Brad Weinberg is the Chief Fit-Technician of Providence-based Shape Up The Nation, the leading provider of team-based corporate wellness programs to large corporations. Brad will be debuting Shape Up the Nation's new social-networking functionality at the Providence Geeks Dinner on Wednesday Sept. 24th 5:30-9pm. Details and RSVP here .

Did your parents ever ask you: "if [fill in name of your friend] jumped off a bridge, would you?".  Were you tempted to say yes?  Our peers have an incredible influence on our behavior.  10x more powerful than any advertising.  How many times have you dismissed a product (i.e. a movie) only to hear a good review from a friend and try it.  Two studies recently published in the New England Journal of Medicine written by Nicholas Christakis illustrate the strong influence our peers can have on weight loss and smoking cessation.  The studies showed that we lose (and gain) weight together, we smoke (and stop) smoking together - sometimes even if we are separated by 3,000 miles!

Motivators can be classified as: emotional or tangible, positive or negative, and personal or peer driven. The setting of these motivators highly effects their strength: are the motivators clear (i.e. is there a set goal), are they regularly tracked, what is the accountability mechanism, and if peer driven, how "close" are you to the peer.

Our program is designed to focus on close-peer motivators and has strong accountability mechanisms with layers of failover.  What does this mean: people form teams with their friends.  They don't want to let their friends down.  We don't connect people to people they don't know - that doesn't work well!  Members can see if their team members
are reporting.  And because teams are five to eleven people, someone is going to remind the "slackers". This creates a very powerful motivational situation.

We apply these same principals to our business.  Every team member sets their goal(s) for the next week on Friday and discusses them with their direct supervisor on Monday morning.  We post if team members met all of their goals for the prior week on our Star Board.  The most powerful incentive is a strong team/company culture.  When our team
members are working for the team and not just a paycheck - the team can achieve another level of performance.  We walk the talk and truly give our employees the opportunity to "join the team" by earning equity in the company.  We are still working at it but we try to live our motto: live a good life, a healthy life, together.

We hope to see you at the Providence Geeks Dinner on Wednesday the 24th! Details and RSVP here.

Click Here to see a PBN interview with Brad.