The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • After the happy at work conference

    We had the happy at work conference yesterday, and it was a great experience. All our planning and desing efforts paid of, and everybody involved had a great day. Here’s some of the feedback we got:
    Best conference I’ve attended in Denmark…

    Wonderfully inspiring and immediately useful…

    Very refreshing and different…

    A great day of happiness…

    Fun to be part of, very inspiring. See you in 2005…

    I can safely say, that we succeded in creating a space and a mood where people could explore happiness at work from many angles. All day long the participants were happy, energetic, smiling, enthusiastic and positive. And I think the key is to create an environment where people have to take charge of their own learning. This was not a day that we created for them – they had to make their own day.

    For example: As soon as the participants arrived and were registered, they had to make their own badge. Instead of those boring preprinted badges with your name, title and company on’em, we had a large tabe with paper and pens in every conceivable colour, and everybody made their own badge, exactly as they wanted it. Some people got really creative :o)

    The conference only had 5 speakers, who spoke for 30 minutes each. The topics were very different, and each had their own individual style, that added immensely to the conference. Each of them did a great job.

    We had the CEO of Denmarks best workplace, Mads Kjaer, who spoke toegether with Malene Nilsson of Kjaer Group (their people manager) on what they’ve done to create their success story. We had a doctor, Claus Hyldahl, who spoke of the significance and practice of health in the workplace. We had Jesper Bove-Nielsen, the author of Corporate Kindergarten, who talked about play and innovation at work. John Bern talked about a simple model for happiness at work, and finally the well known danish actor Jens Arentzen talked about his take on happiness, in his very own style. All of this – and it wasn’t even noon yet.

    Then we had workshops. Lots of workshops. Coaching, appreciative inquiry, conversation circles, juggling, meditation, massage, health checkups and much, much more. And the participants seemed to throw themselves into it with abandon – especially the impro theater workshop seemed to generat a lot of fun and initiative.

    One very nice thing we did was to invite some professional storytellers to tell stories. One right after lunch, and one at the end of the conference. This was a great touch, which added a lot of fun to the proceedings.

    After the workshops, we gave each participant a chance to formulate a plan for their own happiness at work, and to discuss it with the other participants. Then it was almost 6PM, and we closed the day.

    Right now I feel happy and very, very tired. Every single gamble we took paid off. Every weird idea that we put into practice work. And put together, all of it created a day that was almost magical. We rock!

  • Open Space Status and future

    Harrison Owen wrote a brilliant summation on OST on the open space mailing list, which covers the origins, history and current status of Open Space Technology.

    The ending contains a wonderful challenge to all of us who know and use open space, and has certainly started med thinking about what the next step will be. Here is the entire text.
    (more…)

  • Psycopathic corporations

    The Corporation is a Canadian documentary released last year, which has an interesting premise: Under current law, a corporation is a person. But what kind of person?

    Considering the odd legal fiction that deems a corporation a ?person? in the eyes of the law, the feature documentary employs a checklist, based on actual diagnostic criteria of the World Health Organization and DSM IV, the standard tool of psychiatrists and psychologists. What emerges is a disturbing diagnosis.

    Self-interested, amoral, callous and deceitful, a corporation?s operational principles make it anti-social. It breaches social and legal standards to get its way even while it mimics the human qualities of empathy, caring and altruism. It suffers no guilt. Diagnosis: the institutional embodiment of laissez-faire capitalism fully meets the diagnostic criteria of a psychopath.

    I like the premise, and as Noam Chomsky says in the movie, you must distinguish between the system and the individual. It is perfectly likely, that most individuals in a corporation can be nice, thoughtful, compassionate people, yet the resulting system shows behaviour that is selfish, greedy and short-sighted.

    While this behaviour is certainly prevalent in some corporations, I think that more and more organizations are starting to realize, that this way of doing business is not sustainable, and are making positive changes.

    I had the pleasure yesterday of visiting the offices of IKEA in Denmark, to interview them for my book on happiness at work. About 8 months ago, they gave their entire check-out staff a 20% pay raise. They did this partly in recognition of the fact that these people have one of the hardest jobs in IKEA while getting the least amount of money, and partly because they think it will make them money in the long run. This is very far from psycopathic behaviour. It shows a creativity and maturity, based on the realization that there is no inherent oppostion between making money and doing good.

    Sample clip here.

  • Declaration of content

    Inspired by an ancient MAD Magazine article, I did this declaration of content, for the “happy at work” conference:

    Typical conferenceOur conference

    Talk:
    More talk:
    Innovation:
    Energy:
    Action:
    Boredom:

    		45%
    25%
    2%
    2%
    1%
    25%    		Talk:
    Action:
    Innovation:    		25%
    50%
    25%

    How does that sound?

  • Happy at work conference

    I’m very proud to announce the happy at work conference on May 27 in Copenhagen.

    We have a great program for the day, with more action and less talk than most conferences. And in a novel twist, we’re making the day a “Powerpoint free zone”. There are many great ways to use Powerpoint – and many bad ones. We thought we’d try and see what happens when you can’t use it for a whole day.

    We have some great speakers, including Mads Kjaer, the CEO of Denmarks best workplace, and Jesper Bove-Nielsen, the author of Corporate Kindergarten.

    Here are a couple of banners you can use, if you’d like to help us advertise the conference:

  • Motivation games

    Yahoo has a whole section on Work/Life health with some interesting stuff in it. I especially enjoyed some of the games describes in this article.

  • Book review: Synchronicity

    Synchronicity, the inner path of leadership by Joseph Jaworski is the story of his own transformation as a leader. From his earlier life (as he calls it) as a trial lawyer to his quest of identifying and promoting better leadership.

    His transformation began, as it often happens, with a personal tragedy. Until his wife left him, he had been living what must have seemed on the surface a perfect life. He had a high-payed, challenging job, a nice home, a wife and a kid. But when it all came tumbling down, he realized that he hadn’t really been living. His life felt two-dimensional.

    He has since then been through an amazing transformation which is described in the book in a no-nonsense, down-to-earth manner. He’s met, worked with and learned from people like David Bohm, Peter Senge and Arie deGeus, and the lessons are passed on in the book.

    And mostly, it’s about openness. About realizing that everything in the world is connected. That ultimately the border we perceive between “self” and “not-self” is an illusion. It’s about not trying to control life, but letting life flow through you.

    Jaworski argues that when you live life in this way, it feels like the world is constantly conspiring to help you along, and I can’t help but agree. I’ve taken a very similar approach to my work on the “Happy at work” project, and highly skilled and wonderfully nice people are constantly coming out of the woodwork to help. It’s a great feeling to be reliant on the world to help you, and to see that the world does.

    The book is an easy and enjoyable read, and the story of Jaworskis gradual unfolding from slave to a job to servant of a purpose is well told and very inspiring. I recommend it highly.

  • Nonviolent communication

    Nonviolent communication (nvc) is an excellent tool, especially for communicating in difficult situations. Like telling an employee he’s fired, criticizing someones work or reprimanding a child.

    The Center for nonviolent communication have an excellent overview of nvc.

    Marshall B. Rosenberg, the man behind nvc says in an interview:
    We call the language that we teach ?giraffe language,? though its official name is ?Nonviolent Communication.? I use the image of a giraffe because it?s a language of the heart, and a giraffe has the largest heart of any land animal.

    Unfortunately for myself, I was taught to speak ?jackal language.? You see, a jackal is closer to the ground. They get so preoccupied with getting their needs met that they just can?t see into the future like the tall giraffe. Jackals speak in ways that block compassionate communication, because they?re motivated out of fear, shame, and guilt.

  • I’m a clown

    Yep, this sunday (feb. 29) the “happy at work project” arranged a clown course for some people, and I’m now a certified, first grade clown.

    The story is this: Back in november, Lise Egeberg who is a hospital clown, asked around for contributions to a trip she wanted to take to Jamaica to visit schools, hospitals and orphanages and clown for the children there. It’s not like we’re swimming in money, but we decided to give her 1000$, and in return she gave us this training, and it was a lot of fun.

    Starting from a simple warm-up, she soon had everybody tripping over invisible wires, giving gifts in the clown manner and making fools of ourselves in many other ways. It was great!

    One exercise that made a great impression on me was about personal space. Take two people one walks towards the other, and the person standing still says stop, when he feels his personal space being invaded. When we did this normally, my personal space was a little less than a meter. But with the clown nose on, I had no personal space. I was not only comfortable with people getting really close to me – I was enjoying it. That was a powerful demonstration of the barriers we build around ourselves every day, and how clowning around and being more childlike can tear the barriers down.

    And today after the course, I feel more open, more spontaneous and more alive. There’s a great power in clowning. Here’s a picture of the graduates.

  • Interesting times

    These are really exciting times for the happy at work project. We’re meeting lots of interesting people and good things just eem to keep happening to us. I love it! That’s also why I haven’t been posting for a few days.

    Here’s just a few of the good things that have come up recently:

    New members
    Some new people have joined the project, each of whom brings some very interesting skills with them. I really enjoy the boost that comes from the energy and ideas that new members bring to the project. Welcome, guys!

    Prison
    I visited Denmarks biggest prison the other day in preparation for a workshop we’re doing with some of their employees (mostly prison guards) in march. This gave me an insight into a workplace that is not like most others. A workplace where more is at stake. Where the difference between a good and a bad day means more than just running out of coffee. A bad day in this job can put you in the hospital. And as a consequence, people are there for each other. If you need the help of your colleagues, you get it, sometimes without even asking for it.

    Conference
    We’re just finalizing our conference, which will be the first conference on happiness at work in Denmark (possibly in the world), and we have a very interesting and untraditional day planned. This will be more than just an endless lineup of speakers talking at a passive audience. This will be an event to inspire, energize and to spark action.

    Book
    Our book on happiness at work is also coming along nicely. We had a meeting yesterday with a publisher who would like to publish it (YAAAAY!), but we’re still thinking that maybe we should publish it ourselves. That way we keep all the rights and flexibility, and if we suddenly decide to offer it for free downloads on the net, we can.

    And here’s the kicker: All of this stuff happened within the last ten days. Interesting times, huh?