The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • 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)

  • Happy at work at Southwest Airlines

    Southwest AirlinesThe NY Times has an article about 17 original Southwest Airlines who signed on at the very beginning in 1972 and still work there. Most of these people are now millionaires thanks to the company’s profit-sharing plan, but still work as mechanics, flight attendants or at the ticket counter.

    Why do they stay on? Many people at other companies dream only of the day they can retire from work, so what is it about Southwest that makes their employees stay on far beyond that point? Here are some of the things they say in the article:

    “Passengers — you get a feel how far you can go with them,” she said. “We had businessmen in suits pass out peanuts and pick up trash. We’d see how many people we could lock up inside the lavatory. They loved it. We had them on top of each other. Seven or eight? Quite a few. And those lavatories are pretty small.”
    —
    Though a union shop, Southwest is less bound by work rules than most other airlines. “If you saw something that needed to be done, and you thought you could do it, you did,” Mr. Wilson said.
    —
    Mr. Marcell, 64, lost a kidney to cancer and more recently the disease showed up in a lung. He is on medicine to control its spread. “I’m going to work until I can’t work anymore,” he said. “I just like to work.”
    —
    And Ms. Force, the one-time Esquire cover model, who is 61 and single, just completed chemotherapy for breast cancer and, after six months off, returned to work this month. She does not need the paycheck, with more than 100,000 shares of Southwest stock, valued at about $1.6 million.

    “I love to work,” she said. “Southwest is kind of my family and my husband.”

    How would you like your employees to say things like that about your company? Would you enjoy working at a place where this is a common attitude?

    Southwest’s model for happiness at work is worth learning from, and it’s decribed magnificently in the classic business book Nuts! by Jackie and Kevin Freiberg. Read it!

  • Quote

    Finding your calling is a wonderful thing, but how do you do that? Will you know your calling when you see it?

    Here’s my definition: You know you’re doing the right work when you would rather do it and fail, than not do it.

    – Alexander Kjerulf

  • Let’s go vampire slaying

    Vampire ideas

    Cold, undead relics from a past age haunt the corporate world, spreading fear and carnage wherever they go. These monsters can look good, seductive even, but if you let them, they’ll suck the life force out of you and leave you dead. Or worse: One of them.

    I call them vampire ideas and all they deserve is a stake through the heart. Vampire ideas can be found in stock management philosophy, tired old leadership theories or business advice from an earlier era. Wherever they come from, they’re bad for you and they’re bad for business.

    Here’s a table comparing vampire ideas to actual vampires:

    Actual vampires Vampire ideas
    Can look really good Can look really good
    …but are actually disgusting and evil …but are actually disgusting and evil
    Are undead Should’ve been dead a long time ago
    Suck people’s blood Suck a company’s energy and creativity
    Are deterred by garlick and crosses Are deterred by good leadership
    Can’t enter your house without an invitation Can’t enter your business without an invitation
    Are really hard to kill Are really hard to kill
    Wither and burn in the light of day Wither and burn in the light of logical thinking
    Cast no shadow or mirror image That’s kinda where the analogy breaks down

    So what are some commonly seen vampire ideas? Here are a few examples.

    Fire the bottom 10% of your employees every year

    This is one of the most inhumane, cynical and just plain stupid ideas I’ve ever heard about. Who on earth still believes that this is a good way to do business and to get the best performance from employees. This idea keeps employees constantly afraid, but if that’s what you want, go for it. The exact opposite view is described here and trust me, it works much better.

    If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it

    Vampire ideaConsidering how many things in a business are unmeasured, not to say unmeasurable, this is one more bad idea in need of a final resting place. I’ve written about it previously here. This idea of management-by-spreadsheet stifles new ideas and reduces a leaders focus to things that can be expressed in numbers.

    Long work hours are good for business

    No. They’re not. In fact, laziness will take you much further.

    Nice guys finish last

    That’s not true either. In a networked world it’s more important to be generous and likeable than to be ruthless and efficient.

    Wooden stakeI’m sure there’s more. What vampire ideas do you know, that we should get rid of once and for all?

    Let’s break out the wooden stakes and go vampire slaying together!

  • Conversations / samtalerne – May 31

    The Cluetrain Manifesto reminds us that:

    • Markets are conversations.
    • The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
    • Companies that don’t realize their markets are now networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in conversation are missing their best opportunity.

    Since the manifesto was published in 1999, we have seen the rise of weblogs, discussion groups, wiki sites, chat rooms, podcasts and social networking sites, just to mention a few technologies currently enabling conversations.

    But how are businesses harnessing conversations?

    As part of the Reboot conference, there will be an excellent 1-day event in Copenhagen on May 31st called Samtalerne (the conversations). I will most definitely be there, and so will

    • Doc searls (co-author of the Cluetrain manifesto)
    • Robert Scoble who blogs for Microsoft
    • Euan Semple who introduced net conversations to the BBC
    • Anette Hartvig, CEO of Aarstiderne who renamed their customer service department “Conversations”

    as well as many other very interesting people. Should make for some great… conversations :o)

  • Enthusiasm

    BatteryScott H. Young has a great post on enthusiasm:

    Enthusiasm is like any other skill. If it is continually practiced and exercised, it gets better. If it is not, then it will atrophy. Enthusiasm rarely comes naturally and it must be the result of conscious effort. Practicing the ability to use enthusiasm can keep you excited and driven even in horrible circumstances.

    Go read it, it’s a great piece.

    My ability to be enthusiastic is without a doubt my greatest skill. When some new idea really grabs me, my enthusiasm

    • Makes me do something about it
    • Helps me get others involved by infecting them with enhusiasm
    • Gives me the energy to get through the difficult parts and the problems
    • Lets me believe I can do it – or at least that it will be fun trying

    Enthusiasm also gives me a certain half-blind optimism. I see mostly the opportunities and internally minimize problems and risks. Which is a great thing when you’re trying to do something big.

    Looking back, all of the greatest things I have achieved look nearly impossible on paper. If I hadn’t had my enhusiasm to slightly blind me to the challenges involved, I would probably never have tried it. And I certainly wouldn’t have succeeded.

    So I say be enthusiastic – and let it show!