The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Book Reviews

My book reviews. Fiction, non-fiction and mainly business literature. These are all excellent books, ’cause I never review the books I don’t like.

  • Book review: Guts!

    Kevin and Jackie Freiberg are the consultants and authors that gave us a wonderful insight into the weird and wonderful (and highly succesful) ways of Southwest Airlines in their book Nuts!. This book has really shaped my perception of what can be done to create a workplace that is both fun and makes money. You may scoff at their alternative business practices and their willingess to promote fun and caring at work, but right now Southwest Airlines is the only major airline in the US that makes any money.

    In Guts!, companies that blow the doors of business as usual, the authors look at more companies that have become succesful by defying traditional business practices. Among the mos well-known are Southwest Airlines and SAS Insititute. The authors argue, that the main ingredient needed to use different strategies is courage, hence the title of the book.
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  • Book review: I moved your cheese

    I’m sure there’s not a single person left in the modern business world who hasn’t read “Who moved my cheese” by Spencer Johnson. So here’s a book that offers the answer to that timeless question of missing cheese: I moved your cheese by Darrel Bristow-Bovey.

    This book is a hilarious spoof of every self-help book out there. It accurately mimics and satirizes the solemn tone, the basic advice and the whole way that the self-help genre takes itself so seriously. I was alternately chuckling and laughing out loud throughout while reading it.

    And if nothing else, it left me with a deep conviction that the book we’re currently writing on happiness at work must not become a self-help book :o)

  • Book review: Love is the killer app

    A killer app is an idea so good, that it simply has to spread. Something so necessary and basic, that you have to adopt it. And according to this book by Tim Sanders, Love is just that.

    I admire people who dare to use the word love in a business setting, and to stick it in the title of the book is down-right gutsy. What’s more, I agree completely. Love is a powerful force in all aspects of life, including business. Here’s what Tim sanders believes you should do to become a lovecat, ie. someone who uses love for business success:
    1: Learn and share your knowledge
    2: Grow and share your network
    3: Show compassion

    See a trend here? This is about giving. About sharing. About focusing on others instead of only on yourself. Tim Sanders shared some of these tips in an excellent article in Fast Company.
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  • Book review: Tyranny of the moment

    Subtitled “Fast and slow time in the information age”, this book by norwegian Thomas Hylland Eriksen details the struggle between two kinds of experiences. Fast time is when you’re doing 10 things at the same time. You’re talking on the phone while reading email, listening to the radio and half-following another conversation in the room. Slow time is when you focus on one thing only. You take time to cook a nice meal, to play with your child or to do nothing.

    Eriksen argues that the information age is geared almost exclusively towards fast time and that consequently we have to make slow time for ourselves. Eriksen also argues that in any contest between fast time and slow time, fast time will win, because it is immediately gratifying and (not least) addictive.
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  • Book review: Smart Love

    I try to gather input for the Happy At Work Project from many sources. Web sites, books, movies, magazines – whatever may give me some new angle on what makes people happy at work. So please don’t read too much into it when I tell you, that I just finished reading a book called Smart Love: The Compassionate Alternative to Discipline That Will Make You a Better Parent & Your Child a Better Person by Martha and William Pieper :o)

    I saw the title, and thought that any alternative to discipline might be a nice thing to know about, in the search for ways to create better work environments. Indeed, much of what is says CAN be transplanted from the world of bringing up children to that of working together on the job.

    The obvious notion NOT to take with you, is the one where managers take on the roles of parents and employees become the children. Where knowledge, authority and responsibility is seen to lie only with some people (those who happen to be leaders) and employees are expected to do as they’re told. Fortunately this mindset is slowly disappearing.
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  • Book review: The crimson petal and the white

    The crimson petal and the white by Michael Faber is a novel that by all rights I should hate. It’s a 900 page long story set in victorian England in which very little happens. I ought to be bored to tears, but in reality the book gripped my like no other book I’ve read recently.

    The reason: The characters. This book is driven almost totally by the people in it, and Faber brings them to life as deep, funny, interesting, sexy, confused, frustrated, brave, cowardly, weird and wonderful. There’s Sugar, the highly skilled prostitute who writes a secret novel in which she kills off innumerable men. There’s William Rackham, the aspiring intellectual who drives himself to take over his fathers perfume business. There’s Williams strange and beautiful wife, who teeters between high society and madness. And there’s a whole host of other human beings (not merely characters), each of whom are brought to life in front of the readers eyes. The result is, that for all their flaws and failings, you end up caring deeply about what happens to them.

    The novel has another quirk: It speaks directly to the reader, and anticipating your every thought, leads you on a tour of Londons victorian stratified society. It lends a wonderful intimacy and drive to the story, and gives you the impression, that here is a tale told just for you. It’s a wonderful book, and I recommend it highly.

  • Book review: The art of happiness at work

    The Dalai Lama knows a thing or two about how to be happy. Not only has he studied buddhist philosophy, psychology, history etc. all his life, he’s also a terribly nice person who has devoted his life to serving others – his own people (the tibetans) as well as the rest of us. In The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living his insights into what makes people happy were paired with those of Howard Cutler an american psychiatrist, to give us a manual of happiness based on eastern and western thought and science.

    For their second collaboration, they’ve decided to look at how to be happy on the job. The Art of Happiness At Work is an exploration of the major issues confronting those of us who have jobs: Topics like stress, boredom, anxiety, meaningless jobs are given a new twist through the insights of the Dalai Lama – a man who has never held a real job. It speaks to the depth of the buddhist knowledge and his ability to apply it, that he can offer profound insights and useful advice to people in circumstances so different from his own.
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  • Book review: The 7 habits of highly effective people

    It’s a little difficult to say someting original about this book. The 7 habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey has been around for a long time, and has infleunced many people’s thinking on leadership and personal and professional development.

    And deservedly so. The book offers insights that make sense and can serve as the foundation for personal growth. What I found most encouraging is that I see signs that much of the thinking of the book is now commonly found in a business setting. It seems that the ideas have spread and have become accepted, especially the very foundation, namely that professional success can (or maybe even must) come from personal development. To become a better worker, become a better person is the message that’s been spread by many books, and most effectively by “7 habits”.

  • Book review: No contest

    Competition is bad. It is a determining factor shaping human interaction almost everywhere eg. in education, in the workplace in hobbies and even in our social lives, but the net result of competing is negative.

    Life for us has become an endless succession of contests, From the moment the alarm clock rings until sleep overtakes us again, from the time we are toddlers until the day we die, we are busy strugglinh to outdo others. This is our posture at work and at school, on the playing field and back home. It is the common denominator of American life.

    This is the central argument of Alfie Kohn’s excellent book No Contest, The Case Against Competition. In the book, he takes on many of the myths of competion, especially that competition is an unavoidable aspect of human nature (built into us at a biological/genetic level) and that it drives us to better performance.
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  • Book review: The art of happiness

    The Art of Happiness starts out by defining the role of happiness in our lives:
    I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So I think the very motion of our life is towards happiness…

    Howard Cutler got the enviable assignment of sitting down for a series of meetings over a copule of years with the Dalai Lama, and the result is this book. The style is true east meets west as Cutler, a psychologist, seeks to combine his understanding of the mind with the spiritual practices of the tibetan buddhism practiced by the Dalai Lama.
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