The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • 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.
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  • 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.
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  • 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.

  • How to complain constructively

    Constructive complaining

    Last week I wrote about chronic complainers at work and what to do about them.

    Now, I don’t want anyone to think that I’m opposed to complaining as such. Complaining can be a great tool for initiating change and if we outlaw complaining in the workplace, as some managers try to do, all we do is drive it underground where it becomes even more toxic.

    So we should accept that complaining plays an important role in business, but the key thing here is to know the difference between constructive and unconstructive complaining.

    Here are some of the differences:
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  • How to recieve praise

    Yaaaaay!I’ve been getting a lot of amazingly nice praise recently, which has .given me a chance to practice receiving praise gracefully.

    I use a method that helps me avoid some common mistakes in receiving praise:

    • Don’t explain the praise away – as in “Aaww, it was nothing special”
    • Don’t reject the praise – as in “You don’t need to thank me, I was just doing my job”
    • Don’t ignore the praise – as in “How about them Dodgers!”

    Remember when people take time out to praise you or something you’ve done, it’s nice to accept the praise in the spirit it’s given.

    I recommend this 2-step process for receiving praise:

    1. Shut up
    2. Say “Thank you!”

    Step 3, jumping up and down, pumping your fist in the air while yelling “I’m the MAN!” is optional and should probably be avoided in many situations.

  • A challenge to all managers: Do you know your people?

    How happy?

    I’m going to risk provoking business leaders everywhere and state that any leader worth her salt knows how happy her people are at work. This is a leader’s most basic responsibility. You shouldn’t need to see a pie chart – you should know already.

    The question of “How happy are people in our organization??? is typically handed over to HR who can then distribute a job satisfaction survey that results in a lot of statistics which can then be sliced and diced in any number of way to produce any number of results. You know – “lies, damned lies and statistics???.

    I’m not saying these surveys are worthless. Wait a minute: I am saying they’re worthless. They’re a waste of time and money because they very rarely give a company the information or the drive necessary to make positive changes.

    As I said, you as a leader/manager shouldn’t need a survey to know how your people are doing so I challenge you to a simple exercise. It goes like this:
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  • Fill your office with kids, dogs and happy people

    Christian of think:lab visited a Montana printing company called Printing For Less. Some teasers from his post:

    The first thing you see when you come walk the parking lot to the front door are little kiddos playing under the Montana sky. All employees pay a pitance to have their young kids on site with them.
    …
    Spaces were vibrant. Team members were free to work in a variety of settings. And the place had a learning buzz about it.
    …
    The dog to the right was one of at least 12 that I saw, roaming happily around the Printing For Less offices/halls. Talk about a perk for employees!
    …
    Man, there just weren’t any spaces in the building that didn’t suggest learning, collaboration, experiment, and team.

    Kinda sounds like he liked it, huh?

    And so do I. It’s a nice break from the traditional, sterile office environment that many other businesses think is necessary for productivity and professionalism. I think this type of office atmosphere lets people be themselves and is much more likely to make them happy at work.

    Also check out my previous post about an ad agency that allowed babies and subsequently dogs, cats and other pets to the workplace. Though they did have to draw the line at goats, they found it to be a real boost for the company and for the employees.

    Via Lifestylism.

  • The strongest force in business (no, not money)

    Driving force

    As a leader, manager or executive, what is your driving force in business?

    Think about it for a second. What gets you out of bed in the morning and makes you take that drive to work? What is behind the choices you make? How do you set your goals and ambitions?

    There are many possible answers. Ask a thousand people and you’ll get a thousand different answers. Money would probably show up quite often. So would power, influence, getting ahead, recognition, security and success.

    But I believe that there is one underappreciated driving force in business. One force that spurs people on to stellar results, wise decisions and strong business relationships. One strong force that, when harnessed in your work life, will make you more efficient and let you enjoy work more.

    One that all business leaders everywhere need to know about and build into their businesses at the most fundamental level.

    Curious yet?

    Here it is: The strongest driving force in business is happiness! Yes, happiness at work.
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