Jon Jones: The Mindful CEO

Jon Jones is a business executive by trade and a guiding light by nature. The culture at the wealth management firm he co-founded with Charles Brighton 25 years ago, Brighton Jones, is a mix of spiritual, practical and, when appropriate, lighthearted. Acronyms such as “MESI” and “RLP” spill from his tongue like a free-flowing river.

“Let’s call it the ‘x-y axis’ of what we call psychological safety,” Jones says. “The x is creating a place where people just love and trust each other. And then the y access, let’s call it performance accountability. But if you have too much performance accountability, you may be accomplishing a ton of things, but it may not be rewarding for people. But if you just have psychological safety, it’s kind of like folly.”

Jones has introduced several concepts at Brighton designed to improve performance and boost individual satisfaction. He created MESI (Mindfulness, Emotional, Social Intelligence), a mental fitness program, and RLP (Richer Life Partners), which seeks to empower employees and clients. Jones, a Washington State grad and former WSU board of trustees member, even helped the college develop a MESI certificate program.

“It’s a pretty big platform that really helps drive better outcomes for people,” says Jones, a certified MESI coach. “We can either act on autopilot, or we can slow down and think about what’s happening.”

Brighton Jones has appeared on Seattle Business magazine’s list of Best Companies To Work For the past 16 years.

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I think values are probably the most important piece to any business if they actually have them. When people are living in alignment with their values, they’re probably thriving more.

We have what we call our six C’s. Commitment, Curiosity, Continuous growth, Compassion, Collaboration, Community. Compassion is probably the most important. We all get reviewed on them. I get reviewed on them.

Can you figure out where you have common agreement? Identify the point of disagreement and then say, well, here’s the decision we’re making and now, as the team goes, so do I. It doesn’t do any good to start rowing in a different direction if you’re in the same boat.

One percent of our revenue, not profit, goes toward charity. A lot of people do nonprofits, but that’s like contingent compassion, I think, because if you don’t have profits, you’re not giving your money away. So, we do 1% of revenue. I think that’s really important.

We have this thing called the Giving Game, where clients and people can present their organizations that they want us to support. Most of what we give away is related to clients’ and our teammates’ organizations. But they have to be involved with them.

Volunteering isn’t optional. We are all required to volunteer. Where you volunteer is up to you.

Perks are probably a bottom-up thing. It’s people wanting something that they ask for. Generally, my response would be yes, why not?

I think perks are nice to have, and they can be differentiators, but they’re not what keep people at companies. I don’t know if they’re really attracting people to companies, either.

If you think of physical fitness, sometimes you’re in better shape than others. We think mental fitness is the same way. Sometimes I’m just in a better mental mind state than I am at other times. Think of MESI as your workout program to have better mental fitness so that you can thrive.

I can either be really mad and upset or whatever I’m feeling relative to something that’s out of my control, or I can take more control over my response to life happening to me.

Our definition of leadership is inspiring each other to achieve shared goals. They can’t be top-down goals and they can’t just be bottom-up goals. We’ve got to figure out how we are aligned on everything we’re doing, and then how do you go about inspiring people to achieve those goals?

One of the things that we do pretty regularly is we draft a vision statement. Our latest one is called Thrive to 25. It’s a document written as if it’s 2025. It’s like, “Hey, look at all the great things that we accomplished in 2023, 2024, and 2025.”

It’s about helping people clearly see the direction of where you’re going and getting input and saying, “We collectively drafted this, and we collectively owned it and updated it.” This is not leadership’s document. This is our document.

The backside of it is a workbook for everybody to document how are they going to personally thrive in these areas: work, play, physical, social, and emotional well-being, and compassion in action. Everybody can score themselves and think about what their own personal Thrive to 25 looks like.