things that people believe

there simply is no academic research for.

When it comes to brainstorming,

right now around the world companies will all

be getting together to kick around some ideas

and generate some new thoughts.

A terrible, terrible idea.

If you look at the research on brainstorming,

it decreases the number of ideas and the originality

of those ideas by around about 20%.

Why? Because when we all get together,

the most dominant people take charge of the meeting,

and who knew they're not the most creative people

in the world?

A very, very simple change which is that you ask people

to brainstorm on their own to come up

with three innovative solutions before they get together,

and then when you get together you go around the group

and everyone talks about their solutions no matter how crazy

actually increases innovation and creativity.

Again, a very, very simple change.

A very easy change, but a very powerful one.

When it comes to meetings,

often we all like to sit around and we all like,

quite frankly, to waste a great deal of time.

If you stand up in a meeting, a standing meeting,

it doesn't reduce productivity.

What it does do is massively reduce the time of the meeting.

People want to be out of that room quickly,

so they're just as productive in a much, much shorter time.

Also, if you think that a colleague

or maybe a client is not being entirely straight with you,

what's the best thing to do

to try and find out if they're being economical

with the truth?

Well, if you look at the amount

of lying across different types of communication,

you see people lie a lot face-to-face,

a bit less on the phone, a little bit in texting,

but absolutely not in emails.

Only around about 10% of emails carry a lie,

because people don't want to commit themselves to print.

And so If you think someone isn't being entirely straight with you,

just say, "Oh, can you email me about that?"

and instantly you'll find out whether

or not they're being economical with the truth.

At the moment,

we're trying to cut down on sleep as much as possible.

There's an epidemic of sleeplessness

and sleep is absolutely vital.

It underpins productivity, it underpins focus,

it underpins creativity.

What's happening right at the moment

is we're taking our smartphones to bed,

often putting them on our bedside table

and treating them as alarm clocks,

and then, of course, in the middle of the night,

you wake up, I think I'll just check social media

or whatever it is and you get this blast of light,

which actually contains blue light,

which is very disruptive to the production of melatonin,

which is essential for sleep.

And then it really messes up the rest of the night.

So, value sleep.

If there's any way of incorporating a 20-minute nap

into the middle of the day, really good for productivity.

Businesses should be doing that.

Value sleep.