Culture & Compliance Chronicles: From Formula 1 to Resilient Leadership – Health, Identity & Success with Annastiina Hintsa

At a glance: Click the links below to advance directly to the corresponding sections of the transcript:

• [1:37] About Annastiina Hintsa and Lightning Round Questions
• [5:57] How Identity Shapes Performance in F1 Teams
• [10:16] Small Changes, High Impact
• [13:13] How Identity Shapes Resilience
• [16:54] Tools for Engaging with Your Identity
• [21:47] Are Wellbeing and High Performance Compatible
• [26:15] Training for Wellbeing
• [31:23] Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Nitish Upadhyaya: Welcome back to the Culture & Compliance Chronicles, the podcast that gives you new perspectives on legal, compliance, and regulatory challenges faced by organizations and individuals worldwide. The clue is in the title. Culture is at the heart of everything. It's the endlessly shifting patterns that govern our environment and behaviors.

The magic is in amplifying certain patterns and dampening others. Let's see if we can pique your curiosity, get you to challenge some of your perceptions, and give you space to think differently about some of your own challenges. I'm Nitish Upadhyaya. And I'm joined by Amanda Raad.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Hello, Amanda.

Amanda Raad: Hey, Nitish. How are you?

Nitish Upadhyaya: Yes. All well. Thank you. Last time we were out recording with Pav Gill. We were hearing his deep and very personal experiences as a whistleblower. We went on to discuss how organizations can create safety for their staff to speak up, and what the value of that is in the first place. And who do we have today?

Amanda Raad: I'm so excited that we have Annastiina Hintsa from Hintsa Performance with us today. I had the great pleasure of meeting Annastiina a few months ago to talk a little bit about how we can be better performers, and the connection between well-being and performance. And honestly, I could talk to Annastiina for hours and hours and hours. And I'm so pleased that she is willing to join us today. So before we dive in, first let's just—hi, Annastiina. Thank you.

Annastiina Hintsa: Hi, Amanda. Hi, Nitish. Thanks for having me.

[1:37] About Annastiina Hintsa and Lightning Round Questions

Amanda Raad: We do these ice breakers, and I thought we would start there. So the first thing, Annastiina, three things that we should know about you.

Annastiina Hintsa: I'm the CEO of Hintsa, and entrepreneur, second generation. I am a sleep-deprived mother—chronically sleep-deprived mother of a three year old. In my free time, I relax by running long distances.

Amanda Raad: I forgot about the long-distance running. Okay. One thing you're curious about?

Annastiina Hintsa: Cognitive performance, and specifically brain endurance training at this point in time.

Amanda Raad: Brain endurance training.

Annastiina Hintsa: Brain endurance training. Yeah.

Amanda Raad: We're going to have to come back to that. And one—what's the last thing that surprised you?

Annastiina Hintsa: I've been experimenting with caffeine recently. I come from Finland. We're one of the nations that drinks the most coffee in the world. And I went cold turkey. I thought it didn't have an impact on me, but I went cold turkey. And I've since then reduced and sort of strategically reintroduced caffeine into my diet.

And it has had a massive impact on my sort of alertness, on my focus, on my attention, on my perfomance, like overall, both physical and mental—and cognitive. So that's been sort of—there's surprises there. I'm not a caffeine addict no more. I guess the other surprise is like, yeah, it actually has an impact on me.

Amanda Raad: Okay. I'm sorry. I can't just leave that hanging there. So where do you perform the best in what way with caffeine?

Annastiina Hintsa: Dose little and often. And strategically use caffeine. So, I think a lot of us get into that rhythm where we use caffeine just to keep ourselves up or upright during the day. We're basically, like I am, chronically sleep deprived. And then we compensate with caffeine throughout the day.

But we sort of chuck it in those giant Americano takeaway mugs, and we just keep on chugging it throughout the day. And it actually stops having the impact that it could have. So there are only a few foods or nutrients that have been proven to have an actual impact on your cognitive performance. And caffeine is one of the sort of most proven ones, but not if you keep on sort of drinking it day in, day out. Plus, it has an impact on your sleep, which, again, we stop to realize if we drink too much of it.

Amanda Raad: All right. Well, thank you very, very much. And I think I'm probably going to come back to a few of those things as we get talking. But before we dive in more, can you tell us a little bit more about kind of your background? And how did Hintsa Performance come to be?

Annastiina Hintsa: So Hintsa was founded by my father, Dr. Aki Hintsa, who was an orthopedic surgeon, passionate about two things in life: One is sport; another one was helping people. And he came up with this methodology of better life leading to better performance, holistic health and well-being as a foundation for what he calls sustainable performance.

So not just performing at your peak for a short period of time, but making sure that you can perform sustainably over the long term. He developed the method originally in Ethiopia, working with long-distance runners, and then took it to Formula 1, where we've been working since 1996 with 19 World Driver Championships to date and over 90 percent of race victories in the last decade, so a pretty good test laboratory for human performance, if you will.

Personally, I ran some of our first training camps in the early 2000s, then went on to do my own thing. I did management consulting. I did banking. I did microfinance in Latin America, everything that you kind of want to do in between, and then rejoined Hintsa full time in 2016. My father unfortunately passed away. I have the privilege and honor to continue his legacy and work.

Amanda Raad: Wow. That's beautiful. And I know I think you just had the 10-year anniversary, right, of the book that he wrote. Can you tell us just a little bit about that?

Annastiina Hintsa: A year before he passed away, he wrote this book called The Core. It's funny. You can't really put it in one category. It's his story. It's the story of Hintsa. It's the story of multiple of our clients. And it is also very much about the science and the elements of the method.

So quite concrete in terms of what can you actually take away from these learnings from these high performers in Formula 1, or in business, or even in politics? And how do you take them and actually apply them in your day-to-day? So it's a pretty concrete book in the end.

[5:57] How Identity Shapes Performance in F1 Teams

Nitish Upadhyaya: So let's take one particular type of high-performance setup. And this is absolutely to indulge my love of F1. Because I hear you talk about the stories that your father wrote about, the clients that you've worked with. And I think when you're talking about high-pressure, competitive environments, it's one of those that really stands out for me—everything from the pit crews to the drivers to the precision of the engineering. Can you tell us some of those stories about high performance with those teams, and what's brought them and you so much success?

Annastiina Hintsa: So when my father started working with Mika Hakkinen originally, when he started exploring human performance in Formula 1, it looked quite different. So if I think of the kind of book 10 years back, or my father's journey when he started 30 years back almost, it looked different. They were still smoking, and having their cigars, and partying hard. Work hard, play hard type of culture to an extent.

The team performance also wasn't as much of a recognized component as it is today. So today, you'll see the pit crews, or pit stops—they're sub two seconds. It's insane how fast they are. And that also has been an evolution down from tens of seconds to sub two seconds. It's really been an evolution in the last I'd say decade, if you look at it.

And the human performance element that he started exploring at that point in time—there's two kind of foundational elements to it. The first one, which I find super interesting, and which my father thought was sort of the prerequisite for everything, is knowing who you are.

It actually goes to your identity. And he would literally ask that question from young drivers. I mean, if you think of the drivers that you have in Formula 1—some of them are really kids. They're 18 years old when they enter the sport. And my dad would ask them, "Who are you going to be when you're no longer a Formula 1 driver?"

That is a question they have not thought about. It's a single-minded goal. It's a single goal that they're optimizing their entire life around. And my father challenged them to think about: "What are the other pillars of your identity that will help you face the setbacks?"

Because Formula 1 is also one of those sports where your seat is on the line every single race. Every single season, your seat is on the line. And even more so, your life is on the line. Anything could happen in a race. And it's possible that after that race, you will have no more races.

You will no longer be able to do what you love, and what you see as a huge part of your identity. So my father's—kind of one of the first questions that he really drilled down on was: Do you know who you are? Do you really know who you are? What are kind of the other elements of your identity? And that linked back to not just sort of your strengths and how you define success, but also your family.

He tells the story—I think it's also in the book. He asked Seb to write down a list of his closest friends before he became successful. 'Cause once you are successful, there will be a line of people that will claim to be your best friend. And that was sort of like one of the "Who are the people that keep you grounded?"

Another sort of kind of key piece around what we call the core—your identity, your sense of purpose—and your sense of control is around how you define success. And my father, another kind of push that he had, was, "Think about what does success mean to you, not just on the track, but off track, beyond your racing career."

So again, going back to that question: "Who are you when you're no longer a Formula 1 driver? How do you actually define success longer term?" And then the sort of second element of our method is around interconnectedness of different elements of your health and well-being as a foundation for that performance.

So we talk about physical activity, nutrition, sleep and recovery, mental energy, biomechanics, and general health. And instead of looking at each one of those sort of as an area of expertise stand alone, we look at interconnectedness. We look at the system. And what are kind of the smallest changes that you can do that will have the biggest cascading impact?

And, again, to give you the concrete example, in terms of his story, this is already a few years back, but I remember when iPhone introduced the night mode—that had a big impact on our younger drivers. So we noticed that they were so stuck on their phones. It was really hard to get them off it. But when we got rid of the blue light and got into the dark mode, that actually had an impact on their performance the next morning.

[10:16] Small Changes, High Impact

Nitish Upadhyaya: Wow. Sometimes it's those small tweaks, right? But understanding those wider systemic factors. I think that often people think, "Oh, it's a point solution." Or, "I'm going to incentivize someone to do X. I'm either going to tell them off, or I'm going to give them a gold star, or some money, or whatever it might be." And actually, some of those other tweaks, and pulling out inherently the intrinsic motivation—this will help you get better.

This will help you get this much faster. This will help you recover quicker. So I think that's a really, really fascinating kind of very small behavioral intervention, but only after you understood the context of what this was doing, and then harnessing the technological change to make it happen.

Annastiina Hintsa: Exactly. Okay. So starting with that intrinsic motivation, starting with that why, we know that we need to start with the why for you, personally, and for you as an organization too, or for you as a leader, too. So in addition to F1, we work with hundreds of organizations and real high-performing leaders across the board.

And there are many lessons that translate; there are others that don't. And one of the thing that we often in the beginning get pushback on is, "Oh. I'm not an athlete. I won't be able to live my life like an athlete. I can't just be optimizing for that one thing, because I have all these other responsibilities."

"And the equation that I'm optimizing for is a little bit more complex than that, not just winning the World Championship. I can't be that selfish." And what we're looking for them in particular is exactly what you were describing, Nitish, which is: What's the smallest thing we can tweak in your sort of day-to-day operating model, if you will, that will have the biggest cascading impact on your performance? It's not about adding on your to-do list or your plate, because we have enough things to do. It's about tweaking the way you do things. And it really can be about pretty basic stuff.

Amanda Raad: I want to dig in, Annastiina to what some of those basic tweaks can look like, and push on that a little bit more. But what I was really interested about, and it relates also to the connection between working with athletes and also working with leaders or individuals in other organizations or corporations, is that question—the identity question that you mentioned that your dad started with—is: Do you know who you are?

That's an incredible question. And I think it sounds like in that context, he wasn't even looking or trying to drill down on anything relating to F1. It was something entirely outside of that. Can you just say a bit more about why that's important? Because I do think we hear so much this line of, "How much of outside issues should you bring into work?"

"And where's the line between what is work-related and helps drive performance at work, versus something that helps you in your personal life?" And that flies in the face of all of this, right? That kind of says, "No, no. No. To do really exceptionally at F1, we have to start outside of F1." So can you just expand on that a little bit?

[13:13] How Identity Shapes Resilience

Annastiina Hintsa: What he really focused on, and what we talked about, and what we talk about with our clients—it's really this notion of sort of pillars of your identity. Do you mind if I tell a story to make that a little bit more concrete?

Amanda Raad: That would be amazing. We love stories.

Annastiina Hintsa: So the origin of that question actually comes from Haile Gebrselassie, who is one of the best long-distance runners of all time. And my father used to work very closely with Haile. He was the chief medical officer for the Finnish Olympic Committee. He got to know Haile and some of his teammates through the Olympics.

We used to live in Ethiopia. I grew up in Ethiopia. So my father was working—he got to work very closely with Haile, and his teammates. And he was fascinated by Haile's resilience in particular, not just the way he trained, not just the way he kept on winning, but his resilience in the face of setbacks.

And around the Athens Olympics, he had a problem with his Achilles tendon. It turned out he had to be operated. So he flew to Finland to be operated by my dad and his team. And as they were literally entering the operating theater, Haile noticed that my dad and everybody else was sort of nervous.

It's a high-stakes operation. High-stakes Achilles tendon. And he told my father, "Doctor, don't worry. It's just running." And that gave him a pause. You have the world's best runner, or one of the world's best runners about to enter the operating theater. Tells the operating surgeon to chill out because it's, quote-unquote, "just running."

And he realized that for Haile, in the face of a potentially career-threatening operation—running, huge part of his identity, huge part of his identity, his passion. And he would go training 5:00 a.m. every single day, happy, smiling. He loved it.

But at the same time, he had other pillars of his identity that he could fall back on in that moment in time: his family, being a mentor to young athletes in Ethiopia. He was active in societal causes.. He was a businessman. He had all these business adventures.

So he had other parts of his identity that he could fall back on when faced with a setback. And what my father talked about a lot is: How do you found your identity on things that cannot be taken away from you? And oftentimes, we're sort of so clung on to—because work takes up a lot of our time, and energy and mind space, head space, it's very natural that when we introduce ourselves, we start with that, very, very natural. But if our identity is solely, or mainly, or primarily focused on who we are at work, when faced with setbacks, it can become quite challenging.

Amanda Raad: Yeah. That's fascinating. I love that story. So thank you for sharing it.

Nitish Upadhyaya: My daughter currently walks around the house with all sorts of Disney songs in her head. And one of the ones she talks about quite a lot is Moana. And also, Disney films are asking your kids about their identity. There's The Lion King, "Remember who you are." There's Moana, "Do you know who you are?"

And it just brings me to this mind set of we're trying to figure out this identity for our kids. We're all parents here. And then suddenly that disappears, and it becomes work. The first thing I use to describe myself is, "I'm a lawyer." Those are the natural, "Who are you? What do you do?" Not even where I'm from, anything like that. And that identity shift is really interesting, especially becoming a parent.

And now I describe myself as a dad. And there's a whole different sort of conversation that comes to that. And, yes, work is relevant. And, yes, my cultural background is relevant. But at different points in your life, you're going to have those pieces that change things.

[16:54] Tools for Engaging With Your Identity

Annastiina Hintsa: That's another excellent point. That sort of narrative, that identity, and that question is not something you ask yourself once and answer once. It actually is something that you go back to. So literally when working with our clients, we actually ask them to update their answer to that question on a continuous basis.

We might do an annual—we ask them to write a letter to themselves, actually, around those three core questions: Do you know who you are, what you want, how you define success? Because also that's important. So that it's not—again, success not being this kind of one dimensional, make partner in X, Y, Z, or whatever it is. But becoming a little bit more holistic in nature. And then, finally, the last piece is around autonomy and control. Again, are you in the driver's seat of your own life? Or are you a passenger?

Nitish Upadhyaya: I really love that continuous look-back idea. And creating the structure for people to do that is the same as assessing risk. It's the same as doing all of these things. As coaches more generally, there's sort of the adult development theory approach to some of this stuff that's been for the last number of years.

You go through these stages in life. And you're this, and you're this, and you're this. And it's so linear, and so reductive. And it really puts people into these buckets that people maybe feel that they can't get out of. So I really love that idea of going back, reassessing, and then kind of re-crafting this identity that you bring out into the world, and then doing it again, maybe two days later, or maybe two years later.

Annastiina Hintsa: It's about being explicit about those things, because we are, by the nature of our work and the way we're operating in these pretty structured systems, we're very explicit about: What does success mean for you at work? Who are you in your job?

What is your role description, or requirements? That's very explicit. But we're rarely as explicit about: What does success actually mean for you off track, in your outside work? We're rarely as explicit about who we are as an individual outside work. And it's just basically taking the time to reflect and really put that down on paper.

Amanda Raad: And I just want to put a finer point on it one more time. Because I think you mentioned one of the reasons this came up, which you explained through the story, was because of the resilience that came from having this multi-dimensional familiarity and appreciation for oneself, maybe.

Is that it? Like, is that the core of why we all should take the time, and not be afraid to ask this question? And why we think it should be a core piece or a foundation to everything else that we do? Is it resilience? What else? What are the other things that it brings to us?

Annastiina Hintsa: It's resilience. And it's also making sure that you define what success looks like for you specifically, before searching for it in the wrong places. Because another thing that often happens to us, and, hey, again, a story from Formula 1.

When my dad was taking on board these young clients—the youngest drivers that we work with are like 13 years old—and he would interview these young drivers and ask them about why they wanted to be a Formula 1 driver, et cetera, et cetera.

And there were times when he discovered in those sessions that it wasn't actually the driver who wanted to be an F1 champion; it was his dad, who wanted to be the father of a Formula 1 champion.

There were cases when the driver, in the end, walked away and started studying architecture. It's also about making sure that you don't end up just climbing this ladder that was set in front of you at a given point in time. It's about making sure that we are aware of the different perceptions of identity that we might have.

We have this “ought to be,” that we think others are expecting us to be. We have an ideal self that we have maybe created—this idea of who we should be or who we strive to be. And then we have our real self. And if the distance between those three is too much, there is a chance that we, again, struggle.

Nitish Upadhyaya: That requires a bit of a pause. Whether you're having the question asked by someone as experienced as your father, one of the coaches that you work with, or your team manager—whatever it is—it requires that pause, and the time for introspection.

But when I speak to people, they don't have the time. They are too busy performing to a high level. They're too busy succeeding. And almost there's this perceived tension between high performance and well-being. There's a feeling that you can't have one if you have the other, or a desire that actually one stops the other from happening, or actually to have one means you're indicating that the other one isn't there.

If you're too in the soft well-being, you can't be a high performer. I'm sure you've heard those stories and those viewpoints before, but I'm intrigued to hear your take on it, and then what it means for sustainability of that top level of performance.

[21:47] Are Wellbeing and High Performance Compatible?

Annastiina Hintsa: I love that question. Yes. I have heard it. I've heard about the hugging trees. And I've heard about the sort of, "Hey. We're a high-performance type-A culture. Don't talk about well-being, because it doesn't fit our culture. It will just turn people off. We don't want to talk about well-being, because we're a high-performance culture."

And in reality, the concept that we talk about is a well-being-performance paradox. And by paradox, that actually means it's not either/or; it's both/and. Those two are actually interlinked. And the way that we see it—and there is ample evidence and science base to this that is just becoming more and more pronounced—well-being is a prerequisite for sustainable high performance.

It's not something you do on the side of your job. It's not something you do over the weekends. It's not something you earn the right for once you retire. It is actually a prerequisite for you to be able to do your job well right now, do your job sustainably over the long term.

And I think that can be a difficult thought for a lot of people to come around to, particularly because if we look at the current sort of generation of leaders that we work with, it's not exactly the culture that they grew up in. And a lot of the leaders, the question that we ask them is it's not just about, “Hey, could you be more high performing?” —because they're already performing at a high level. The question is about: What is the price that you paid for that performance, in terms of your own health, or, for example, in terms of your relationships?

Amanda Raad: Well-being as a prerequisite—I mean, it is so core. And you're right. The consequences for getting it wrong are so severe, whether it be related to burnout, or complete isolation, or not being as effective as you want to show up in your relationships with family, or with others, or even with clients. Can you talk a little bit more about what we mean by well-being, and just some practical tips of what one must do to be an effective leader? Like, what does that prerequisite look like?

Annastiina Hintsa: I think the best way to maybe start addressing that is to think about sort of the different dimensions that you were talking about, Amanda. There's an upside to this, which is actually increased performance—increased cognitive performance, also.

And there is kind of managing the downside and the risks, which is about not just absenteeism, burnout risk, et cetera, but also about presentism. So you show up at work, but you're actually unable to perform at your best, because of poor well-being.

And there's, again, ample evidence. People with high well-being are at 19 percent more effective than those with poor well-being. That's like adding an extra work day to your week in terms of productivity. We talk about productivity. We talk about efficiency.

We talk about creativity, too. We talk about emotional intelligence. All of those are impacted by the foundational elements of your health and well-being, including your physical activity, including your sleep, including your nutrition, et cetera, et cetera, and the interlinkages between all those elements.

Amanda Raad: And the upside—so the upside is the increased productivity, the increased clarity, all of those things. So ultimately, we're talking about increasing the bottom line. This isn't like a soft thing that can't be measured. This is something that there's proof for. Where you put the work in, it results in—I think you said—19 percent. Is that right?

Annastiina Hintsa: Nineteen percent higher productivity for individuals with high well-being versus those with poor well-being. So that's basically what the research indicates. And then we talk about—we like to differentiate between, sort of, also creativity as an output. We know that people who engage in physical activity, as an example, are more creative.

We know that you are 2.4 times more likely to solve a complex problem after a good night's sleep. We know that two weeks of sleeping six hours per night results in cognitive decline equivalent to staying up for two nights in a row. So sleep debt is actually also cumulative.

And one of the challenges that we see amongst our clients is that they think they're performing okay. So you've actually just gotten used to performing suboptimally, because you're so used to that—being chronically sleep deprived or not thinking clearly.

And then when they actually change something as basic as a consistent bedtime, and increase their sleep from six to seven hours—there was one client who I vividly remember saying—he came to us after—it was a two-week intervention only that he had done at that point in time. And he came to us saying, "Hey. I can see colors. Like, the difference is so stark. I can see colors."

[26:15] Training for Wellbeing

Amanda Raad: That is hugely impactful. And that is not something that just applies, obviously, to athletes, because we're talking about creativity, and decision making, and kind of all of the things that we all need as leaders in all of our jobs, in everything that we do every day, right?

Annastiina Hintsa: Exactly. Complex problem solving. Creativity. Critical thinking. Also, emotional intelligence. So when we are sleep deprived or when we're chronically stressed, we become less capable of recognizing microemotions in other people's faces, but also of regulating our own.

So we just become less pleasant people to work with. Our emotional intelligence basically goes down. And it really is across all critical leadership capabilities that we see. And maybe one final note there: the way we see it is that well-being is a skill.

It's a skill that you can learn. It's a skill that you need to continuously train. It's a skill that you need to continuously sort of relearn, as well. It's sort of a toolkit that you keep on sharpening as you go, similar to any other leadership skill or skill at work that you have.

It's something that you actually need to train for. It's not kind of like you have it or you don't have it. You can learn it. And you should learn it. And you should invest in it. You should invest in well-being as a part of your leadership training and development, really.

And furthermore, it is actually a prerequisite for you to be able to learn other skills. So it also links back to—we talk a lot about AI these days with all of our clients, and it's bound to come up in almost any discussion that we have. How do we adapt now that we have these kind of new ways of thinking, and working, and operating?

And it's a big culture shift. It's a big behavioral shift. And we see well-being, again, as a prerequisite for you to be able to adapt to that change, because what we need is a focused and rested brain right now to be able to actually make the most out of it, to be able to actually brain rewire and relearn some of the ways that we've been working in the past.

Amanda Raad: And to be creative, right, enough to be able to even come up with how we can work with a new technology, and how we can come about making the changes that we need to make.

Annastiina Hintsa: Exactly.

Nitish Upadhyaya: How do organizations, then, create the space for well-being? We take well-being as a skill that can be learned. On the flip side, everyone's got a slightly different feeling as to what their well-being is. And you can't have people personalizing things to the nth degree.

I feel like most organizations have defaulted to going, "Oh. This is a difficult problem. I'm going to get everyone a Headspace subscription or a Calm subscription. And I've ticked my box." What are actually the meaningful interventions that organizations can put in place? And what frames can they have on a day-to-day basis, when they're dealing with individuals, to create the right circumstances for well-being to emerge?

Annastiina Hintsa: That's a fantastic question. And yes, we've seen a lot of the tick-the-box exercises, particularly post-COVID or during COVID. Post-COVID, we saw every given organization roll out some kind of well-being programs and initiatives. If I'm blunt, I think there was a lot of money wasted in that process.

Just because you were sort of doing those blanket solutions. And then you have 1 percent or 2 percent of the population that's actually benefiting from it. You have zero personalization, et cetera, et cetera. And this is personal. It is about you defining why, you defining your “why” for this.

It's also for the organization. And this is where we actually start with organizations: defining your well-being or your high-performance narrative. And it's sort of like, "Why does this actually matter to us?" Again, I'll give you two concrete examples.

So we work in a nuclear power plant. And there it was about safety. You don't want to slip if I'm an engineer operating a nuclear power plant. So they actually incorporated well-being into their safety protocols. Well-established, already existing process, already existing sort of systems, and structures, and trainings—they incorporated well-being as a part of that.

They also created—made sure that well-being sort of worked in the context of their annual maintenance cycle. So there was also a time and place already when they knew that, "Hey. When we have annual maintenance period, the power plant tripled high-intensity work for a period of time." You're not going to be focusing on your well-being at that point in time.

That's the time when you implement those skills that you've already actually invested in and learned beforehand. You implement the tools. And in a similar fashion, we've worked with other organizations. So it is about defining that sort of “why” for a partnership or in a professional organization.

For a team of surgeons, it's about patient outcomes, et cetera, et cetera. So you actually make sure that the well-being is not just because you want to be a nice employer, which is nice. But it's actually connected to a business outcome that's relevant for you.

So that's sort of step number one. Then step number two is about really thinking about how do we integrate this into existing processes and systems that are already there, so that it's not another sort of initiative for the HR to run when the going gets tough.

[31:23] Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Nitish Upadhyaya: We could talk forever. And I think that is such a wonderful set of stories to end on for now. I think there are lots of takeaways. But the one that I keep coming back to, for me at least, actually comes from a conversation I had with Christian Hunt.

And he was saying, "Look. We maintain our machinery, our plant. It's all about oiling, getting things ready, making sure we do the health and safety checks. Why are we not thinking about our people? Who are basically—out of the industrial age and into the information age—that is where our capital is going to be, right, this human capital?"

And we don't spend the time thinking about them, maintaining them. We pay lip service, maybe, to it. We put some programs in place. We're not invested in it. And I think what you have said today kind of just brings that out again into that need for investment, and the need to really then treat well-being as a skill that can be learned. So that's one of many things I'm taking away today. I'm sure Amanda is the same. And there are lots of new things for her to ponder on from this conversation.

Amanda Raad: There are way too many, but I will try to think of one or maybe two. I guess they're related. I loved the way you framed well-being as a prerequisite and not a nice-to-have, not a when-it's-convenient, or when-it's-available, on the weekends, or as you say, retirement.

Because I think that happens a lot—the retirement. People feel like they'll just push, push, push until later, or until they completely change. But I also really liked focusing on the downside and the harm that can be done by avoiding a focus on well-being, but also the upside, because I really do think that it's hard to convince organizations to really prioritize this and put in the time and energy—which it does take—without understanding the upside.

And so I think the way you highlighted that in a very practical way was really important and really, really helpful. I'm gonna throw one more question back to Annastiina. If there's one thing that you would want to leave all the listeners with, what would that be?

Annastiina Hintsa: I would actually probably go back to the beginning of the conversation around identity, and making sure that you take the time to define what success really means to you—not just at work or on the track, but off track, outside work, and being really explicit about it. Being really, really honest to yourself and explicit about how you define success for you.

Amanda Raad: I love it. Thank you so much Annastiina. We could have seven volumes of this for all the areas of life.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Absolutely. And I think with the Christmas period coming up, it's probably quite a nice time for people to sit back and reflect, where the plant, the machinery, and everything is turned off—at least for some people—and to have that break and reflect on what identity is, and if they remember who they are, if they know who they are, and, if not, what it means to get there. If listeners are looking to explore that a little bit more, where can they find out a bit more about you and your work?

Annastiina Hintsa: Simply on our website, actually. So Hintsa.com. Please don't hesitate to get in touch; we'd love to hear from you. And a super easy place to start, for instance, would be just to do our well-being assessment, which is a short survey that will give you a snapshot of all of the different elements, including that core, those three key questions, but also our six elements of health and well-being as a foundation.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Amazing. So many interesting points to focus on in Christmas and as people go into the new year. Maybe it's a new start, and a new chance to get things moving in a slightly different direction. So, thank you so much for coming on board, for sharing your stories, and methods, and ideas, and, I think, equipping us all with a bit of a toolkit to at least start that exploration.

Annastiina Hintsa: The fresh start effect is real. I know we make fun of New Year’s promises, and there are good reasons why we do that. But the fresh start effect is real. And it's a great time to reflect and think about, "Hey, what's that one little thing that I could tweak that would have the biggest cascading impact on my life?"

Nitish Upadhyaya: Well, we can't leave our listeners with anything better than that—a bit of inspiration and motivation to start the new year with, when it does arrive. Thank you so much, again. And we look forward to hearing from you again soon, with more of your wise words on how we can  balance and use well-being for even higher performance.

Annastiina Hintsa: Thank you.

Amanda Raad: Happy holidays. Happy New Year. Thank you so much, Annastiina.

Annastiina Hintsa: Thank you both. It was a really wonderful conversation. Happy holidays.

Nitish Upadhyaya: And from us as well. And we'll see you on the other side, for some more Culture & Compliance Chronicles episodes. Thank you all for tuning in to the latest episode in our Culture & Compliance Chronicles series. For more information about our series and any of the ideas discussed today, take a look at the links in our show notes.

You can also subscribe to the series wherever you regularly listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Amanda, Richard, and I will be back very soon for our next chapter. If you have topics you'd like us to cover, or novel perspectives you want everyone else to hear about, get in touch. Thanks again for listening. Have a wonderful day. And stay curious.

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Show Notes:

• https://www.hintsa.com/method
• https://www.amazon.co.uk/Core-Better-Life-Performance/dp/9510417386