The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Cross-blogging

    I’m blogging my experiences, thoughts and ideas at the WorldBlu Forum at the forum website.

  • Better meetings

    Here’s an amazing resource for leading good meetings.

    Meetings aims or purposes should be at the top of every agenda. These are the key decisions that must be made or actions that must occur at the meeting. If you aren’t clear on aims and purposes, don’t meet.

    All so you can avoid this :o).

  • Death and music

    The New York Times profiles Frank Minyard, a 76-year old New Orleans coroner known for marching in funeral processions wearing a white suit and plays jazz the trumpet.

    At 76, on the brink of a retirement that was supposed to combine oyster dinners at his favorite restaurants with a simple life on his cattle farm on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, Dr. Minyard has found himself living in an R.V. on the grounds of a temporary federal morgue in St. Gabriel, a small town just outside Baton Rouge, grappling with the still-increasing death toll, the bewildering red tape and the urgent calls of bereaved families.
    …
    In the kind of twist that might strike New Orleanians as perfectly natural, their coroner began his medical career as an obstetrician. Before that, he was a tall, blue-eyed pretty boy: a lifeguard in the summers and, once, second runner-up in a Mr. New Orleans bodybuilding contest. During medical school, he said, he spent his summers in New York City giving “nightlife tours.”

    By the late 1960’s, Dr. Minyard had a successful practice, a family, a tennis court and a swimming pool, beside which he was sitting one day when he heard Peggy Lee singing, “Is that all there is?”

    “Prior to that I was very selfish, like most young doctors and lawyers and dentists,” said Dr. Minyard, who gave up his private medical practice soon after he became coroner. “I was just trying to get the Cadillac and the country club membership.”
    …
    However inexpert his playing, Dr. Minyard became devoted to jazz, and soon he was sitting in with the venerated Olympia Brass Band and hiring musicians as morgue assistants to help them make ends meet. In his first year as coroner, he was arrested while playing in the French Quarter to protest a crackdown on street musicians.

  • Open source fun

    Does it matter whether IT people have fun at work? Autrijus Tang thinks it does, so when he set up the Pugs Open Source project, he had an explicit goal: Optimize for fun. The results are clear: More people get involved in the project, their work is of a high standard and they’re more creative.

    Of course, this should come as no surprise. As any cognitive science expert will tell you, fun is a great way to focus the mind. Developers that aren’t enjoying themselves will slow down, write buggy code, make poor decisions, and eventually leave the project (even one that pays). Conversely, rampant fun will bring coders in droves, and give them a passion for their work that shows in quality, quantity, and goodwill. It’s a pretty good bet that optimizing for fun will produce a better product than almost any other method.

    Here are the main thoughts of Autrijus on the subject (translated from geek-speak – sometimes it pays, having been a geek myself):
    * Make fun your primary goal
    * Embrace anarchy
    * Avoid deadlocks
    * Cast responsibility far and wide
    * Working code is more fun than mere ideas
    * Build a rich, supportive community
    * Excitement and learning are infectious

    Damn, that guy’s good!

    Read the whole article here.

  • Worldblu Forum

    Traci Fenton of Worldblu wrote to remind us all that:

    We’re now about six weeks away from the launch of THE WORLDBLU FORUM in Washington, DC, October 26-29th!

    The theme
    Rewriting the Rules of Business for a Democratic Age

    The big idea
    Organizational democracy and freedom-centered leadership and what it means to YOU

    The take-aways
    HOW organizational democracy can recharge your company
    WHY freedom-centered leadership matters
    WHAT tools and skills you need to outsmart your competition and get in front of the business shift

    The speakers
    Everyone from CEOs to best-selling authors, technology gurus to high-stake revolutionaries, former prime ministers to movie producers (see list)

    The audience
    Dynamic thought-leaders from around the world

    The setting
    Washington, DC?s only five-star hotel, the stunning Mandarin Oriental. Situated in the heart of Washington DC?s monuments and museums, the hotel offers breathtaking views overlooking the Potomac Tidal Basin, Jefferson Memorial and Washington Monument. This urban resort features elegantly hip guest rooms, a 10,400-square-foot spa and fitness facility with indoor pool, and the award-winning CityZen and Caf? MoZU restaurant. (I just had lunch at Caf? MoZU last week; it was outstanding.)

    The updated program
    http://worldblu.com/forum/program.html Nutritious and delicious!

    You can register here
    http://worldblu.com/forum/registration.html

    Thanks to everyone for spreading the word. The response has been fantastic and I can?t wait to see you all in October!

    I’m going. Are you going? If you’re going from Denmark, we’re organizing a trip to make it real easy for you.

  • Play Ethic

    This article by Pat Kane on the play ethic is one of the most inspiring, electrifying and just wonderful manifestos for play, fun and happiness at work. My biggest problem in blogging it was to choose a quote from it because the whole damn thing is eminently quotable. Here’s an appetizer:

    Welcome to the play ethic. First of all, don’t take ‘play’ to mean anything idle, wasteful or frivolous. The trivialisation of play was the work ethic’s most lasting, and most regrettable achievement. This is ‘play’ as the great philosophers understood it: the experience of being an active, creative and fully autonomous person.

    The play ethic is about having the confidence to be spontaneous, creative and empathetic across every area of you life – in relationships, in the community, in your cultural life, as well as paid employment. It’s about placing yourself, your passions and enthusiasms at the centre of your world.
    …
    So to call yourself a ‘player’, rather than a ‘worker’, is to immediately widen your conception of who you are and what you might be capable of doing. It is to dedicate yourself to realising your full human potential; to be active, not passive.

    Now go read the whole thing :o) His book The Play Ethic is on it’s way from Amazon to me.

  • New Happy At Work Newsletter

    We’ve put out a new edition of the Happy At Work Newsletter, including the story of why it’s all Chet’s fault and how American Airlines have turned a profit for the first time in 5 years – by listening to their people!

    You can sign up for the newsletter here.

  • Doing business in the nude

    If you have to be naked, you’d better be buff.

    This quote is from The Naked Corporation by Don Tapscott and David Ticoll, one of the books I’m currently reading. They argue (and quite convincingly so) that businesses are entering an age of transparency, ie. that some of the major forces affecting markets and societies increasingly favor those organizations who are open and honest. That in an age where the cost of communication is constantly dropping, the world most likely WILL know what goes on inside your organization – whether you want it or not.

    Here’s my take on this: Yaaaaaaay!!! Openness and transparency are good, and it’s hard to be happy and enjoy your job in a company that requires you to keep too many secrets. I think our natural state is to be open and share information, and we can relax more when we’re allowed to do that.

    For an additional reason why transparency works, read Non zero by Robert Wright. This book argues that those who cooperate will always triumph over those who battle each other, not in every case but in the long run. And those who can be open and transparent can cooperate way more effectively than those who keep everything secret.

  • Ethical balance sheet

    Bank manager Hans Erik Brønserud explains the reasoning behind the ethical balance sheet his bank does in addition to the normal balance sheet:

    First and foremost this has given us a tool, which gives us a unique opportunity to sense how our stakeholders view us and what we do. Every year we get specific feedback on whether we are in agreement with our customers, employees and community, and the tables and graphs instantly show us if we’re slacking in any area.

    But all of this knowledge makes no difference if we in management don’t take in the signals and correct the things that aren’t working optimally, and this we’ve chosen to do since the very first ethical balance sheet.

    BTW, I’m thrilled by their mission statement:

    1) We must treat our customers in a way that keeps them coming back and makes them mention on favourably to people who aren’t yet customers with us.

    2) We must treat our employees in a way that makes them look forward to coming to work every day and be proud to mention where they work.

    3) We must make enough money to keep fulfilling the first 2

    Read the entire article (in danish)

  • Happy at work newsletter

    The Happy At Work Project has long been publishing a monthly email-newsletter in danish, which has become very popular. Now we’ve decided to start publishing the newsletter in both english and danish, and the very first english edition can be found here.

    The newsletter has tips and ideas on how to be happy at work and also book reviews, articles and even some shameless advertising for the work we do :o)

    You can subscribe to the newsletter here.