The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Perks gone wild

    PianoIt started with free M&M’s. Now there’s a country club, on-site Montessori daycare, on-site doctors and nurses, 35-hour work week, live piano music during lunch, 50.000 square foot fitness center, swimming pools, no dress-code, masseur, on-site car detailing. And more. If you need assistance in adopting a child or finding a college for your child or a nursing home for a parent, they have people to help you with that too.

    SAS Institute’s perks are legendary, and the Software Company’s 9.000 employees certainly know they have it good. Normally IT companies have employee turnover rates of 20%. At SAS it’s 3% which saves them an estimated $80 million a year in recruting costs alone. Conservatively.

    Why do they do it? Are they naïve altruists? Jeff Chambers, director of human resources at SAS, puts it like this:

    No, we’re not altruistic by any stretch of the imagination. This is a for-profit business and we do all these things because it makes good business sense.

    There are four interesting points to notice about what SAS is doing:

    1: It works

    Their annual report for 2004 rightly brags about their 28th consecutive year of growth and prosperity, a record unmatched in the software industry. Their revenues in 2004 was $1.5 billion. That’s pretty impressive.

    2: It’s possible because they’re privately owned

    CEO Jim Goodnight refuses to take the company public because it might change the way employees are treated and destroy their ability to make long-term plans:

    You can’t just have a weak quarter and then all of a sudden start bailing out and cutting things. I am basically my own board. So, I don’t have to worry about pressure from the board or being fired if I don’t improve earnings.
    …
    There’s no possible way I can tell you what my earnings are going to be to the penny each quarter. There’s only one way to get there to the penny — you have to cook the books.

    3: They’re committed to treating their people well

    Goodnight says it very simply:

    If the employees are happy, they make the customers happy. If they make the customers happy, they make me happy.

    4: It’s not the perks

    SAS employees are happy and stay at the company for years doing good, creative work. But that’s not because of the perks – because no amount of perks can make up for lousy leadership, a bad atmosphere or a lack of respect for employees.

    The truth is this: The perks, combined with Goodnight’s and the company’s attitude, make people feel valued – and that’s what’s making them happy.

    This is good news for companies that don’t have as much money in the bank as SAS. It’s not the (expensive) perks, it’s the commitment to your employees’ happiness that makes a difference. And that doesn’t take country clubs and Montessori schools but can be done on a much tighter budget.

    Most of the information in this post comes from the piece 60 minutes did on them back in 2003.

  • Startup vs. corporate

    Kathy Sierra nails it yet again with a laugh-out-loud funny list of differences between the startup and the corporate mindset.

    I added a few examples of my own in the comments:

    Startup Corporate
    When we screw up Admit it, apologize, fix it, compensate customers, move on. Hide it. When that fails, blame the customers.
    Meetings Fun, chaotic, everyone is heard. The boss talks, you listen.
    When you disagree with management You’re valued. You’re fired.
    Work-time Whatever works for you 9-5. On paper. In reality: 9-9.
    Having children Congratulations! Come back in 6 months. Or when you’re ready. Are you sure you want to jeopardize your career?
    When you succeed The whole company celebrates with you. “Employee of the month” certificate.

  • Thank you, Istanbul

    A great big thank you to:

    • The conference team from MCT and Eventus who were an amazingly nice bunch of people
    • The other speakers for many great conversations
    • And especially to those who attended my presentation on happiness at work in Istanbul
    Istanbul audience
    See – they look happy already!

  • Back from Istanbul – and the future of HR

    I’m now back in Copenhagen after a nice, sunny flight home from Istanbul. Most of the way, I could look down on a snow-covered Europe which looked amazingly beautiful from 10 km up.

    The conference was a great experience which touched on the many themes that are (or are becoming) central to HR, such as:

    • Innovation
    • Talent development
    • ROI
    • Organizational culture
    • Eliminating bureaucracy
    • Leadership

    I went out to dinner thursday evening with a group of other speakers and we ended up talking about what the common, unifying theme of the “new HR” might be.

    It will probably surprise noone, that I believe that unifying theme to be happiness at work. The basic challenge of modern business is to activate the full potential of the people who work there. For this to happen, peope need to be happy. It’s that simple.

    This makes happiness both a goal and a tool, and it is my claim that happiness at work will become the most important strategic goal of modern businesses over the next few years.

    I also predict that we will see a trend, where happy companies will put unhappy companies out of business, simply because happy businesses are much more efficient and profitable. It’s no contest.

    What does this mean for the future of HR? I think it mainly requires a new focus, namely this:

    The role of HR is to make people happy

    If businesses make this conceptual leap and start prioritizing accordingly, we will see HR becoming an even greater asset than it already is and we will see many workplaces change for the better. And it’ll help the bottom line.

  • Happy at work slides

    Click here to download the slides from my presentation at the MCT HR conference in Istanbul on february 23 2006 (8 Mb .ppt-file).

    A big thank you to everyone who participated! If you have any comments or questions, please write a comment here and I will try to answer.

  • Istanbul HR conference

    I’m writing this from the VIP room at the MCT HR conference in Istanbul (it’s good to be a speaker). The conference was kicked off by some good presentations:

    • Lars Kolind launched his crusade against bureaucracy
    • Elisabet Sahtouris used her background in evolutionary biology to show us that businesses are living organisms
    • Ricardo Semler spoke via satellite from Sao Paulo on how Semco manages to do things incredibly different and incredibly well

    After a very nice lunch, there are several sessions to choose from this afternoon – we’ll see who wins the race.

    And of course the best part of any conference is making new friends and having great conversations – and this conference certainly doesn’t disappoint. More updates later.

  • Podcasts from the WorldBlu Forum

    A short while ago I spoke at one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to: The WorldBlu Forum on Organizational Democracy. Previous coverage here, here, here and here.

    The organizers have put up podcasts with many of the speakers including Dan Pink, David Weinberger and … me (7 min., 8 Mb mp3) being interviewed by the charming and delightful Susanne Goldstein. I somehow manage to go all the way back to Aristotle and the Dalai Lama and then talk about happiness at work and how it relates to democratic workplaces.

    Find all interviews from the forum here.

  • eXtreme Projects

    eXtreme Programming is a process used to structure software development projects. It is radically different from more traditional methods, in that it defers more of the detailed planning till later in the project. Most traditional methods try to answer all the big questions up front. This makes it less susceptible to changes that occur during the project – something that can otherwise seriously disrupt software projects.

    eXtreme Programming, or XP, is based on a set of principles that at first may seem awkward and counter-intuitive, but which actually support each other nicely, resulting in a process that is:

    • More efficient
    • More predictable
    • More flexible
    • More fun

    Since I switched from the IT business to making people happy at work, I’ve used some of the XP principles in many other situations, where they have proved to work just as well. Here is my list of which XP principles translate to non-IT projects, and how to utilize them:

    Frequent small releases

    Rather than spending a long time building up to one huge release, find a way to divide your project into several smaller releases. This means that your product makes contact with the real world sooner, and allows you to better incorporate feedback from actual customers/users. in XP, you want to release something every 2-3 weeks, which is certainly preferable to working on a project for 6 months, delivering it to the customer and THEN learning that it doesn’t fulfill their needs. And don’t tell me this never happens.

    Iteration planning

    This means breaking the current goals down into tasks that are small enough to be accomplished in 1-3 days. Based on these estimates, the teams decides which tasks to include for the next deliverable. This means that the work immediately ahead gets broken down into small, manageable pieces and you can easliy track progress.

    Move people around

    Rather than assigning fixed roles to each person, let people switch roles. This enhances knowledge sharing and learning and also helps avoid information bottlenecks. XP also lets people choose for themselves which part of the project they want to work on.

    Daily stand-up meetings

    You’ll be amazed how much faster meetings go, when people can’t sleep in their chairs. in XP projects every day starts with a stand-up meeting to coordinate the days work.

    The customer is always available

    That way you don’t have to guess what the customer wants/intends/needs. You can easily and quickly ask.

    Pair programming (or pair work)

    This means that no work is done by one person alone – each and every task is tackled by at least two people. This may seem inefficient at first, but experience shows that people do better work when working together and it also enhances cross-training and team-work.

    Simplicity

    Choose the simplest solution that could possibly work. Don’t get fancy when simple will do.

    Create spike solutions

    If you’re faced with a difficult choice, don’t analyse it to death, trying to look for the right solution. Instead create spike solutions – quick tests that allow you to try various possible solutions out. This gives you fast, specific, real-life data to let you choose and helps avoid paralysis by analysis.

    Collective code ownership (or collective project ownership)

    Everybody owns the whole project. This helps avoid bottlenecks and that unpleasant situation where people feel that they own a part of the project and seem reluctant to share knowledge or accept criticism on their “property”.

    No overtime

    Period!

    I believe that these principles can be applied to many kinds of projects and I have done so myself with considerable success. Are they always applicable? No. Read the XP entry on when to apply XP for some inspiration on when to use XP – and when not to.

  • Pixar gets it

    The Holllywwod way of organizing a movie is by using only contract labour. The vast majority of movie people, from grips and gaffers to high-paid actors, are in essence self-employed and are hired for one movie at a time.

    Pixar goes against this trend, by focusing on people:

    Contracts allow you to be irresponsible as a company. You don’t need to worry about keeping people happy and fulfilled. What we have created here – an incredible workspace, opportunities to learn and grow, and, most of all, great co-workers – is better than any contract.
    …
    We’ve made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It’s no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it’s a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.

    Says Randy S. Nelson, the dean of Pixar University.

    Among the advatages cited are:
    * People learn to work more efficiently together through long-term collaborations
    * People can better support each other through difficult creative processes
    * A culture of learning
    * People have more fun

    Also check out the amazing offices at Pixar.

  • Meetings: Hell or heaven?

    We recently developed a product in the Happy at Work Project to create better meetings – or in our parlance happy meetings. We tested it on a few organizations and one group of leaders told us, that they normally have 20-30 hours worth of meetings a week. I was flabbergasted.

    Our product aims at making meetings more fun, productive and dynamic by distributing ownership and responsibility for the meeting’s content from one person (typically the manager) to the entire group. When everyone is involved in setting the agenda and prioritizing items, meeting participants become more focused, engaged and creative.

    And now The Guardian reports on a study on meetings which found that:

    1. The more meetings one has to attend, the greater the negative effects
    2. The more time one spends in meetings, the greater the negative effects
    …
    The results speak volumes. “It is impressive,” Luong and Rogelberg write in their summary, “that a general relationship between meeting load and the employee’s level of fatigue and subjective workload was found”. Their central insight, they say, is the concept of “the meeting as one more type of hassle or interruption that can occur for individuals”.

    Notice that it is not meetings per se that are annoying people – it’s bad meetings. I’m pretty sure that fun, engaging, productive meetings would simply make people happier at work.

    Here’s my question to you: What do you think it takes, to make meetings fun and productive rather than boring and stressful?