The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • 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!

  • Happy at writing

    Lois McMaster Bujold: The Vor GameLois McMaster Bujold, one of my favorite sci-fi authors, tried a new approach for her latest book: Having fun writing it.

    The first ideas for this book surfaced in June, 2004, when I was out on my back deck trying to soak up some Minnesota sunshine for the long winter ahead. (In other words, I made it up, in a welcome idle moment.) I began writing in August, quite soon after I’d turned in the final manuscript for The Hallowed Hunt. This was to be a book written for my own pleasure, at my own pace, without the constraints of a contract or pressure of a deadline. The duology length came as a bit of a surprise to me, but it was precisely what the story, as it developed, needed. Also a surprise was how fast the writing went; I finished the first draft in Aug. 2006, a mere year after I’d started, the time it would usually take me to write a single much shorter book. It was fun!

    If you’re into sci-fi at all, try reading her Vorkosigan books, featuring Miles Vorkosigan, the most unlikely sci-fi protagonist ever. There’s about a dozen of them and they’re all great fun, my personal favorites being Memory and A Civil Campaign.

    I find it interesting that Lois decided to skip deadlines and just have fun – only to find that her writing went faster and she enjoyed it more. This is at odds with the more traditional image of the artist suffering for her art.

    And the same concept probably also applies at work. Focus less on deadlines and more on enjoying work, and you will find that you get more work done and have more fun.

    By the way: Bujold’s publisher is Baen. Check out the proud motto of the Baen online bookshop:

    If it’s in stock , We have it!

  • Goal-Free Living comes to Copenhagen

    Stephen ShapiroStephen Shapiro is the creator of one of the most exciting concepts I’ve heard about in a long time: Goal-Free Living, which I wrote about previously here.

    I met steve when we both spoke at the Worldblu Forum in DC in October 2005, and he’s a great speaker with a great message.

    Stephen is coming to Copenhagen next week to speak about innovation, his other area of expertise, but we’ve also arranged for him to do a presentation on Goal-Free Living which will happen:

    Thursday may 11th at 5pm – 6pm
    Café Enter, Guldbergsgade 29, Copenhagen N

    You can find more information and sign up here, provided you read Danish. Non-danes can sign up by dropping a comment here. The café only has room for 50 people, so sign up quickly – it’s gonna be great!

    Update: 35 people signed up in the first 24 hours. If you don’t want to miss it, better sign up fast :o)

  • The new-skool workplace..?

    Yesterday I wrote about a new kind of school (well, new-ish, it’s been around for 35 years) where students and teachers make decisions democratically, there are no classes, students do whatever they want all day, and if they want to study something they have to find a teacher and arrange for it to happen.

    In the comments to that post, Danny Mydlack, the director of the video about the Fairhaven School, reminded me that the full video is available at newamericanschoolhouse.com.

    The father of one of the children in the school also commented:

    My son is one of those in the trailer, and in The New American Schoolhouse documentary, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in this topic.
    …
    Because of my son’s six years at Fairhaven, or perhaps *inspired* by those six years, he is an original. He is himself, crafted by himself over 13-19, hanging out and doing what he wanted. Six years during which he took no classes, but had the opportunity to excel in the ways he found, and wanted, to excel, in an honest and functional educational community.
    …
    On the standardized SAT he took pre-college, he got a 99th percentile on the verbal, and upper-third on the math. He got a scholarship as a consequence. More importantly, he is someone who can make choices on his own, can make eminent sense in any public setting, makes evidence-based decisions, knows what he thinks, and is a pleasure to talk to.

    That sounds absolutely wonderful!

    Now this blog is not really about schools, it’s about happiness at work. I just got so excited about the concept that I had to share it :o)

    But here’s a question for ya: What if we organized our workplaces in the same way as these schools? What if people came to work and could spend their time doing whatever they wanted? What if the company was run not by a few executives, but democratically by everybody in the company?

    Conventional wisdom says that it could never work, but that wouldn’t exactly be the first time that conventional wisdom turns out to be dead wrong. It was certainly wrong about these new-skool schools.

    Here’s what I believe: Not only would it work, it would blow traditionally-run competitors out of the water.

    What do you think?

  • And that will teach them what, exactly?

    When I first read that an employee of an alarm company has sued the company for emotional distress experienced during a company training event I just thought “here we go again, yet another American suing over nothing.” Remember that case a few years ago where a man sued his colleague for farting at work?

    But check out what they did at this training:

    Employees were paddled with rival companies’ yard signs as part of a contest that pitted sales teams against each other, according to court documents. The winners poked fun at the losers, throwing pies at them, feeding them baby food, making them wear diapers and swatting their buttocks.

    Who on earth still believes that this will create an effective learning environment?

    When I design workshops and training sessions, I always try to make it safe and fun. Everything we know about learning says that people learn better when they feel safe and enjoy themselves. In this kind of setting, participants are:

    • More open to new ideas
    • More motivated to learn
    • More prone to collaborate
    • Friendlier and more relaxed

    And here’s the most important thing: In every event I do, all exercises are voluntary. Even though I’ve tried to make everything fun, simple and straight-forward, there may still be elements of the training that are not right for some participants. And who’s the best judge of that? The participants themselves, of course! Therefore everything is voluntary and if any participants would prefer to sit out an exercise, then that is always OK.

  • Happy at work at Microsoft

    Michael Brundage has written a very interesting piece on what it’s like to work at Microsoft.

    The good includes personal freedom, the top leaders, free soft drinks and the fact that Microsoft contrary to popular belief is not evil. For instance:

    Microsoft gives software developers a lot of personal freedom over both the work and the work environment. I order my own supplies, customize my office as I see fit, schedule my own trips and meetings, and select my own training courses. I choose when I show up for work and when I leave, and what to wear while I’m there. I can eat on campus or off, reheat something from home in the kitchen or scavenge leftovers from meetings. I can even work remotely from home (within reason).

    The bad: mid-level managers, internal “cults” and bad work-life balance.

    Compare this with Paul Thurrott’s highly critical analysis of Microsoft’s failure to deliver Windows Vista on time or even with all the feature they promised.

    Two and a half years later, Microsoft has yet to ship Windows Vista, and it won’t actually ship this system in volume until 2007… Microsoft’s handling of Windows Vista has been abysmal. Promises have been made and forgotten, again and again. Features have come and gone. Heck, the entire project was literally restarted from scratch after it became obvious that the initial code base was a teetering, technological house of cards. Windows Vista, in other words, has been an utter disaster. And it’s not even out yet. What the heck went wrong?

    It almost seems like Microsoft is an example of a company that has a huge, tremendously talented and motivated staff, but still manages to create enormous problems for itself. Does this contradict my claim that a happy organization is also a successful one?

    UPDATE: John Dvorak weighs on on the issue.

    All of Microsoft’s Internet-era public-relations and legal problems (in some way or another) stem from Internet Explorer. If you were to put together a comprehensive profit-and-loss statement for IE, there would be a zero in the profits column and billions in the losses column—billions.

    So they’re happy at Microsoft but they make really bad top-level decisions..?

  • CSR – Doing well by doing good

    CSR works

    Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR, is defined as voluntary efforts by businesses to contribute to society. It may include

    • Workplace issues (such as training and equal opportunities)
    • Human rights
    • The business’ impact on the community
    • Reputation, branding and marketing
    • Ethical investment
    • Environment
    • Ethics and corporate governance

    I think CSR is great and many corporations practice it already. One percent for the planet, pioneered by Patagonia, is one of my favorite examples.

    And now something even more interesting is going on right here in Denmark: we’re implementing a national policy to enhance corporate growth and sustainable social development by teaching small and mid-sized businesses about CSR .

    I just had a very exciting meeting with Karen Høeg, an old friend who’s currently working on that very project for the Danish Commerce and Companies Agency.

    The project kicked off formally last week and will educate 12.000 danish leaders and employees from small and mid-sized businesses in CSR, helping them to increase their profits while doing something good for society and the planet. It is, as far as I know, the largest CSR project in the world.

    Studies show that companies who do CSR make more money than those who don’t. Quite simply, doing good helps businesses do well.

    I have a simple explanation for why this is the case: Doing good feels good. It makes people happy. And happy people are the best way to business success.

    In my post about Creating a Happy and Rich Business, I outlined the six practices of happy workplaces, and two of these are “Care” and “Think and act long-term”. CSR is an expression of both of these. That’s why it makes people happy, and that’s why it’s good for corporate profits and corporate growth.

    But then again, I would say that, wouldn’t I? :o)

  • The cult of overwork (again)

    The cult of overwork is the prevailing belief that the more hours people work, the better for the company. That notion is not only harmful, it is dead wrong, as this story from Arlie Hochschild’s book The Time Bind demonstrates.

    One executive, Doug Strain, the vice chairman of ESI, a computer company in Portland Oregon, saw the link between reduced hours for some and more jobs for others. At a 1990 focus group for CEOs and managers, he volunteered the following story:

    When demand for a product is down, normally a company fires some people and makes the rest work twice as hard. So we put it to a vote of everyone in the plant. We asked them what they wanted to do: layoffs for some workers or thirty-two-hour workweeks for everyone. They thought about it and decided they’d rather hold the team together. So we went down to a thirty-two-hour-a-week schedule for everyone furing a down time. We took everybody’s hours and salary down – executives too.

    But Strain discovered two surprises.

    First, productivity did not decline. I swear to God we get as much out of them at thirty-two hours as we did at forty. So it’s not a bad business decision. But second, when economic conditions improved, we offered them one hundred percent time again. No one wanted to go back!

    Never in our wildest dreams would our managers have designed a four-day week. But it’s endured at the insistence of our employees.

    Interesting, huh? They cut back work-hours but production remains the same.

  • Time and happiness

    A study shows that happy employees put in more hours but remain less prone to stress than uhappy employees.

    What makes them happy? Easier unscheduled time off, schedule flexibility and better telecommuting options. What makes them unhappy? Too much work, their boss’s behavior and long hours.