The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • International Quit-Your-Crappy-Job-Day

    Wake up!

    I had a straaaaaaange idea the other day: What if every single person on the planet who doesn’t like their job quit on the same day? Let’s call it International Quit-Your-Crappy-Job-Day.

    Yeah, yeah, I know, chaos would ensue because all the bad jobs are now not being done. Garbage wouldn’t get picked up, sewers wouldn’t be cleaned, etc. etc. etc. But… many garbage men love their jobs. So do many airport baggage handlers, inner city teachers, taxi drivers and other holders of jobs that many think “must be awful”.

    So maybe it’s not the jobs. Maybe it’s the workplaces, the managers, the culture, the whatever that make people hate their jobs… And maybe if all the people who hate their jobs quit at the same time, John Smith, the CEO who runs SmithCo with an iron fist and who just lost 63% of his employees would be forced to rethink his ways. Or would simply be out of business.

    This would be the ultimate, very loud wake-up call for every company where employees hate the boss, hate work, are bullied, are sexually harassed, are discriminated against and/or only come in for the pay check.

    And maybe on the same day where the mortuary worker quits the job he’s hated for years, that job as a park ranger becomes free and he can finally get that job outside in the fresh air he’s always dreamed about. The park ranger gets the bartending job he wanted, the bartender becomes a cab driver and the cab driver goes to work in the mortuary.

    Remember: One person’s dream job is another person’s living hell. The longer you stay in that crappy job, the longer you’re keeping someone who might actually love it from getting it.

    This is not an actual proposal for action. This is more of gedankenexperiment.

    What do you think?

  • Quote

    Work is much more fun than fun.

    – Noel Coward

  • Monday Tip: Leave early for work – and smile

    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsHere’s your mission this monday: Leave early for work so you have plenty of time to get there. Then smile at everyone along the way.

    If you’re in a car be extra courteous to everyone around you – give some other driver a great morning.

    If you commute by bike, bus or train smile at people around you and go out of your way to be helpful whenever you can.

    If you’re reading this at work, it’s actually too late to do it today – you can do it tomorrow instead.

    Thank you to my wonderful girlfriend for suggesting this one.

    I’ve long thought that a leading cause of unhappiness at work is a stressful morning commute. You get up in the morning and almost the first thing you do is fight your way through traffic along with other grumpy, barely awake commuters equally bent on getting there five minutes faster.

    If you relax and smile and focus on being helpful to others along the way the commute may take a little longer, but it will be a lot more pleasant and you may arrive at work in a much better mood.

    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. Do you have a suggestion for a monday tip? Write a comment!

  • Let’s not settle for any less any more

    Laughing

    Dan Hersam was inspired by the recent talk of abolishing homework and of a better kind of school to post this great quote:

    If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the onrushing multitude.

    See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for.
    …
    I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.

    – Ralp Waldo Emerson

    Yes!

    And this applies totally to work as well. Who says we can’t create workplaces that are so inspiring, fun and challenging that we’d have to pay people to stay away?

    Who says our workplaces have to be so boring, lifeless and meaningless that we can only get people to show up there by paying them to sacrifice their time and energy at jobs that don’t make them happy?

    Let’s stop doing that, OK? It’s been proven time and again that both schools and workplaces can be fun, energizing affairs that draw people in voluntarily. It’s also been proven that doing this makes them more effective.

    Let’s not settle for any less any more!

  • Is your boss a prison warden or a party host?

    Prison vs. Party

    Here’s a scary tale from the real world:

    When I was just starting out as a legal secretary, I worked for two lawyers who I referred to as Good Boss and Evil Boss.

    Evil boss would never look for a file – he would yell for me to immediately find a particular FILE – which would be on his desk where he kept all of his working files.

    In addition he would go through my in-box after I had left the office and rearrange the stack, move his work up and add new post-it notes with different deadline dates.

    Three drafts to any document was the absolute minimum, and he often wanted to see the previous drafts for him to check my work. Consequently, my wastepaper basket was very organized.

    Source

    The old leadership style of “I’m the boss, you must do whatever I say” is being challenged by a different style which is more about supporting people to let them create results.

    While the old leadership style reminds me mostly of a prison warden, exercising absolute power over his wards, the new leadership role is completely different. It’s about making people like their jobs. It’s about realizing that people are in fact free to leave at any time.

    In short, the new leadership style reminds me much more of the host of a party. Here’s how the two roles compare:
    (more…)

  • Ask the CHO: Fighting the cult of overwork in upper management

    Ask the CHOStan has some questions about the cult of overwork:

    1) When/where did the cult of overwork start? Or has business/marketing/office work always been a race towards more & more hours?

    2) Upper management at our company work 6+ days a week, have sacrificed their family lives for the past 15 years to build the company, and in general are not a fun bunch. Is it worth trying to change the corporate culture one step at a time, or should we just give up?

    Thanks for the great questions, Stan. Here’s what I think.
    (more…)

  • Happy at work blogs

    Happy ducks (and blogs)Here are my favorite blogs that talk about happiness at work. Enjoy!

    The Lazy Way to Success
    Excellent blog by Fred Gratzon on why hard work is overrated and laziness is a much better path to success.

    Creating passionate users
    One of the best blogs out there in any category, and many of Kathy Sierra’s ideas on creating passionate users apply equally to creating passionate workplaces.

    Work Matters
    Great thinking from Bob Sutton on leadership and organization.

    The Play Ethic
    About play at work and in schools.

    Bernie deKoven’s FunLog
    A great, great blog about play.

    Slow Leadership
    Excellent thinking on a much healthier and sounder form of leadership.

    WorldBlu
    Traci Fenton’s groundbreaking thinking on democracy in the workplace.

    Anecdote
    This company works with stories to create change and seem to keep one eye on happiness at all times.

    Happiness & Public Policy
    On happiness in society in general.

    Have I missed any? Write a comment if you know a good blog about happiness at work!

    UPDATE:
    Added Here We Are. Now What?
    Terry Seamon blogs on leadership, work, change and more.

    Also added The Performance & Talent Management Blog
    Max Goldman’s great blog at successfactors.com.

    And I can’t believe I forgot Make it great
    Where Phil Gerbyshak challenges us all to make it a great day rather than merely a good one!

  • Top 10 tips for productive, creative, fun writing

    Writing unchained
    Well whaddaya know: It’s only been three months since I wrote and posted the first chapter of the happy at work book and now the whole book is done (minus one chapter which is almost done).

    I’m having trouble believing it myself: Not only did I write a book in three months, I’ve also taken a holiday in that time, worked on other projects and done a serious amount of blogging. This means I actually wrote the book in twenty writing days, writing only before lunch.

    So how’d I do it? Well the answer is obvious isn’t it? Clear goals, hard work, perseverance, sticking to it, eliminating distractions and writing no matter what, right?

    Wrong.

    Wrong, wrong, wrong. I tried that. Didn’t work. So I tried the exact opposite and that worked.

    Here are my top 10 tips for fun, creative and productive writing, which can be applied to blogging, writing a book, an article, a report at work, a thesis, a term paper or any other major writing project.
    (more…)

  • Monday Tip: How was your weekend?

    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsYour mission, should you choose to accept it, is reaaaaally simple this monday: Ask at least three people how their weekend was.

    Follow up and ask a few more questions, like “What did you do?”, “How was it” or whatever comes naturally. Spend a couple of minutes and take an active interest in their weekend.

    This simple action shows that you care about your co-workers beyond just the work they do and helps you create lasting, positive relationships at work.

    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.

  • Friday links

    Why happiness is overrated. It can only be a matter of time before companies appoint happiness action officers whose job it will be to patrol workstations with a clipboard: “Jenkins – cheer up or it’s a remedial, wellbeing residential workshop for you. Smith – happy enough!” (via). Heh!

    Microsoft made two training videos with renowned business consultant David Brent (played of course by Ricky Gervais of The Office). Hilarious!
    Video 1 – Video 2. (Via Mathias Vestergaard).
    This is actually a great and entertaining way to get the message remembered – I might even be able to recite the Microsoft values now :o)

    But the funniest fake corporate videos are still the Reebok commercials featuring Terry Tate.

    10 things you could do this friday afternoon. I like number 8-10.

    Oh, the dangers of being self-employed.