The Biology of the Bottom Line

"Can we succeed without the body? On the face of it, this seems like a ridiculous question, but when we step back and take a closer look at modern organizational culture, we might be inclined to wonder. After all, most discussions of management and strategy take place in the disembodied, abstract world of the mind. The body is considered a minor player at best and health becomes a concern only in its absence, when skyrocketing medical costs, absenteeism, and presenteeism reach unacceptable levels. In practice, today's organization is almost completely blind to the body and its contribution to performance. We are, in the language of therapy, 'vertically disintegrated' or to put it more bluntly, 'dead from the neck down.' As Sir Ken Robinson put it in his legendary TED talk, most of us now consider the body to be little more than 'a locomotor device for the head,' a transport mechanism whose only purpose is to move the brain from one computer terminal or meeting to the next. And so it comes as no surprise to discover that we are suffering catastrophic consequences."