The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Book review: Life on the line

    Solange de Santis is a journalist who’d never held a blue collar job in her life. She wondered what it would be like, so she took such a job. For a year and a half! Now that’s commitment.

    But it’s also something more. What drove her was partly curiosity about a different work environment and the desire to show that she could overcome a completely new set of challenges – but her book Life on the line which describes her experience also shows that there is more to it. The blue collar life has an attraction that shines through almost every page of the book. It may be rough, dirty, physically demanding and underpaid. But it is also challenging, giving and lets you meet many fascinating people.

    Solange got a job at a GM van factory that was slated to close 18 months in the future, and this added to the intensity and relevance of the experience. What happened to the 2700 people working at the GM Scarborough is happening again and again in companies all over the world.

    And if there is one lesson, that I take from the book, it is that the stereotypical view of factory workers is dead wrong. Many if the people she meets are dedicated, hard working, highly skilled and creative. But the way they work offers them no opportunity to use those sides of themselves. They’re locked in a tight battle between management and unions that actually has them cheering when production stops, giving them an unexpected break. This is not what they’re naturally like – it’s a reaction instilled in them by an inhuman system.

    Solange made it through some very tough times (especially at the beginning) and I have the deepest admiration for her, for having stuck with it. The resulting book is fascinating – I almost couldn’t put it down, I constantly had to know what would happen next. It’s also a fascinating glimpse of a different work environment that most white collar workers will never see for themselves. Managers would gain immensely from reading the book to get a view of management seen “from below”.

    The book is especially relevant for our work in the Happy At Work Project, because most of our customers so far have been white collar companies. This begs the question: Will the same methods work for blue collar workers? And after having read Solange’s book I remain convinced that they will. The difference between the white and blue collar people is much smaller than we think. And in the end we all have the same ambition for work: That it will make us happy!

  • Quote

    It’s late friday night at the end of a long, hot summer week. As I push on the next liner, feeling my neck and shoulders ache, I spot one of the trainers and his buddy tiptoeing behind the parts racks with a truly magnificent weapon, a slingshot made of rubber tubing that’s so big one man holds the ends above his head and the other pulls back the cradle…

    Not so long ago I was a boss and would have been considerably less amused. Now, picking up the 151st window, I watch with delight as they fire off another water balloon and it travels a good seventy-five feet down the aisle, splattering on the painted concrete floor. I am a prisoner of the line, and I am completely free, free of anyone’s expectations beyond the correct installation of this window.
    – Solange de Santis

    Solange de Santis is a journalist who took a job in a GM car plant to try blue collar work life. She described her experience in the book Life on the line.

  • Conference on change and happiness at work

    We’re arranging another conference on happiness at work, and this time the focus is on how to be happy during changes. Read more about the conference.

  • New website

    We took a look at our current website for the Happiness at Work Project, and found it to be horribly crowded! There’s information about us, our products and our results. And there’s articles, news, resources, downloads and lots of other stuff. Too confusing!

    So we split out all the resources stuff to a new website which you can find at www.spredarbejdsglaede.dk or at www.happyatworknow.com.

    So far most of the pages are in danish only, BUT soon we will translate most of the site to english, and thus have our first international website (YAAAAY).

    The site is (of course) a 100% open source solution. It’s running on a linux server hosted by Logical and the site itself is running on an excellent, free, open source solution called eGroupWare. Open Source Software ROCKS!

  • Storytelling

    When even the Harvard Business School turns on to storytelling, you know its gone mainstream. Which is entirely a good thing. I’ve been using stories a lot in the work I do, and I really enjoy the way an audience will go quiet and lean forward in their chairs when you say “I’d like to tell you a story…”

    “Here is our company’s biggest challenge, and here is what we need to do to prosper.” And you build your case by giving statistics and facts and quotes from authorities. But there are two problems with rhetoric. First, the people you’re talking to have their own set of authorities, statistics, and experiences. While you’re trying to persuade them, they are arguing with you in their heads. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.

    And that’s where stories come in, with their ability to talk to the non-rational parts of our minds:

    The other way to persuade people?and ultimately a much more powerful way?is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story. In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener’s emotions and energy.

    For an excellent introduction to storytelling read The Springboard by Stephen Denning.

  • A happy cab driver

    Few people would put cab driver at the top of the list of “jobs most likely to make me happy”, but there’s one New York cabbie who’s making his own happiness by playing matchmaker to his single customers:

    The 50-year-old Egyptian immigrant sets up blind dates for his single passengers through a free, impromptu matchmaking service he runs out of his yellow cab. He said he finds mates, or at least dates, for about eight people a week.

    “New York is a very tough city for dating,” Ibrahim mused while driving through the West Village recently. “I have heard a lot of crying in this cab, a lot of fighting and a lot of broken hearts.”

    “Sometimes great people were just missing each other by minutes; one would get in my cab just as another had gotten out,” he said.

    It all started by accident:

    “I was joking around with this girl … who said she couldn’t find a boyfriend,” he recalled. Ibrahim took her number.

    Three days later, a man got in his cab and bemoaned his bad luck finding a woman. Ibrahim called the woman and gave her the man’s number. Three weeks later, she called back and said they had gone on a date and were getting along great.

    “I thought, ‘Oh my God, this is my new project,”‘ he said.

    How’s that for creating your own (and others’) happiness at work.

  • No need to succeed

    My main tool in coping with all the stuff going on in the Happy at Work Project right now has been to remind myself, that I don’t need to suceed. Every time I start to stress a little I think “This does not need to work out. It does not need to be a success. It is OK if it fails.”

    I tried it at a workshop with a customer the other day. I had about 30 people there, and it felt like I wasn’t really reaching them. They weren’t complaining or anything, I just felt like there was a huge distance between me and them and that I wasn’t communicating as clearly as I wanted. So I did two things:
    1: As above, I reminded myself, that I don’t have to suceed. What a relief :o)
    2: I consciusly focused my attention on what was going on.

    All our workshops have lots of sessions where the participants work in small groups, and I spent some time not thinking or planning ahead. I simply tried to notice what was happening tight now in as much detail as possible. From that came a sense of calm and a feeling of reconnecting with what was going on in the room at the time. The workshop was a great success. I even stuck in an exercise I’d never tried before, one that’s really designed to be used on one person – I just modified it on the fly to work on 30 people :o)

    The question in my mind is whether I’m honest with myself. I’m telling myself that I don’t need to suceed – to enhance my chances of suceeding. That seems like cheating, somehow. But it works!

  • Living vs. blogging

    I haven’t been blogging much lately, and the reason is simple: I’m too busy living to write about living :o)

    The happy at work project is going so well, that it’s taking up all my time right now, I could fill page after page with all the good stuff that’s happening for us right now, but in brief:
    * The “happy at work” game is finished – and we immediately sold the first 10 copies.
    * We’ve moved into our new offices – they rock!
    * We’re planning yet another Happy at Work Conference – June 2nd at Basecamp.
    * We’re meeting new friends, partners and customers everywhere we go.
    * We hired Mette Nygaard Olsen to work full time.
    * There’s a new Happy at Work Website coming real soon now.
    * We just agreed on our biggest contract so far with a huge international customer.

    Phew! I think this will be a very interesting year :o)

  • Coffee in the office… or office in the coffee house?

    Wired has an article on a company that use a coffee house as their office:

    Delicious Monster is the Mac software company behind the hit Delicious Library, a program for cataloging collections of books, movies and games. The software is selling like hot cakes and has garnered rave reviews and awards, yet the company’s headquarters is a Seattle coffee house.

    As well as creamy lattes, the coffee shop offers wireless internet access and big, bench-like tables that several people can gather around. Often, Delicious Monster’s entire seven-person staff will work there.

    “Zoka is pretty much their office,” said Reid Hickman, a Zoka barista. “It’s a pretty good deal. They hang out here all day and they often get lunch and dinner here. They take good care of us.”

    This is yet another interesting blurring of what is and isn’t work. Or of where work can or can’t be performed. Expect more of this kind of thing.

  • Speaking of toys

    I’ve gotta have a Mac mini. I mean, just look at it.