This is your sign to take bigger swings

Fortune favors the bold.

Shopify canceled all meetings and saved an estimated $8.4 million. 

Buffer announced a four-day work week and found that 91% of its employees were happier.

Patagonia ran a “Don't Buy This Jacket” Black Friday campaign and next year its sales increased by 30%.

And the list goes on.

Yes, survivorship bias is real; it’s often easy to point to successful outliers and infer the wrong lessons. But the funny thing is that these “bold” decisions are backed up by treasure troves of data. 

Take meetings. Poking fun at meetings is the stuff of Dilbert cartoons—we can all joke about how soul-sucking and painful they often are. 

But meetings have increased in length and frequency over the past 50 years, to the point where executives spend an average of nearly 23 hours a week in them, up from less than 10 hours in the 1960s. 

There is so much data to back up the negative impact of ineffective meetings on employees psychological, physical, and mental well-being. And they’re bad for the bottom line!

Lazy and unproductive employees hide behind a wall of calendar invites, and those who wish to opt out risk awkward explanations and offense.

Yet, the news that Shopify cut 322,000 hours of meetings was met with a mix of admiration, incredulity, and jealousy. Why don’t more companies follow Shopify’s lead?

The same can be said for four-day work weeks. Employee turnover dropped by 57% in organisations that implemented a shorter week. 85% of businesses observed increased productivity with a 4-day workweek. 

There are so many studies and data points that back up the four-day workweek it’s astonishing that Buffer is still one of a small number of companies offering this perk. 

Finally, there’s Patagonia’s anti-consumption campaign. Deloitte found purpose-driven brands capture more market share and grow on average three times faster than their competitors. They also retain employees at a higher clip and experience a host of other benefits from more innovation to fewer safety incidents.

Syracuse University professor Ralph O. Swalm presented the results of a remarkable study of risk attitudes among 100 executives. He concluded:

“[The findings] do not portray the risk-takers we hear so much of in industrial folklore. They portray decision-makers quite unwilling to take what, for the company, would seem to be rather attractive risks.” 

Cancel meetings and save your company millions of dollars. Introduce a four-day workweek to turnaround declining employee engagement and productivity. Run bold creative that takes a stand and builds brand affinity. 

Look loss aversion straight in the eye. Take those swings. Otherwise someone else will.