The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Sharing the reins

    John Abrams, President of South Mountain Company, tells the story of how the company became employee-owned:

    In 1987 I sold my business, South Mountain Company, to my employees (and myself)… Shared ownership and control is our method at South Mountain. “Every employee, an owner” is our intention. More than half of our thirty employees are full owners. Each time another comes in, and each time a new management invention encourages more voices to be heard, we move steadily toward the goals of democracy, fairness, and transparency.

    Among the advantages: Commitment, effectiveness, productivity. Read the whole story here.

  • Happiness and the bottom line

    Was there ever really any doubt:

    [Result of a] study of more than 7,500 workers: companies whose workers are highly committed to their employers and have confidence in their top management deliver dramatically higher returns to shareholders.

    Well, duh! This point is so obvious to me, that it’s actually difficult for me to argue it. Like defending the benefits of oxygen in the atmosphere or the wetness of water.

    Full article here

  • Leadership darwinism

    In the case where a board can’t figure out to depose self-obsessed, autocratic and power-hungry managers, we’ll probably se in the future that these leaders will in principle be deposed by their own employees, who will leave for better workplaces with better leaders and leadership values, that create a better space for the employees’ personal goals and life visions to unfold.

    This will leave the managers who use hierarchical leadership, control systems and autocratic leadership values without significant access to getting employees. Ie. a leadership with no followers, which is both pathetic and useless.
    – Alfred Josefsen, CEO of Irma

    Right on, Alfred – you tell’em :o)

    There will be two kinds of darwinism operating against bad managers:
    1) Employee selection: Employees will leave bad managers behind and gravitate towards better leaders.
    2) Marketplace selection: Companies with autocratic old-school management are less efficient, and will loose market share to better-run organizations. In the end they’ll die out altogether.

    If I had stock in a company, and wanted to make money out of those stocks, I’d ask the board of directors two questions:
    1) What are you doing to make the people in the organization happy?
    2) How are you training leaders to make themselves and others happy?

  • Business – New school

    David Heinemeier Hansson is one of the hottest names in IT right now. He’s been developing something called Ruby on Rails, which is a tool for developing web applications. Now Denmark has become too small for David, and he’s left for Chicago, better to work with his compatriots at 37signals, one of the most admired software shops right now.

    The evening before he left, he gave a presentation in Copenhagen to a small crowd of techies, bloggers, business people and others. I was there and I was blown away by this guy. Not only is he a good developer, he also has an amazing sense for how a business can also be designed. And he’s 26 years old. Interestingly, his software design principles are the same as his business design principles, making his philosophy consistent and credible. Here are the main points I took away from his presentation:

    Solve the next problem
    Whether you’re working on software or building a business, this means that you should tackle the issues that matter right now. Don’t solve the problems you think will appear in 6 months – they probably won’t, you see. Solve the next problem, and then the next. In six months time, you will have plenty of stuff to work on, but it won’t be what you thought six months ago.

    Solve your own problems
    When you work on something that you yourself need, you’re much more efficient. Rather than working on something that some remote client will use, attack issues that are important to you.

    Do as little as possible – or slightly less
    The complexity of any system does not grow proportianl to the size of the system – it grows exponentially. Making a system twice as large makes it waaay more that twise as complex. Therefore, make your system as simple as possible, or maybe even a little simpler.

    And if I may be allowed to brag for a moment here: This is exactly how we work on the Happy At Work Project. Here are a few of our maxims, that I might add:

    Try stuff
    Rather than analyzing a given choice to death, make a quick decision and try it out. If it doesn’t work, try something else.

    Relax
    It’ll all work out. Don’t beat yourself up and don’t work too hard. Take plenty of breaks and do lots of different stuff to stimulate your mind.

    The best of luck to David in Chicago – I’m sure he’ll do famously.

  • German IT outfit bans whining

    This may not be the best way to go about it:

    German IT outfit Nutzwerk Ltd has come up with the perfect solution to whining in the workplace – it’s made cheerfulness a contractual obligation. What’s more, Manager Thomas Kuwatsch has declared that those who don’t measure up to the prescribed level of jollity in the morning should stay at home until they cheer up.

    Full story in The Register. Funny. I think there’s actually something to this: Give people the right to stay home, if they don’t feel happy, though outlawing grumpiness is probably a bad idea. It’ll only drive it underground where it’s harder to deal with. It may even amplify the complaining.

  • Best speech ever

    Yesterday I gave one of the best speeches I’ve ever given on happiness at work to Junior Chambers Copenhagen. What made it good? This I think:
    1: I opened up the speech by showing them my prepared notes (on little cue-cards)
    2: I then made a display of tearing them up and throwing them away
    3: And then I had the audience call out suggestions for topics they’d like to hear about

    It also doesn’t hurt if you have an attentive, interested and active crowd listening.

  • Quote

    Each individual should work for himself. People will not sacrifice themselves for the company. They come to work at the company to enjoy themselves.
    – Soichiro Honda, founder of (surprise) Honda

    Via Metacool via Mike Wagner.

  • Book review: Difficult conversations

    90% of all problems and conflicts in organizations stem from what has NOT been said. NOT been talked through. From issues that should have been raised, but weren’t.

    This makes the skills that allow us to adress difficult issues in constructive ways crucial job skills. And Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone Bruce Patton and Sheila Sheen is the best book I’ve seen on this subject. It is, quite simply, excellent!

    The book’s main idea is this: In every conversation there are three simultaneous conversations going on:
    * The “What Happened?” conversation about the factual matters at hand
    * The feelings conversation concerning how we feel about this
    * The identity conversation where we assert and redefine our identity

    Ignoring any of these means that you’re not adressing what’s really going on in the conversation, because all of these WILL be going on. And if you’re one of those people who believe that feelings have no place in business and that professional conversations should stick purely to factual matters, let this book be your wake-up call. Humans have feelings and there is no way for us to leave them at home when we go to work. One chapter is called “Have your feelings – or they will have you”.

    Reading this book is a joy. It is well planned, well written and contains many good anecdotes that underscore the book’s messages. The questions it examines are critical in any organizations:
    * How to raise difficult matters
    * When to raise them and when not to
    * How to deal with past conversations that went wrong
    * How to better express your point of view
    * How to better understand others

    The advice given is specific and simple to follow and has already helped me on more than one occasion. Read it!

  • Give it away

    The business question I ask myself most often is this: What can I give away? What do I have, know, think, write, say that I can give away easily?

    This may seem like a strange attitude towards business, but I believe it has been the key to our success in the Happy at Work Project – we have gotten an amazing amount of traction and good will from all the stuff we give away like our newsletter, articles, book reviews and more.

    And here’s a cool example I found during a walk in Washington DC:

    In my opinion, there’s something innately healthy about giving stuff away.

    Here’s a previous blogpost, that starts with the decision that “I accept the idea that I should give everything away”, and then examines what implications this may have on how you work and live. One conclusion: Wealth is relationships.

  • Art: The office assistant

    Consider this a tribute to the unsung heros of the workplace. The people who make the whole thing work. Artist Zen Parry has taken up a seat in the Portland Building in Portland Oregon, where she crochets a a huge blanket while talking to the public.

    During a temporary job I had in the corporate world, the office always functioned well, but “felt” even better when the Office Assistant was present. This woman brought a sense of comfort into that cold sterile environment – she did all of the unseen things that the rest of us didn’t know how to do. I often thought of her as providing a comforting blanket of functionality within that office – you could always rely on her “just being there.”

    This installation symbolizes the comfort experienced in that environment. There is a lot of security in having a routine and identity that a job provides. Even though you might not be happy with your job, you will still come to work on a regular basis, and perform your duties, comfortable in the familiarity of that rhythm. I am doing the same – coming to work each day, performing my duties by being here and making a rug of comfort.

    You are invited to interrupt my performance – sit and chat, call out to me as you walk through the lobby or use the ATM machine – you might even try to ignore me as you hurry to your next appointment. Artists often strive to create an environment as a work of art. In this installation/performance, I will strive to create an environment as the art of work.

    Even if you manage to ignore me, I know that you will miss me when I am gone…..

    What a cool, fun, innovative way to comment on work, especially unfulfilling work without condemning it. Read more about the installation here and
    Zen is blogging about it here.