Christian W. Schnepf

The Business of Good Times

Understand why some organizations naturally attract people who perform with energy, trust, and ownership, while others continuously struggle to find, engage, and retain the right people.

We engage with what we find attractive. We block, fight, and run from what we don’t.

As humans, we are motivated to invest energy into things that bring us experiences we desire. Like children playing or teenagers dating. The Good Times—not merely Okay Times where we simply have nothing to complain about.

The more we understand the difference between Good Times and Okay Times, the clearer we can see why people behave the way they do. We begin to realize that many organizational struggles exist because companies optimize for Okay Times while pressuring people to compensate for a lack of intrinsic motivation. In these organizations, people tend to take low ownership, perform only as much as is needed to avoid punishment, and leave as soon as slightly better opportunities arise.

In stark contrast, people perform indefinitely when their organization and community are perceived as direct enablers for the life they genuinely love to live. In these organizations, people are aligned and see each other as comrades, while leaders are trusted with little to no resistance. Individuals take ownership of their role and build innovative, fulfilled teams others want to be part of.

While all organizations are inevitably in the business of Good Times, the ones whose leaders make them a priority connect directly to the source of human energy, while their competitors waste energy internally until collapse. Ultimately, the organizations that prioritize Good Times do not merely survive. They thrive.

Topics:
Leadership; Future of Work; Employee Engagement; Organizational Culture; Performance; Customer Experience; Strategy; Innovation; Technology & AI; Productivity; Trust; Burnout; Workplace Design; Success Metrics.

Key discussion areas:

• The Problem Behind Every Business Problem
• Why People Really Follow Leaders
• The Wrong Metrics
• When Employee Wellbeing Initiatives Help—and When They Hurt

Made for: CEOs; Executives; Leadership Teams; HR Leaders; Founders; Organizations undergoing transformation.

The Science of Good Times

Understand why humans behave the way they do, and what reliably increases life quality across individuals, organizations, and societies.

Why do humans behave the way they do? What truly drives individual and collective behavior? Why do some people and societies prosper at certain times while others collapse?

Christian examines human behavior across cultures and ages through the lens of the universal pursuit of Good Times. By connecting disciplines ranging from sociology and psychology to physics, physiology, and philosophy, he explores the universal principles that shape human development and societal evolution, helping close the gaps in our understanding of how individuals and societies can move toward increasing prosperity and life quality over time.

Topics:
Human Behavior; Evolutionary Biology; Sociology; Life Satisfaction; Economics; Social Trends; Cross-cultural Research; Human Development; Philosophy; Public Policy.

Key discussion areas:

• How Life Satisfaction Can Be Measured Across Cultures
• No Tailoring Needed for Life Design: One Size Fits All—Yet Customized
• The Universal Principles of Human Behavior
• Why and When Societies Rise and Thrive—or Decline and Collapse
• The Science of Good Times: An Interdisciplinary Lens

Made for: Universities; Think Tanks; Research Institutes; Governments; Policy Leaders; Public Sector Organizations.

The Good Time Journey

Understand and be inspired how to intentionally design a life you genuinely love—where today’s moments feel good while creating even better ones tomorrow.

In our pursuit of a good life, growth is often framed as a trade-off: sacrifice now in the hope of experiencing better times one day. Yet more often than not, those trades come with doubts about whether they work out, making them feel more like a gamble than a strategy.

This keynote explores how we can strategically design lives we genuinely love in the present while reasonably expecting them to fuel a future we love as well. Drawing from best practices and insights into human development toward a life of Maximized Good Times, it combines lessons gathered from hundreds of conversations across cultures and ages, one decade of high-performance life coaching, and the Science of Good Times as researched at Shanghai University.

Topics:
Life Design; Personal Growth & Fulfillment; Fitness & Wellbeing; Human Development; Habits; Career; Decision-making.

Key discussion areas:

• What Actually Creates a Fulfilling Life?
• The Biggest Distractions From Living Well
• Growth Without Sacrifice
• A Framework for a Fulfilling Life
• Lessons From Six Years of Full-Time Immersive Intercultural Research as a Nomad

Made for: Leadership Retreats; Personal Growth Conferences; Entrepreneurs; High Performers; Universities; Wellbeing Events.