About the book

The book aims to convince you that:

• Each and every one of us can be happy at work
• Being happy at work will not only make work more fun, it will also improve your quality of life outside of work and make you more successful
• Happy businesses are much more efficient than unhappy ones so happiness makes great business sense
• Happiness at work is not rocket science – what it takes to make yourself and your workplace happy is simple to do

Structure

The book is structured around the three basic questions we must remember to ask about any important topic:

1. What – What is happiness at work anyway
2. Why – Why does happiness at work matter to you and me and to our workplaces?
3. How – So, how exactly can we make ourselves and others happy at work. What works, what doesn’t?

The book dives particularly deeply into the “How?” question, and offers specific, simple, practical, effective tools you can use to make yourself and others happy at work. These methods have all been tested at other successful and happy organizations and are simple and fast to implement.

Cases

The book refers to many real-life cases of companies who have achieved success through happiness. I know it’s normal in business books to preface every business case with a list of that company’s successes, you know something like:

Hansen & Co. are the only company in the world to have achieved triple-digit growth 25 years running.

Their stock price has risen from 10 cents to 452 $ and is still a “strong buy” recommendation from all investment advisors.

They have expanded from their humble beginnings in the founder’s garage in 1972, to a complex taking up half the buildings in lower Manhattan.

The owner is now richer than Bill Gates and 3 out of 4 employees retire as millionaires on their stock options befire they turn 40.

Or something similar. Not only do these litanies of amazing accomplishments get boring after a while, they also make it look as if it’s all about the money. And lastly: The company may be successful, but who knows why? The reason for their success could be innovation, timing, happiness, wise investments or sheer, unadulterated blind luck. Who knows?

Can we just assume, that if I use a company as a case for this book then:

1. They are doing phenomenally well
2. They believe themselves that the main reason they are doing so well is happiness at work. They may not call it that, but that’s really what it’s about.