The Happy at Work Book is now half finished. It took me eight days of writing, writing only before lunch to get this far. I can’t believe how fast I’ve been writing or how much fun it’s been. I literally have to force myself to take days off from writing on it once in a while :o)
I’m going on vacation next week, so new chapters are coming the week after that. What I’ve covered so far are the basics: The introduction, What is happiness at work, why is it important for people and businesses and who is responsilbe for happiness at work.
I would like to thank everyone who has read and commented on the book so far – it has been both encouraging, motivating and a great help to read your comments. Thank you! If you’d like, you can read the book and leave feedback here.
The next part of the book is about How to make people and businesses happy, and this is where I have a question. You see, the things you can do, the options available to you are fairly different depending on your position at the company. If you’re an employee there are some things you can do, mid-level managers have some other options available to them and top-level execs and business owners some different ones again.
Everything in the book up till this point is relevant for everyone with a job (and everyone who wants one), but now things diverge a little.
The question is this: Should I try to write one book that combines these three viewpoints or what would be the best way to do it? My chief ambition is to keep the book interesting, fun, useful and fairly short.
Please let me know what you think.
I think that writing for all three groups would be useful… but at the very least, write for the employees! :)
For employees, I think, because they are people who will read this book at most.
However many of current clerks may go on and become managers or even executives ;). So I think it will be a good idea to give at least short tips for the latter two (since you have already given one receipt for the employees – Helle’s story).
The important thing for fresh managers is to tell them the difference of making employees happy at work and making friends with them. Many people mix up those, try to become friends, get defeated, and begin to treat people as robots.
If you can find it possible, incorporate all three into this book. Break out into multiple sections such as the introduction for everyone and then have a section for employees, one for managers, and one for executives. That way if a portion doesn’t apply to someone they don’t have to read it, but you can still provide a perspective from those views that some people may not have within a company.
As a fresh manager, I’m getting a lot of insight that works for me at my level but also helps me look at how to help my employees. Being their friend isn’t what I should be doing (as I’m learning the hard way now), but that doesn’t mean I can’t make them happy at work.
I hope you can incorporate those three views into one book, but if you have so much information that you could write seperate books, that may be the best alternative rather than cut out too much.
Thank you guys for the excellent input. Any other thoughts on how to proceed with the book are mist welcome – I’ll be thinking about this next week at the beach :o)
I think definitely all 3 sections are needed because they are so different and it will help a wider variety of people. I think write for all in general and then break off for 3 small seperate sections so that if it isn’t relevant to them they can skip it. The sections shouldn’t be too big because if the reader skips them they may feel they’ve missed half a book. I love this site and it’s definitely refreshing seeing as I’ve worked in customer service most of my life and have been with many a manager that wasn’t exactly looking out for my happiness. Thanks!
Thanks for the advice and the kind words Caitlin – that means a lot to me!