Brittney Maxfield, VitalSmarts1

Public Relations Manager
Provo - UT United States

The big idea: In 25 words or less, please tell us how this Fast 50 Nominee is helping to address the planet's problems.

VitalSmarts, an innovator in corporate training and home to the New York Times bestsellers, Influencer and Crucial Conversations, is solving entrenched problems through strategic behavior change.

Please describe how this nominee is using business as a force of positive change. What technology, idea, or strategy is the nominee using -- and what problem, such as global warming, poverty, or pollution, does it address? (suggested length: 100 words)

VitalSmarts is a mission driven organization that aspires to help individuals, groups, and organizations become measurably more vital. To fulfill this mission, VitalSmarts conducts groundbreaking research and builds products and services that teach people skills to achieve life-changing results in both their professional and personal lives.

Positive change for groups and organizations:
VitalSmarts produces award-winning training solutions that teach strategies and skills for driving rapid, sustainable, and measurable behavior change that leads to improvements in engagement, quality, productivity, safety, and other key performance indicators. Products include: Crucial Conversations®, Crucial Confrontations™, and Influencer Training™. Each product is based on more than two decades of research.

To date, VitalSmarts’ products have been implemented in 300 of the Fortune 500 companies and more than 2 million people worldwide have been influenced by the company’s books, training, and research.

Influencer Training
VitalSmarts’ latest product, Influencer Training, is set to become one of the training industry’s premier solutions for solving the most profound problems corporate and cultural leaders are facing. The program teaches proven strategies to uproot entrenched habits and drive rapid and sustainable behavior change in individuals, teams and entire organizations.

To arrive at the tested and proven model for influencing behavior, VitalSmarts executives traveled the world in search of modern-day change agents who have solved world-class problems. They met a man who prevented more than five million cases of AIDS in Thailand, another who eradicated a debilitating disease in 11 countries in Africa, and a woman who successfully rehabilitated more than 14,000 hardened criminals. What they discovered is that each of these leaders used the same strategy to achieve profound change.

Influencer Training combines the same model used by the world’s greatest change agents with more than five decades of the best social science research to teach people strategies for influencing human behavior and making change not only possible, but inevitable.

Eradicating Cultures of Silence
VitalSmarts’ research has been the catalyst to eradicating dangerous corporate cultures.

In 2005, VitalSmarts released a study called Silence Kills that revealed 84 percent of healthcare professionals regularly see coworkers take dangerous shortcuts and 88 percent work with people who show poor clinical judgment; and yet, only one in 10 physicians and nurses ever confront their coworkers about these concerns. This culture of silence is the leading factor in poor employee morale, declining patient satisfaction, and the rise of avoidable and fatal medical errors. By implementing Crucial Conversations Training—a course that teaches people skills to speak up in high-stakes, risky, and emotional situations—more than 75 leading healthcare organizations across the United States have experienced dramatic results to vital matters of patient care.

In 2006, VitalSmarts released a study called Silence Fails. The study revealed that major business initiatives, projects, and programs fail at a rate of 85 percent when leaders don’t communicate effectively around five common business issues. This stifled communication is the root cause behind corporate America’s failure to execute on their major product launches, deliverables, and initiatives. The study revealed that leaders who were skilled at holding crucial conversations improved their project performance by 50 to 70 percent.

Positive change for individuals:
VitalSmarts’ business model is also designed to inspire widespread change in individuals around the world. This is accomplished through three New York Times bestsellers written by the company’s cofounders. The bestsellers include: Crucial Conversations, Crucial Confrontations, and, Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. Each book enables individuals to make their world a better place by increasing their personal influence, improving their relationships, achieving career, family, and personal goals, and replacing destructive and unproductive habits with positive, life-changing behaviors.

To date, the books have been translated into more 19 languages and have sold more than 1,000,000 world-wide.

What are the results, both financial and social? How has the nominee's business performed, and what impact has it had on the problem it addresses? (suggested length: 100 words)

VitalSmarts’ growth and success has been recognized by industry associations and the business community. VitalSmarts was recently named Business of the Year by the Association of Learning Providers and has been ranked twice on the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America with a three-year sales growth of 432 percent in 2005, and a three-year sales growth of 308 percent in 2006.

VitalSmarts’ crowning achievement is funding and participating in worthwhile charitable causes that bless the lives of families, reduce suffering, and strengthen communities. VitalSmarts annually contributes at least 1 percent of its total revenue to worthwhile charitable efforts. The company’s flagship cause is Unitus, a not-for-profit micro credit organization. To date, VitalSmarts has contributed $203,654.00 to help Unitus end world-wide poverty.