Last week, an editorial in one of Denmark’s leading newspapers took aim at yours truly. Here’s the introduction:
Enforced mirth
The title alone guarantees some mirth: Chief Happiness Officer – senior happiness comissioner.The line between embarrassing and funny may be a fine one, but you certainly can’t take a title like that seriously.
Truth to tell, among many other ridiculous titles, it has to be a candidate for some award: stupidest title of the year or something like that.
(source)
It goes on at some length…
When I first spotted this editorial it made me sad. Nobody likes to be criticized – I certainly don’t – and this criticism seemed both unfair and a little malicious to me.
A blog comment like this one is another good example. They’re very rare, but they do crop up occasionally.
As I was thinking about how to react to the editorial, I remembered this graph by Kathy Sierra:
In one of her very best posts (and that’s saying something) Kathy talks about the physics of passion saying:
You don’t really have passionate users until someone starts accusing them of “drinking the koolaid.” You might have happy users, even loyal users, but it’s the truly passionate that piss off others enough to motivate them to say something. Where there is passion, there is always anti-passion… or rather passion in the hate dimension.
This means that the kind of criticism I got in that editorial is great news. It is a sign that my message is sharp enough that some people take an active dislike to it. They may not care for it – but they care!
If all I got was negative feedback it would probably be time to rethink my work in happiness, but fortunately it’s not all hate – far from it! Many, many people tell me that they enjoy my book, blog and presentations and have used them actively to become happier at work.
I think we can all use Kathy’s excellent reminder to do two things:
1: Whatever you’re doing, get yourself and others passionate about it. Your project, product, company, process, leadership, work, salesmanship – whatever you’re doing will go better with passion.
This means that your message can be anything but bland. Don’t set out to actively piss people off – that’s just crude. But if you’re pleasant, moderate, mild and soft-spoken you also run the risk of being utterly forgettable. No one will oppose you – but no one will be passionate about whatever it is you do either. That’s why you must hone your message to the point where it’s possible to be passionate about it.
2: When people get negative about you, remember that this is part of the process. As Kathy puts it:
Should you ignore the detractors? Diss them as nothing but evidence of your success? Should you just wave them off with a “just jealous” remark? Absolutely not.
Somewhere in their complaints there are probably some good clues for things you can work on. But if you start trying to please them all or even worse, turn them into fans, that could mean death. Death by mediocrity, as you cater to everybody and inspire nobody.
I’d rather go down in flames than risk death by mediocrity. Kevin Briody said it best:
I don’t want their reaction to be a measured, rational, dispassionate analysis of why the product is better than the alternatives, how the cost is more reasonable, feature set more complete, …
I want “f**king cool! Period.
I want that pure sense of wonder, that kid-at-airshow-seeing-an-F16–on-afterburners-rip-by so-close-it-makes-your-soul-shake reaction, that caress-the-new-Blackberry until-your-friends-start-to-question-your-sanity experience. I want an irrational level of sheer, unfiltered, borderline delusional joy.
What about you?
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