I sit on the London Underground sometimes and watch people’s faces. Jean Moncrieff, CEO of the Small Giants community, described it perfectly in our recent conversation: “Almost looking like zombies. They can’t wait to get out of work. They hate Monday.”

Beneath that visible misery lies an even darker reality. This week, I learned that one in three Canadian workers face food insecurity. They literally don’t have enough to eat while working full-time jobs.

This is where we are right now: Work has become one of the biggest sources of suffering for people.

This is why I’ve dedicated the second half of my life to changing that, helping organizations move from performance anxiety to human flourishing, to democratizing wellbeing so it’s accessible to everyone.

The Gap We Refuse to See

Zeynep Ton at MIT’s Good Jobs Institute has documented a reality that should shake every business leader: In Cleveland, a single parent with one child earning minimum wage ($15-16/hour) needs to make $29-30/hour just to cover basic living expenses. That’s double and it doesn’t include cell phone bills, taxes, or medical emergencies.

So people work two or three jobs. They become “unreliable.” Manufacturing and retail see 30-70% attrition rates.

And the story most people tell is they’re just unreliable workers. It’s so hard to find a reliable worker. But maybe the story is that they don’t make enough. We’re not paying them enough. So they have to do two jobs or three jobs, which makes them unreliable because they’re just trying to do the best that they can.

I recently heard about an executive who proudly supported a local food kitchen, only to discover that one-third of the people being served were his own employees. Another company offered an “amazing” health plan that many employees couldn’t afford because they didn’t earn enough to pay even their portion of the premiums.

I think there is a cognitive dissonance between the senior most leaders versus frontline workers. There is a cognitive dissonance of the suffering that their choices of how to run operations, how to pay, how to set schedules is causing. There’s a fundamental cognitive dissonance.

From the boardroom, these realities remain invisible. But they’re destroying lives.

The Leadership Trap That Keeps Us Stuck

Here’s what surprised me most in my conversation with Jean: The moment he knew his friend Richard Bryan was truly transforming his organization.

“It was only once I got to the stage where I was the stupidest person in the boardroom that I knew we were actually making a change,” Richard had told him.

Think about that. The stupidest person in the room, that’s when you know you’re building something real.

The Leadership Trap That Keeps Us Stuck

It flies in the face of everything we’re taught about leadership. We’re supposed to be the smartest, the most strategic, the one with all the answers. We’re supposed to be the center of everything.

But that’s exactly the trap. As Jean observed: “There’s this fundamental thing about business owners, we try and be the center of everything. And you’ve got to build this really great team around you.”

Without that shift, founders hit what Jean calls the “doom loop”, stuck at the same revenue plateau for years, losing their best people, getting buried in the weeds, unable to see the forest for the trees.

The Survival Mode Epidemic

There’s so many people operating out of this fight flight freeze mode all the time. They’re so busy. They’re so frantic. They’re losing sleep. They’re gaining weight. Relationships are suffering and you find yourself operating from that scarcity mindset, that fear-based mindset where everything is coming down even if the business is reasonably doing well.

People look at a thriving business and think, “Wow, look at that success.” But the founder is waterboarding, gasping for breath, trying to keep it all together.

Here’s the truth that research makes crystal clear: The business is a projection of you. If you’re in survival mode, the business will be in survival mode.

You don’t have to look at the financials of the business. You don’t have to look at the revenue, the profits, the customer. Look at yourself. How are you feeling in this moment right now?

Are you excited to take on each day? Do you sleep energized by what you accomplished? Or do you operate from “Oh my God, here we go again”, drained, feeling like there’s never enough time?

All the research is so clear. When you’re flourishing, when you’re happier, when you’re operating from a place of resilience, driven by purpose, you will operate better. You will have higher results, but you have to start with yourself.

A Different Operating System

So what’s the alternative?

The Small Giants community, a network of purpose-driven business leaders, offers a fundamentally different approach. Paul Spiegelman’s “circle of growth” is deceptively simple:

Start with clear purpose → Reinvest revenue into people → Put people first → Watch customer relationships transform → Experience higher margins → Reinvest in people again.

His company sold at 22x multiples in an industry where 7-8x was standard. Not because he chased growth, but because he stayed true to purpose and invested in people.

These aren’t utopian fantasies. They’re profitable businesses. Jean reminded me: “You have a very clear purpose of where you’re going, you’re making revenue, but you reinvest that revenue into your people and you put your people first. That then feeds into the relationships with the customers. If you’re looking after your people really well, the relationships with the customers are far, far better.”

The Mission That Matters

Jean and I kept returning to the same question: How do we change this? How do we transform work from a source of suffering to a pathway for flourishing?

For me, the mission is clear: We are all about how can we help democratize flourishing? How can we really help transform ways of working so that people can flourish through their work, not outside of it? And work doesn’t become one of the biggest sources of suffering for people. And that’s where we are right now.

The Mission That Matters

Jean’s vision for Small Giants aligns perfectly: to 10x the community’s impact over the next three years by connecting like-hearted leaders globally creating what he calls “beacons on the hill” that show other companies a different way forward.

As he beautifully put it: “I want the small giants community to be all of these beacons around the world, showing other companies how to do this differently so that our children are going to these fabulous purpose-driven, values-oriented companies.”

The Choice in Front of Us

Most people play this if then else game. If I get this, then I’ll be happy. Then I’ll change my life. Then I’ll do all these things. The research is so clear. That’s a never ending game. You can choose to be happier, satisfied now. And from that place, set an aspiration of where you want to go and you will be more successful. Happier people are more successful, live longer, are more adaptable, more resilient.

But nobody is coming to save you. Only person who can save you is you.

And you don’t have to do it alone. That’s what communities like Small Giants represent, that’s what we’re building at Happiness Squad. Companies that are purpose-driven, people-first, profitable, and committed to staying true to their mission rather than chasing every vanity metric.

Jean’s advice to his younger self resonates: “Be far more intentional about what it is that you’re trying to create, what that purpose is, and be true to your values.”

The question isn’t whether work can be a source of flourishing instead of suffering. Companies are already proving it’s possible and thriving as a result.

The question is: What needs to shift in how you’re operating today?

Learn more about Jean Moncrief on LinkedIn.

Listen to the podcast with Ashish and Jean Moncrief below, You can also listen on Apple Podcasts.

Access and subscribe to all of the episodes of the Flourishing Edge Podcast here.

Make Flourishing Your Competitive Edge.