bad behavior is due to their character. Mine is due to circumstances, of course. So to bring this to life, if I cut you off on the highway, it’s because my wife’s in the hospital having premature labor and I’m trying to get there before my kid is born. When you cut me off on the highway, it’s because you

are a jerk, I’ll say here, because I don’t want to offend people with my language.

In a business context, if I’m a little short with you in a meeting, don’t take it personally. My kid was sick, I didn’t sleep very well, just, you know, I didn’t mean anything by it. If you’re a little short with me, it’s because you are a jerk. That’s the fundamental attribution error. And scientists call it the fundamental attribution error because we all tend to do that. If I see you behaving badly, it’s because you are a bad person. The reality is,

People have all these battles, right? Where I used to live in Portland, Oregon and a lot of other bigger cities. I come off the highway and there’s somebody standing there with a cardboard sign telling you what their hardship is and asking for help, right? So I’d come off the highway in Portland, which is a great city by the way, lest I give the wrong impression to listeners, but.

But you come off a highway in virtually any big city or any street corner and there’s somebody with a sign saying something like, disabled Vietnam vet, anything helps. I sometimes wish we all went around work with cardboard signs telling each other what our hardship is and asking each other to give ourselves, give each other a break and ask for some help. Again, trigger warning, I’m not trying to bring everybody down here.

But most of us, without realizing it, have somebody in our life who has a sick kid with a chronic illness. Almost certainly, if you work with more than a handful of people, one of those people has a parent who’s in decline. One of those people has a loved one who’s battling addiction, or they’re battling addiction, and another, it goes on and on and on. So we don’t know the hidden battles we’re all fighting. At the risk of oversharing,

My cardboard sign would say, really weird divorce when I was nine years old. My parents split the custody of the kids. My two brothers went with my dad. My sister and I went with my mom. We lived in the same town and got together on weekends, but that was a traumatic experience to me. So if I get a little hyper-focused on keeping the team together and making sure we’re working well together, that’s why, and give me a break and know that my intentions are good here. So.

John Marshall (17:04)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Crabtree (17:13)
We just need a little bit of education that they get in one of our workshops so that we can be aware of stage two. I’m judging that person right away instead of attributing it to circumstances or something I don’t know. And then we can start to shift. I practice this with my girls. I have two teenage daughters. And when one of us at the dinner table is talking about somebody behaving badly, we frequently say something like, we don’t know their story.

or not all families are as strong as our family. You know, that kid in your class who’s acting out, you know, you don’t want to excuse bad behavior. And of course, there’s subtlety to all of this, right? If someone is chronically abusive to somebody else at work, well, that may not be forgivable and may need some action, but most of the time we’re so quick to judge. And so we need stage three practice consciously saying, that jerk.

John Marshall (17:56)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Crabtree (18:05)
Here’s a helpful cue for me and other people. Anytime you find yourself saying, he is such a, fill in the blank, or she is such a, fill in the blank.

or they are such fill in the blank, you’re almost certainly making the fundamental attribution error. And the challenging question, and look, I don’t do all this stuff perfectly. My speaker friends and I have a phrase, we teach what we need, right? So I teach happiness and forgiveness and assume positive intent. What I try to ask myself is under what conditions could a good well-intentioned person be behaving this way?

John Marshall (18:42)
and then that over time creates the habit.

Scott Crabtree (18:45)
If you stick with it, you notice that you immediately think, ooh, Kevin must be having a rough day, or Julie must be having something going on at home, immediately. And then you have that delightful moment where you notice, I have a new habit. I did that without even trying. I did that without even thinking. Look, neuroplasticity is wonderfully encouraging for all of us. So for anyone who’s not as geeky as I, this, this,

this word neuroplasticity relates to something I find absolutely miraculous. Your brain can think thoughts that rewire your brain. So your genes are not a life sentence. Your brain wiring is not a life sentence. And anytime you say, that’s just the way I am, I’d like you to add, so far.

And what we think and do rewires our brains. So if we practice investing in relationships, if we practice seeing the best in each other, if we practice attributing behavior we don’t like to circumstances, it rewires our brain to be a kinder, gentler, more people-focused brain. And that brain is happier and works better.

John Marshall (19:55)
Beautiful. Well, let’s take this up another level. So we’ve talked about attributed positive intent as one of the strategies to one building better relationships, being happier overall. And now for someone listening saying, this sounds great. I’d like to try it personally, but how do I start integrating this as a priority in my team?

Right? How do I start supporting my team in understanding that assuming positive intent is the way that we do business here and here are ways that you can practice it. Is there some team norm or practice that people can start integrating into weekly team meetings or something like that? How do you start building this as a norm in your team?

Scott Crabtree (20:42)
Great question. There are dozens of things that we can do. if somebody wants my workshop, the science of being happier and more productive at work, you can have as much time as you want, Scott. What would be good? I say three and a half to four hours would be ideal. That would give us plenty of time to get into all the exercises. So it’s a long answer, obviously, that I’m gonna trim way down to one or two examples. Here’s one of my favorites, gratitude. Gratitude is a fantastic mental habit to develop.

John Marshall (21:05)
beautiful.

Scott Crabtree (21:11)
Again, you can rewire your brain to be a more grateful brain and a happier brain. And gratitude helps us see the best in each other, right? So you might try what I tried at Intel, which is starting meetings with recognitions. So I had a weekly team meeting. I told my team.

I want to start with recognitions because, and I briefly explain some of this science, there’s wonderful studies by Barbara Fredrickson, led by Barbara Fredrickson and others, showing high ratios of positive interaction lead to better, more creative meetings because it gets us in a positive mindset and positive brains see more possibilities and do better creative thinking. So I was like, I want to nurture this in our weekly team meetings, so I’m going to start with recognitions.

So simple, specific shout outs to anybody on the team for any reason.

If you try this, you might get what I got at Intel, which was horrible awkwardness for a few weeks, right? So there’s something called the J curve, where you’re coming along at a certain point and you try something new that’s supposed to help. And things actually get a bit worse initially because it’s like, wait, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? Isn’t this weird? Isn’t this too touchy feely for Intel? Or are you being toxically positive here, Scott?

And then we see how it’s actually working and we get to a new, better, higher level. That’s what happened for me. So week one, it was like crickets. Any recognitions, anybody? Nice shirt, Paul. All right, we’re struggling here. But consistency from a leader helps develop the culture, right? The leader sneezes, the team catches a cold. So when I, the leader, kept saying,

Every week we’re gonna do this. And here are two that I’ve brought this week. Omar, you really did some fantastic thought partnership with me on the next demo code that we’re gonna put out from Intel. I had ideas, but you helped refine those ideas into better, more applicable for game developers. Thank you, Omar. And I did another one like that. And then people started to see it and…

Many people may know, but another wonderful finding from the science, our behavior is literally contagious. Our moods and behavior are literally contagious. Dr. James Bowler led this research, and it shows that what we do is literally infectious to the people around you. So when a third of the team starts buying into the specific gratitude at the beginning of a meeting, it spreads. And then week seven,

I said, okay, agenda, we’ve got to talk about this demo code. We’ve got game developers conference coming up. I want to talk about this new project and we’ll do opens at the end. I knew I was onto something when Orion said, hey Scott, you forgot recognitions. Aren’t we going to start with recognitions? Now we’re getting somewhere.

John Marshall (23:55)
you

Beautiful, So shifting that positivity ratio through gratitude and kind of installing that practice in regular team meetings and letting that positivity ratio guide towards assuming more positive intent.

Scott Crabtree (24:11)
Yeah, when we see the

best in each other, it’s easier to forgive a slight in a meeting or an accidentally rude email.

It just it’s hard to be grateful and begrudging at the same time, right? So if you focus on the gratitude you’re putting your limited precious brain resources oxygen glucose, etc into Wow, John’s awesome instead of yeah I don’t really like the way that John does this and we all come with what scientists call negativity bias, right? It’s great for survival. So we focus on what’s wrong before we focus on what’s strong

John Marshall (24:43)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Crabtree (24:48)
That’s great for survival, but it’s not great for thriving and being resilient during times of intense change at work. So retraining our brains to be more positive is a way of not only seeing the best in each other and assuming positive intent more often, but feeding our brains more positive emotions so they work better.

John Marshall (24:55)
Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yes. One thing that I offer clients sometimes is somewhat of the opposite of the, not really opposite. would say different yet in parallel to that meeting practice, but also introducing a challenger.

designating a challenger for that specific meeting that your role here is to actually think of all of the things that are counter to the flow of the way that we’re all agreeing to move forward here. So We all get comfortable with difference of opinion and not just difference of opinion for to see it as dissent, but

to pause and to consider other perspectives. So it’s not immediately met with assuming that this person is just playing devil’s advocate and being annoying, but they are actually assigned to the role in this particular meeting to challenge the way that we’re all moving together and offer alternative perspectives. So the way that I see that with some of my clients and their teams is that building.

Scott Crabtree (25:58)
Yes.

John Marshall (26:14)
the other side of that muscle. So you kind of have the gratitude practice of building what’s going well. What are we noticing in each other that we want to remember? And then the other side of it is how are we handling dissenting ideas or shifts in direction without reacting to that? So I just wanted to introduce that as well as something that kind of builds both ends there.

Scott Crabtree (26:29)
Yes.

I’m so glad you did, John, because it’s so important. What it reminds me of, of course, is psychological safety.

which I’m sure you know all about, but for anybody listening, look, if you don’t deeply understand psychological safety, if you’re not measuring it at your organization, it is time to start paying attention and taking action because Google’s well-respected Project Aristotle was searching for what made teams thrive. And they looked at dozens of variables across many, many people in teams and nothing stood out like psychological safety. So psychological safety,

John Marshall (26:47)
Yes.

Scott Crabtree (27:13)
You know John, but for those who don’t, psychological safety is, as Harvard professor Amy Edmondson calls it, who leads the research on this, it’s felt permission for candor. It’s the feeling that it’s safe to speak up. It’s the number one factor in team success.

And positivity and gratitude and psychological safety are a wonderful pairing. Because if you overdo positivity, anything can be overdone. Believe it or not, we can kill ourselves with water if you drink too much of it. You’ve got to drink an unbelievably absurd amount of water, so don’t worry about that. People hydrate. But the point is dosage of almost anything. If you way overdose in almost anything, it can be harmful. I’m a big fan of positivity. I love the gratitude.

That same study from Fredrickson and others showed if you get to a crazy high ratio of positive to negative comments in a meeting like 19 to 1, it’s an indicator you can’t be real with each other and performance starts to drop off again. So we gotta be real with each other. Bringing the positivity and the gratitude and the forgiveness and the investment in relationships builds this foundation of trust. So that then I can say,

Really, John, you see it that way? That’s interesting. I see AI affecting leaders in different ways than you do. Let’s talk about that. Let’s explore that. I want to understand better where you’re coming from. Or let me give you one of the best examples I’ve ever had of psychological safety.

I don’t know if maybe the leader was primed because I was coming in to speak about this, but I was hired to do a session on psychological safety for TriMet, which is the regional transportation organization in the greater Portland, Oregon area. So this was the expanded directors exchange, the general manager and 200 leaders underneath. So it’s a virtual meeting. This was during COVID time. I am on mute waiting for my time. And the first half hour is a general manager’s

update and he talks for about 15 minutes and then he says, hey team, what did I miss? What did I get wrong? I need your help here. And I’m sitting there on mute going, that’s how you build psychological safety. You ask for input. You do just what you’re suggesting, John. Give someone a role of being devil’s advocate. Or Amy Edmondson tells this wonderful story in one of her books.

Maybe the Fearless Organization, I’m trying to remember which book it was. But anyway, she tells this wonderful story of one company’s gonna acquire another. And the CEO is meeting and he says, okay, we’re strongly considering this acquisition. Who’s for it? Bunch of positive comments. Who’s got concerns or questions? Silence.

The CEO says, that’s not good enough. There are always concerns and questions when one company is acquiring another. We must not be thinking about this enough. I want you to think about this some more. We’re gonna bring this up next week and I expect and demand some dissent. What could go wrong if we acquire this company? I need to hear that before we go through with this decision.

It’s not just making it okay, it’s asking for it. So let’s invest in relationships enough that I know we care about each other, we respect each other, and then we can say, ⁓ I see it differently. Or we can specifically say, look, I’m a straight white male, I don’t know what it’s like to be a different person. I need your different perspective. I grew up on the East Coast, you grew up outside the US, I need your different perspective on how this is gonna land.

John Marshall (30:36)
Beautiful. Wow. From self to team to psychological safety. Now let’s take this up another level. when, well, I know you slid in there, the little AI comment as well. have to, I have to acknowledge that I’m torn between let’s go, let’s go into AI or let’s go into the organization.

Scott Crabtree (30:55)
I was wondering if I could drop those. I

dropped two heavy letters, right? ⁓ We can go there or not as you like.

John Marshall (31:03)
Right.

Well, let’s, let’s take it to the organization level. So you have, so we mostly focus on growing organizations. Those come kind of between 50 to 500 people or so where, know, a lot of their people initiatives are second because you’re still building around your product. You’re focused on operations, product delivery, customer satisfaction, sales, right? So when it comes to your internal culture,

I see a lot of that being secondary until it becomes a problem. Once you start getting to a certain scale and then they start looking at, okay, we need to solve this problem. Let’s change the culture. And that involves a lot of investment and sometimes it’s a little too late and then it starts affecting the bottom line. So they start paying attention, but we want organizations to be able to start getting ahead of these things, to start building a culture that aligns with their budget.

and priorities. So we talked about this at the individual level, happy brains within a team starting to build this assuming positive intent. But if you’re an organization that’s scaling rapidly, what would you recommend for them to start building happy brains into the culture in a way that aligns with their current budget priorities and probably lack of time that they can dedicate to certain.

and resources to dedicate to these things. A lot of the companies I see, there’s one head of people that’s doing all things, HR, benefits, recruiting, learning and development, all the things. So how can they, with limited resources, start investing in the highest value places, call it the highest return on investment places to start building happy brains into their culture?

Scott Crabtree (32:51)
Great question with a lot of possible approaches here, so I’ll try to focus on the highest priority, most important. You said a key word, John, which is budget. I forget who to attribute this quote to, but somebody said, stop telling me what your values are. Show me your budget and I’ll tell you what your values are. There’s another quote that I can’t remember who said it, but somebody said,

John Marshall (33:11)
Love that.

Scott Crabtree (33:14)
Stop telling me how your people behave. Tell me how you compensate them and I’ll tell you how they’re behaving. So people at growing organizations, they have to be budget focused, right? I mean, it’s just, it’s going to happen because if it doesn’t, you go out of business, right? So in those conversations you’re already having about performance reviews and raises and bonuses, what do you want to reward, right?

When I was at Intel, and let me be clear, I left Intel 15 years ago, it may be a very different company by now. But when I left Intel, what I saw was individual contributors were rewarded for individual performance, even if they left a wake of destruction behind them, right? So.

Joe is such a, there’s the fundamental attribution error, right? But Joe doesn’t care about other people. Joe is a know-it-all. Joe is secretly stealing people’s work and, but he’s delivering great results. Joe, you’re promoted. What does that tell everybody, right? If you want good teamwork, reward good teamwork, right? If you want your values to come into life in an organization, reward those values come into life. So let me give you a positive example of what I’m talking about from Intel.

Intel had six key corporate values at the time I was working there. One of them was informed risk taking. I wanted to be a good new leader at Intel. I’m studying these values before I join. I get to informed risk taking and I’m like, do they mean that or is this kind of lip service?

John Marshall (34:34)
Hmm.

Scott Crabtree (34:44)
Then in the first few months, I’m at a division update meeting. Yes, we called them DUMs. We were at a division update meeting and they were giving out division recognition awards and the enlightened leader of the division that I was in said, okay, next award goes to the Northwood team. You tried some compiler optimizations. They did not work, did they? No.

But you learned a lot and you discovered a promising path forward through the work that didn’t work and you took a chance and if it had worked, it would have made a big positive difference. Well done, Northwood team. Here’s your plaque and here’s your check. And I’m sitting there with my jaw open going, ⁓

They actually care about informed risk taking. So it’s not all about money, of course, right? But I think looking at budgets and how people are compensated, incentivized, rewarded is gonna lead to a lot of behavior change, good or bad. Furthermore, I touched on values really briefly.

There’s research that I heard from Adam Grant recently and Brene Brown and their wonderful podcast saying that research suggests that organizations perform better when they focus on only one or two key values.

That’s extremely rare in most of the corporations I work with. They’re like, here are eight values, here are 27 priorities for this year. It’s overwhelming, right? I keep a couple of sticky notes on my desk. I’ll hold up for those watching on YouTube. They say focus and do less better because I love ideas. I’m a positive person, so I’ll get really scattered if I’m not careful.

John Marshall (36:06)
Mm-hmm.

Scott Crabtree (36:21)
What matters most to a company’s culture? What?

Culture is what people do when people aren’t looking, right? I think Peter Drucker was famous for saying culture eats strategy for breakfast. You and I know it happens pretty organically at a very small startup size, so you don’t have to pay attention to it. And then you start growing, and then as you said, ⁓ there’s not much attention or effort being put on culture, now we have very expensive problems, right? So focus on what matters most in your values and live those values. Your behavior is literally contagious.

especially if you’re a leader. So reward it, show it, celebrate it. Culture doesn’t happen by accident, or if it does, you get a culture you don’t like and value very much.

John Marshall (37:08)
Wow. I’m going to leave it at that. That sounds, that is very direct sound advice in place and an essential place to start. So I want to wrap up with one last question here is if anyone listening is taking

whatever part of the conversation that meant the most to them. Regardless of that, maybe they tuned in right here and they’re just at, they forgot everything and we’re just at the last, at the last moment here. What would be the most helpful piece of advice for them? Or you can answer it another way. What’s been the most helpful piece of advice for you up to this point of your life?

Scott Crabtree (37:47)
Again, I have to come back to relationships and investing in the quality of relationships because it just keeps coming back, right? So I briefly mentioned AI. I know we don’t have a lot of time here, but I’ll just briefly say I think we’re in the biggest change any of us have ever lived through in our lifetimes, at least in the technology front and maybe even in the world. And I think we’re in the top of the first inning on this, if you will.

there’s gonna be tremendous disruption, upheaval, change. AI is gonna do wonderful things and some things that are not wonderful. The key question for me in all the changes and challenges in the world is are we gonna stay connected as human beings? Are we gonna solve them together? Because if we can come together as people, and I don’t mean to get grandiose here, but I mean this at every scale, in my household,

in this conversation, in a workshop we’re doing, at a company in the world. If we can come together and work together and connect as human beings, we can overcome almost any challenge. We’ve overcome so much in human history together. And it’s when we are divided and at each other’s throats that problems can overwhelm us and cause failure.

So it’s not easy. It takes work overcoming our negativity bias. It takes work to forgive people and assume positive intent. It takes time and effort to invest in relationships. It is the smartest investment any of us can make. So I try to keep reminding myself every day, keep coming back to relationships, keep investing in relationships.

Other things are useful, other things are gonna come and go, but the core of well-being, resilience, adapting to change, overcoming challenges, is being in it together.

John Marshall (39:35)
Well said Scott. Thank you so much for your time today, for your presence, for everything that you’ve shared with the audience and all of the work that you’re doing in the world. It’s certainly much needed and listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. If you’d like to connect with Scott for workshops, keynotes, just to get on the newsletter.

Scott Crabtree (39:49)
Thank you so much.

John Marshall (40:00)
check out happybrainscience.com. Okay. We’ll have that link in the show notes as well and any other ways that would be helpful to connect with him. So again, thank you so much for tuning in for investing in yourself, your teams, your organizations. We’ll see you next time.