The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Happy at work in prisons

    I’m back from the FutureCamp event with the Danish Prison Service and I am exhausted. After 48 gruelling but fun hours, the director of the service could take home an catalogue of a dozen ideas which had been fleshed out and about 50 more that were still hanging in the air.

    The theme was to make the prison service a great place to work. Currently, this is how they see themselves:

    1. People don’t stay long in their jobs
    2. People feeling overworked and stressed
    3. Absenteeism is high
    4. There is little trust and communication between managers and employees
    5. Prison wardens don’t talk to case workers, case workers don’t talk to IT people and nobody talks to the central administration

    Which doesn’t really seem too different from many other workplaces. Of course, working with prisoners does give this workplace some unique challenges, but it also give employees an incentive to stick together and support each other.

    The camp had 40 participants from the prison service, from many different departments and from all levels of the hierarchy. I was called in as an outside expert to participate in the process. Participants were divided into six groups, each of which focused on a specific topic, eg. leadership, relations with inmates, relations with colleagues. I was placed in the group that worked on IT in the prison service, probably because of my background in IT.

    The process itself was quite impressive with illustrators, facilitators, a camera man to film everything and produce movies on the fly and various suprises along the way.

    And what happened was the same things that always happens when you put people together in an inspiring process around an important topic: People got creative. And they got to talking. And they got fired up. I love it when that happens and it’s great to be a part of.

    My favorite part of the whole event happened on the morning of the second day, where they brought in a gospel singer and his keyboard to get everybody up and singing. Now, I’m not much of a singer, but suddenly I found myself hollering with the best of them :o) That was great fun and energized the whole room.

    So what am I taking away from this event:

    1. Give people a chance to talk and magical stuff happens
    2. People ARE creative, anybody saying differently is lying
    3. A lot of ideas can be created and worked on in 48 hours

    I’m also left with a lingering suspicion, that making the event such a huge production makes it more difficult to take home the spirit and the lessons of the event. If it had been more like real work-life, the results would be more easily transferable – which is what we’re really after. *cough* Open Space Technology *cough*.

  • Happy at work at Motek

    I met Motek’s CEO Ann Price at the 2006 WorldBlu Forum on democractic organizations, and her story of how they work at Motek was tremendously inspiring.

    Motek make warehouse administration software and here’s some of the great things they do according to this excellent article in American Way Magazine:

      Parasol

    • Price offers her employees a $5,000-a-year travel benefit for flights, tours, cruises, you name it – but only if they take at least a three-week paid vacation. She gives employees another two weeks off for paid holidays throughout the year and leases luxury automobiles for any employee who has worked at the company for at least 10 years. Then there’s the fact that Price sends employees home at five p.m. sans laptop and locks the doors on the weekend.
    • …every Motek employee has a designated backup available to provide cover while they’re out of the office. The only requirement is to check with the backup to make sure he or she is around before the employee leaves.
    • The company keeps a single to-do list… Anyone can enter an item, including customers and vendors. The list can include everything from ordering ink cartridges to customizing a specific function for a customer. Motek divvies up the tasks at meetings and teams don’t pay any attention to who entered particular items.
    • Price doesn’t cut any corners when it comes to bonding with customers. She designates individuals – from top executives to line workers – heroes for their roles in effecting change at a company that uses Motek’s software. Then she sends out a professional photographer who shoots for Fortune magazine – at somewhere between $8,000 and $15,000 a shoot – to snap their photo, which she then posts on the Motek website. There, you can read all about the person’s achievements and how they were able to deliver superior results.
    • For Price, the endgame isn’t to earn money at any cost. And it isn’t about ruling the software industry. No, Price has bigger ambitions: She hopes to change the world.

    The result: Happiness and profits. Eighty percent of the technical team has been with the company for at least 10 years, compared to an industry average employment span of 18 months. In 2005, Motek’s revenue per employee topped $217,000. Competing firms’ revenue typically ranges from $150,000 to $200,000.

    This is a wonderful story of great, unconventional leadership focused on making employees and customers happy rather than on growth and profits. With growth and profit as the results.

  • The need for structure

    Structure?

    My recent post on how not to manage geeks has sparked a lot of interest and a lot of great comments.

    Right now there’s a very interesting debate going on in the comments about the need for structure in small or large organizations. This debate is great because it goes right to the core of the central dilemma of new leadership and employee empowerment.

    Here are some of the key arguments that have come up:

    Elling writes: I think you’re attacking structures which you can do without in a small company… In a large company there’s a NEED for the structures…

    Jeremy writes: I can anticipate some of this need – the need to account for diverse costs accurately and thoroughly, the need to maintain a standard of output for workers in an organized, fair fashion, etc. – but these play to the weaknesses of large organizations. In other words, large organizations SHOULD be at a disadvantage, and the structures we’re proposing tearing out actually add value only in the sense that MegaCorp is inherently inefficient and out of scale with the market.

    Numeeja writes: …there is NEVER a ‘NEED’ for self-serving, ‘personal progression over departmental improvement’ style work places and managers.

    Thad writes: The place where I work is managed by good people who don’t want to be bureaucratic jerks, but they can’t grasp one simple concept: they are giving me money in exchange for doing something I love–they don’t have to shackle me with schedules and policies to get me to produce! I will be here working my little heart out because *I want to be*. I try to block out the memos and TPS reports and remind myself that those things aren’t really changing what I get to do here, but damn, every time the red tape is thrust in my face it just deflates me and I don’t even feel like trying to design or build something.

    Elling writes: If you have 20 people which you want to pull in the same direction, you NEED to have a manager who’s job it will be to try and ensure that the people in the group DO pull in the same direction… On the other hand, I do realize that there ARE idiot-bastard-managers out there. And I’m not defending them.

    Cityzenjane writes: …small tech teams in my experience – when left to their own devices do a GREAT job of pulling in the same direction, getting behind technical strategic priorities that they have been part of developing.

    First let me say thanks to all who’ve commented. THIS is what blogging is all about – one post sparking many great contributions. I feel lucky to be hosting this dialogue.

    But which is it? Do companies need structure or don’t they? Is less management better than more management? Is management a necessary evil or simply evil? :o)

    Niels Bohr, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist once said:

    The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth

    and that’s exactly what I think we’re dealing with here. Whenever I’m faced with one of these either-or questions, I try to loook beyond the immediate choice, to see if there might exist an answer that transcends the dilemma and includes both. Can we have both personal freedom and structure at work?

    The answer is not only that it can be done, but that many highly succesful companies are actively doing it. The truth is that there needs to be structure for personal freedom to even be possible. But we are talking a different kind of structure. Where the “old” structures are often opaque, rigid and top-down we can instead create new structures that are the exact opposite but perform the same function of coordinating and streamlining people’s efforts. These new structures are transparent, dynamic and participatory.

    Southwest AirlinesCompanies that have done this include business school case classics like Semco, Oticon, Southwest Airlines and GE Aviation. None of them are doing too shabby (understatement alert), and people are really happy at work there. Herb Kelleher, ex-CEO of Southwest, was once asked how he could maintain control when his employees had so much freedom. His answer is classic:

    Control? Never had it. Don’t want it.

    I think we can move forward most efficiently if we shift away from choosing between freedom and structure, and work from the assimption that it’s about choosing both and thus creating a new kind of structure.

    Let me hit you with one last Niels Bohr quote (Yes I’m a fan, dammit):

    How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.

  • Happy babies at work

    PregnantCNN has a great story of a small company who tried an innovative solution when four key employees became pregnant at around the same time:

    We had fewer than 25 employees at the time, and the soon-to-be moms were our head of publicity, a media buyer, the manager of print production, and a senior account executive. Each had client and supplier relationships that were vital to our business. Plus, conducting four executive searches at the same time would be costly.

    So I decided to try something radical. A few months before they left for maternity leave, I invited the women to bring their babies to work when they returned.
    …
    The moms were so thrilled to be close to their babies that none ever dropped the ball when it came to work. When one had to run to a meeting, another babysat. We made sure employees who couldn’t stand the sound of crying babies didn’t sit near the “romper room.”

    As we grew to become the $60-million-a-year company that we are today–we now have 150 employees who fill six historic homes in Austin and an office in New York City–additional moms and even dads brought their babies to work.
    …
    So far, 33 babies and a small army of dogs have “grown up” at our company. I can’t measure in hard numbers the impact of the goodwill that our family-friendly policies have had on productivity, but our local newspaper routinely names T3 as one of the best places to work in Austin.

    They do have one rule, though: No goats!

    I like this approach (to the babies, not the goats) and I think it has massive potential. It reframes the situation from “Oh no, one of my employees is pregnant, that’ll create huge problems” to “yes, pregnant employee, what fun!”

    BookKirsten Stendevad, a friend of mine, has written two books on the subject. One is about motherhood and how it can be a career boost, rather than a hindrance. The other she co-wrote with her husband Esben Kjaer, and it takes a similar approach to being a father. Both books are only available in danish so far.

    All of this is yet another case of self-fullfilling prophecy. When you approach something as a problem, you make it a problem. Regard the same situation as an opportunity and, well… this story speaks for itself.

    May I add: “Yes! Crisitunity!”

  • Four Fantastic Phrases at work

    Four Fantastic Phrases

    Let’s say you agree with me, that being happy at work is really important. That coming to work day after day, year after year, simply for the paycheck is just not enough. Hey, we spend most of our waking hours at work, so we might as well enjoy it, right?

    Assuming that: What can you do to be happy at work? Specifically, what can you do right here and right now? Something simple, easy and fun, that will make a positive difference for you and your co-workers.

    If that’s where you’re at, there are Four Fantastic Phrases you should know. Four simple things to say that make work a lot more fun. Four phrases whose absence is guaranteed to make work absolutely miserable.

    Here they are:

    1: “Thank you”

    It’s so simple: People are constantly helping each other out at work and doing stuff for co-workers, and a simple “thank you” can really make a difference.

    Take it a step further and praise people while you’re at it. Remember that you can praise people both for what they do and for who they are. As in “Thanks for getting that report to me a day early” or “I really like working with you because you’re so dependable” respectively. Both are good!

    Praise and thank-you’s take no time and cost no money, but really brighten people’s day.

    2: “I’m sorry”

    Let’s face it, we all screw up once in a while. When you do, don’t hesitate to apologize. In fact, the sooner you apologize, the easier it is.

    Some people think apologizing is a sign of weakness, but in reality it shows that you take responsibility for your actions and it makes it easier to move on after making an error. It also shows that you learn from your mistakes, provided, of course, that you don’t keep making the same mistake over and over.

    Most of the time, a mistake is not your fault alone, but you can always take responsilibity for the part that is your fault and apologize for that. When it’s both your fault and somebody else’s fault, apologize first, instead of waiting for the other guy to do it. He may be waiting for you too, you know :o)

    3: “Help”

    Ask for help when you need it. Many people actually like being asked, since it makes them feel appreciated and needed, so there’s a chance to make somebody happy at work right there.

    Also: Offer your help, even when not asked. Some people feel too busy to offer their help, but when we all help each other, we each become more efficient and get more work done. When everybody’s thinking “I really don’t have time to help others” everybody gets less work done, and the statement becomes self-fullfilling.

    4: “Yes, and…”

    A co-worker comes to you with a new idea. “Let’s try a new approach on the Hansen project. Why don’t we [insert new idea here]?” Here are some potential responses:

    • “No, that’ll never work”
    • “Yes that sounds interesting, but we don’t have time for that”
    • “Yes that sounds interesting, and I’d like to hear more”

    No’s and yes-but’s discourage people. It’s a sign that you’re not really open to new ideas. Yes-and means you’re willing to listen and consider new ideas in depth. People love being listened to.

    NB: Yes-and is not about saying yes to everything. If you do that, you’ll never survive :o) Yes-and is about being open to other people’s suggestion instead of immediately rejecting them.

    Four Fantastic Phrases

    So.

    Imagine a workplace where people:

    • Constantly thank and praise each other
    • Apologize freely when they make mistakes
    • Easily offer and ask for help
    • Are always open to each other’s ideas

    That would have to be a nice place to work. On the other hand: Imagine a company where people rarely or never use those four phrases. Scary thought, huh?

    Here’s the deal: Each of the four phrases is contagious. The best way to spread the virus is to use them yourself. The more you thank others, the easier it will be for them to thank you. The more you admit your errors, the more your co-workers can do it too. Etc…

    And start now. Find a co-worker and praise her. Have you made a mistake recently? Go apologize right now. Are you stuck on some task? Go ask for help. Does one of your colleagues look stressed? Go offer him your help.

    Anybody can use these phrases, employees, executives, middle managers, techies, receptionists, janitors, office workers, everyone. I will say this though: Coming from managers, they have an even stronger impact. But that’s no excuse for the rest of us not to use them, untill management does :o) Remember: Something happens when you do something. Not before.

    Will it make a big difference? Not immediately. But it gets the ball rolling and makes you and others a little happier at work every day.

  • Help Alex write a book

    Happy at work bookI have a big announcement:

    Happiness at work is my favorite topic and I believe this idea is revolutionizing the business world. But while happiness is a deep theme in more and more business books (Nuts! and The Seven-Day Weekend are prime examples), there’s still no one book that deals with how you’d run a company based on happiness.

    I’m writing that book – and I’m writing it right here on this blog.

    The book’s central idea is this:

    Happiness at work is the best and most efficient force in business.

    You can be in business for money, power, out of ambition or to change the world, but the one approach that will get you lasting success and a good life is to base your business decisions on this question: How can I make myself and others happy through my work?

    Click here to read all the details – and please help me out.

  • Happy At Work at IKEA

    I spotted this sign in the men’s room of our local IKEA:

    Equality at IKEA

    For those (unfortunate few, I’m sure) of you who don’t read Danish, it says:

    I assume there’s an exclusive restaurant
    for managers only?

    Erik Edelstein did not make it into IKEA’s
    Management Potential Programme

    Heh! So if you’re the kind of manager who believes it is your god-given right to eat your lunch in a special, exclusive restaurant seperate from the employees, then you’re not going to manage at IKEA.

    Which makes excellent sense for three reasons:

    1: Facetime is important for happiness at work

    Managers must spend time with their employees and lunch may be the best time for it! How else are manager’s going to know what’s going on? And one thing that makes employees happy at work is a manager who has time for you and understands you.

    2: Management applicants self-select

    When IKEA promote their management programme in this gutsy way they are making sure that they weed out applicants with the wrong attitudes from the very beginning.

    3: It matches IKEA’s brand

    It also speaks to me as a loyal IKEA customer and it blends perfectly with the principles of democracy and equality that their brand of cheap but well-designed furniture stand for.

    So: Management development, brand development and happiness at work all in one. Not bad, huh?

    Previously: BMW brand themselves againt bureaucracy.

    I’m adding “management-only restaurants” to my list of vampire ideas.

  • Book review: The Seven-Day Weekend

    Ricardo Semler: The Seven-Day WeekendYou should know one thing before you read my review of Ricardo Semler’s excellent book The Seven-Day Weekend: He’s my idol.

    I’ve read his books and followed his work and I’m a fan. Completely, unashamedly, unreservedly, probably in the same way that 14-year old girls are fans of Justin Timberlake. If he ever comes to Copenhagen to give a speech, I’ll be in the front row, screaming my little lungs out.

    Ahem. I deeply admire Ricardo Semler. He’s the CEO of the Sao Paulo, Brazil-based company Semco, and his vision of leadership has been the driving force behind an organization so different, so innovative and so successful that the business world has been forced to sit up and pay attention.

    That’s admirable but it’s not the most important reason why Ricardo is my idol. The core reason is this: Semler has chosen happiness as his driving force in business.

    He enjoys life and he wants Semco’s employees, customers, suppliers and community to be happy as well. That is the real motivation behind Semco. Not growth. Not profits. Not power. Not status. But happiness.

    This is why Semco has chosen to do things… somewhat differently. At Semco:

    • Employees set their own working hours
    • Employees choose their own salaries
    • All meetings are voluntary and open to everyone
    • Employees hire their own bosses
    • HR has been almost abolished, because leaders need to be able to treat their employees right themselves
    • All employees rate their bosses twice a year and all ratings are published
    • Employees choose which leader they want to work under
    • Employees choose which Semco office they want to work out off
    • Employees can take early retirement, meaning they get one day a week off in return for working one day a week after they retire.

    Etcetra, etcetera, et-fricking-cetera… It’s hard to find a single aspect of traditional organization and management that Semco hasn’t either blown up, reinvented, abolished or turned upside down. I like it!

    Semler first described his vision in the aptly titled book Maverick (also an excellent read). The Seven-Day Weekend was written about ten years later and goes even further.

    The title references Semler’s belief that life cannot be divided into work and free time any more. If you can answer business-related email on a sunday evening, why can’t you go to the movies on a wednesday morning? Semco wants employees who are 100% themselves on the job or off it. Consequently, they treat employees as adults who are capable of making decisions for themselves. In return, people respond by honoring that trust and delivering fantastic results.

    The book is full of stories from Semco’s everyday existence, and these stories are a joy to read. Time and again these stories illustrate, that Semco does not choose the easy way out. The easy, safe and comfortable way is to fall back on well-known, hierarchical control structures. Semco consistently resists this temptation and instead chooses to believe in its people and its corporate values.

    As a result, on of Semco’s top management’s most important leadership tools is… inaction. Not to do anything. To not interfere and to let the organization work out an issue on its own. To trust the process they’ve defined and see where that takes them.

    Not out of a laissez-faire management style or a fear of conflict (if anything, Brazilians seem to relish conflict), but out of a realization that every time top executives step in and mandate a solution, they rob the rest of the organization of initiative and the will to act.

    This is without a shadow of a doubt the best and most important book on leadership I have ever had the pleasure to read. This book quite simply rocks, and any leader who reads it will be able to pluck dozens of useful, practical and innovative ideas from it’s pages.

    It’s an easy, fun read, the stories are told amazingly well and the book is 100% free of MBA-jargon.

    Read it!!!

    If you liked this post I think you might also enjoy these:

  • The anti-CEO

    Ricardo Semler’s leadership style amazes me because it is radical and practical at the same time, as this excellent interview Semler demonstrates.

    My favorite part of the piece is the one where he examines Jack Welch’s leadership style. Welch is revered as the world’s best leader in many circles, but I personally see many things wrong with the way he has run GE. So does Ricardo:

    The model that Jack Welch presents, however, has problems, principally in its emphasis on charismatic leadership. This is true not only of Welch but also of Lou Gerstner, Michael Eisner, and Roy Vagelos of Merck. CEOs around the world are drawn like a magnet to the idea of having the influence that Welch had. But I don’t think it’s in the best interests of GE or any company to have a very strong charismatic figure, because the capacity to make succession happen is diminished. When succession time rolls around, the question is, Should the organization be attuned to the Neutron Jack way of doing things, or should it be attuned to what GE needs to be in the new world? That is the trouble with the Jack Welch paradigm.

    My second objection has to do with a method of management that says, Here’s what I need you to do, here’s my vision-lock into it and you’ll be all right. Work hard, deliver, and you’ll survive, but if you don’t play along, you’re out of here. To my mind, that’s a format of terror.

    That’s exactly what it is – it’s ruling by fear and it’s great to see that modern leader are abandoning that approach.

  • BMW sez: bureaucracy sucks

    Bureaucrat

    The latest BMW ad campaign has very little to do with cars and focuses instead on the corporate values of the Bayerische Motoren Werke.

    One version of it says:

    We say no to:

    Compromise
    Complacency
    Bureaucracy
    Red tape
    Lowest common denominators
    Middle managemet
    Second guessing
    Herd mentality

    So we can say yes to good ideas.

    BMW fights bureaucracy. This is cool. Why is it cool?

    1: Bureaucracy kills happiness at work
    Bureaucracy saps people’s energy and motivation. If you don’t believe me, read Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon Mackenzie. It’s an excellent book about how to thrive in organizitions plagued by red tape.

    2: Branding through good corporate identity rules
    BMW are choosing to brand themselves not through their products or technology but through how they run their business.

    3: Branding that matches products rules
    This campaing works only because the corporate identity they are expressing happens to match the products. BMW’s vehicles (I’m the proud owner of one myself) are innovative and exciting matching the (mildly) revolutionary message of the ads.

    It’s great to see companies making a stand against bureaucracy and It’s even better to see companies making bold, positive identities and standing by them.

    It just struck me though: Is anyone else surprised to see such an anti-authoritarian message… from a German company :o)