The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • What I wish I knew 20 years ago

    StonesHere’s a great article by Peter Grazier who has worked with employee involvment for 25 years:

    When I began working with employee involvement concepts in 1980, I was unbelievably ignorant of the human dimension of organization performance. As a degreed engineer, most of my training had been in the “hard” sciences and left little time for other subjects. I did attend some of the required courses in the humanities such as History of Art, but never in six years of higher education did I receive training in what I call Human Dynamics.

    My education finally came with my entrance into the world of employee involvement. And, to say the least, my beliefs about how organizations operate (or should operate) have changed significantly.

    He goes on to his three key learning points:

    1. Everyone has something to contribute…and will if the environment is right.
    2. The human element of performance is more important than the technical element.
    3. Most decisions can be significantly improved through collaboration.

    I like it, and I agree completely! Not only will this get people involved – it will also make them happy at work.

  • A question for ya: Three tips for you

    QuestionI recently asked which three tips you would give your boss.

    Here’s a sneaky follow-up: What three tips would your boss and co-workers give you, to make yourself happier at work, if they could freely speak their minds?

    Drop a comment, I’d really like to know.

  • Monday Tip: Why do we like our jobs

    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsYour mission for this monday is to have a conversation with another person in your workplace about this topic: What do we like about working here?

    Possible subtopics could be:

    • Which people do we appreciate
    • What do we like about our jobs
    • What’s the best thing about working here

    Do it over lunch, coffee, cigarettes, in a break, or…

    The Chief Happiness Officer’s monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.

    Previous monday tips.

  • F***ing cool

    Kevin Briody doesn’t want people to think that his products are good:

    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.

    That’s what I want for my book. That’s it, exactly!!!!!!!!

    Via Kathy Sierra who once again outdoes herself with the graphic she made for her post on this topic.

    Do you think creating something that arouses this level of passion in your customers/users might make you happy at work? I think it might :o)

  • Work-life balance links

    Work-life balanceI’ll round of the Work-Life Balance theme this week with a few good links about it from other blogs:

    Tim King on work-life balance and thought work

    You can’t see a thought-worker’s thoughts, so you can’t measure them. You have to measure what you can see, and you have two choices. You can measure results, or can you measure how much time the worker spends sitting in his chair. But here’s the twist! The act of measuring the time spent sitting in the chair changes what results are achieved. And the act of measuring results changes when and for how long the thought-worker sits in his chair.

    You have one life

    For the longest time, I lived my life in two compartments. There was “work life??? and “personal life,??? all kept in place by an ever-teetering Work-Life Balance. What a silly concept. It’s actually a euphemism for “I don’t intend to let my job take over all aspects of my life,??? which of course can’t be said out loud in many companies.

    Work-life imbalance

    My friend told me an atrocious story. Actually, she told me a few of them, but I’m only going to share one of them with you right now.

  • I’m sitting here but I’m blown away!

    This is awesome: Last night I write a post that I could really use some help in evaluating my book on happiness at work. 12 hours later, almost 40 people have signed up to help. This absolutely rocks!!! This is why I blog.

    I’ve always believed that everything we need is all around us – if we dare look for it instead of always struggling alone.

    I have one more question for you: A cover. I asked the incredibly talented Lone Ørum to come up with something, and here’s my favorite of her suggestions. What do you think?

    Book cover?
    Click for larger size

    This is only a draft, so the image is a little choppy. What do you think?

  • Help me evaluate my book

    Happy At Work BookAlrighty – my book about happiness at work is aaaaaaalmost there. Now I could really use your opinion and feedback.

    I’m doing my final write-through this week and I’m incredibly happy with it. Either this is a friggin’ great book or I’m seriously deluded. But why don’t you tell me which it is :o)

    UPDATE: I’m totally blown away here, and I think over 40 people giving feedback is probably as many as I can handle, so I’ve closed the sign-up. Thank you to everyone who’s signed up to give feedback. I’m really excited about showing you the book and to hear what you think!

    This monday my wonderful girlfriend and I are leaving for a short vacation in London. If you’d like to review this release candidate (nerd humor, I apologize) of the book, write a comment on this post. That way I get your email adress (don’t worry, it won’t appear on the site).

    Then we’ll do it like this:

    1. On monday November 6 I’ll email an electronic version of the book to all the people who’ve signed up.
    2. You pick the one chapter that you find the most interesting and read it and give me feedback on it. You’re more than welcome to read the entire thing of course, but focus on one chapter so you can give me some thorough feedback on it.
    3. Forget all about spelling, grammar, typos and punctuation, I’m going to get some pros to fix all of that.
    4. Focus on the contents of one chapter, and please answer the following questions for me:
      • What do you really like about this chapter?
      • What could be better? Are there any holes in the contents or the arguments in the chapter? Something I need to focus more on? Some point I should elaborate more on?
      • Does anything seem redundant? Something I can safely cut out?
      • What is your overall impression? Is this chapter ready to go into the book?
      • If you were to write a three-line review of the book based on what you’ve read, what would it say?
    5. Be honest. If you love it, say so. If you think it sucks, say you love it anyway :o) Just kidding – if you absolutely hate it or see something you don’t like, tell me – I’m a big boy, I can take it.
    6. Write your feedback in the text document I’ll include and mail them back to me no later than friday November 10.

    I’ll then do the final rewrite that same weekend and provided that I don’t need to make too many changes, the book will go out to proofreading the monday after and to printing later that week.

  • Journey into leadership: Bullet points!

    New leaderThis post is part of a series that follows A.M. Starkin, a young manager taking his first major steps into leadership. Starkin writes here to share his experiences and to get input from others, so please share with him your thoughts and ideas.

    This will be the Great Starkin Bulletpoint Post – I simply want to say too much.

    By the way, as mentioned in a comment, I am HAPPY to see people wanting to think and comment on what I am writing here. My primary reason for posting is to let thoughts on practical leadership evolve and mutate, so the more the better! So far it’s mostly all about helping me, and that is totally completely outstandingly fantastic! Each comment makes me think, and I should probably feed a lot more back if I had the time.
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  • There is no work-life balance

    Work-life balance
    One of the few moments in my life where I’m almost
    guaranteed not to be thinking about work.
    And that’s exactly how I like it.

    The Work-Life Balance theme continues all week on the blog in honor of the Danish National Work-Life Balance Week. Previous posts on the topic here.

    I previously reported on an an interview with Lotte Bailyn of MIT, who works to:

    …rethink aspects of work in such a way that employees are able to live up to their highest potential in their work, and are also able to integrate their work with their personal lives. That is what we call the dual agenda.

    That’s interesting work, and one of the most interesting things is that they specifically DO NOT talk about work-life balance:

    We specifically do not use the term “balance” because it connotes that these two domains in people’s lives have to be equal; that it’s a balance scale – hence if one goes up, the other goes down. The underlying premise of our work is that this need not necessarily be so. We talk about “the integration of work and personal life” to show that work is also part of life. The term “work-life” implies that somehow the two are different, and of course they are not. Work is obviously an important part of life but shouldn’t be the only part.

    That’s a very good point. Actually, I’d take it one step further. Looking at my own life, I certainly don’t see a work life and a private life. I just see one life, mine, being expressed in different aspects. And these aspects are so mixed and so mutually dependent, that it makes no sense to attempt to separate them. They are already as integrated as they can be, and there seems to be no time where I am 100% at work or 100% off work. I’m always just me, living my life.

    If I could only work from 9 to 5 on weekdays and only “live” the rest of the time I would be much less happy than I am today. But then again, I’m an entrepreneur and self-employed. I have no demands on me, except for my own. If I had a boss (shudder) to report to, it might be a very different story.

    That may be why some people who live like this find that work takes over and leaves little or no room for their private life. But that’s not integration, that’s more like disintegration :o)

    What do you think? Do you prefer a clear separation between work and non-work? Do you want balance or integration?

  • Happy at work at DFD

    Work-Life BalanceThis week’s theme on the blog is work-life balance in honor of the Danish National Work-Life Balance week. Read my previous posts on the topic.

    I was at a party last saturday, and even when there I could’t stop talking about happiness at work. How’s that for not being able to separate work and “free time” :o)

    Which was great ’cause I met a lady who works for De Forenede Dampvaskerier (DFD), a Danish laundry and cleaning company that employs 2.500 people. She told me that DFD has a rather extreme policy: Employees are hired to work 37 hours a week, and are expected NOT to work any more than that.

    Leaders make a round of the offices around quitting time to make sure that everybody leaves. You can’t answer emails or phone calls outside the company. If you consistently work more than 37 hours a week, you will be called to a meeting with your manager, who will ask what’s wrong and how they can help.
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