How to be happy at work
The happy at work project went out on the streets of Copenhagen and asked people “What makes you happy at work?”
The answers we got were funny and interesting, and if you understand danish you can see the best of them in this 1,5 min video clip. A big thank you to Charlotte Slemming for putting this together.
One of my passions is better meetings. Meetings can be productive, energizing, creative and fun. Or they can suck the life out of you faster than a brief stay in vacuum – without a space suit.
I stumbled upon a very simple and effective format that I’ve been using for shorter meetings with fewer people. Say 1-2 hours and up to 6 -8 people.
At the start of the meeting everybody who has a topic writes it on a piece of paper, announces it briefly, and places that piece of paper on the table. When no more topics come up, dialogue begins. We look at the potential topics, and decide where to start. People can break into groups or not as they choose, most of the time we tackle all of the topics together. Once a topic has been dealt with, you can put that piece of paper aside.
The good thing about this format is that it takes almost no time to do the agenda planning, and the agenda is visible to everyone, as is the progress since the number of outstanding items on the table keeps shrinking.
I’m not sure why, but this works much better than writing down the agenda on a piece of paper. I should probably note that I use this format with people who are already used to open space meetings – that may be part of the reason why it works for us. Try it!
Chris Corrigan links to a review of the book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, from which comes the following quote:
The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality,” however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.
Hehehe, I looooove that. And here’s another thought: I think art and work are approaching each other, or rather, I think that the way we work is coming more and more to resemble the way we produce art. Work used to be about producing something, and of course it still is, but increasingly work is also about self-expression and creating meaning for yourself and others, as in art.
This book is going in my shopping basket.
As you may have figured out from some previous posts, I’m a huge fan of the LOTR movies, and now I’ve found a treasure trove of info from people involved in the filming here.
My favourite quote:
On a day when it was mostly Elves, it was slightly an attention-seeking day – all the Elves needed a haircut, or their costumes had to be spotless. When it was a scene with a whole lot of hobbits, you just realized lunch got eaten a lot quicker, and there was a lot of joking going on!
– Dominic Monaghan (Merry)
I believe that the very purpose of our life is to seek happiness. That is clear. Whether one believes in religion or not, whether one believes in this religion or that religion, we all are seeking something better in life. So I think the very motion of our life is towards happiness…
– The Dalai Lama, quoted in The art of happiness
I could not agree more. Our nature is to be happy and peaceful and to work together for mutual benefit.
I believe, that the ability to tell a good story is one of the most important tools available to leaders (and remember: We’re all leaders). Stories have the ability to bring a point across without forcing the issue. Where rational arguments fail, stories can contain boths sides of a dilemma and can illuminate an interesting paradox without having to solve it. You might argue that stories open, where facts close.
“The story factor” by Annette Simmons is the best book on storytelling that I’ve read. It contains all the reasons why stories are good tools as well as a list of situations where you can use stories effectively (and how). Finally there’s a lot of info on how to find the good stories and how to tell them. And of course the book itself contains loads of stories, most of which are highly entertaining, and useful for many situations.
As an example, here’s a story that I heard recently, and immediately incorporated into the “happy at work” workshops. It’s the story of the ostrich who learned to fly. Normally ostriches can’t, and this ostrich wanted to share his new knowledge with all the other ostriches, so he arranged a flying conference in Africa. Other ostriches walked in from all over Africa, and over the course of a couple of days, he taught all of them to fly. Then on the last day, he stood and watched, as all the ostriches walked home.
I use this story to illustrate the gap between learning and action, and it illustrates the point in a funny and interesting way, without browbeating people about how difficult it is to translate learning into doing. It sets the stage perfectly for the “planning the future” part of the workshop.
Compared to one of the seminal works on storytelling, Stephen Denning’s “The Springboard”, Annette Simmons’ book is much more useful and contains more tips that will get you started as a storyteller. If you’re at all interested in the potential and practice of storytelling, this is the book for you.
2003 has been a wonderful year for me. Here’s a list of some of the things that I’m really grateful for in 2003, in no particular order:
* The company of the wonderful and innovative people at Arena. Thomas, Ole, David, Valdemar, Peter, Tine, Guan, Niels and many more. We rock!
* Moving to an appartment on the 7th. floor. Great sunsets!
* Meeting Traci, Justin, Christine, Mike and the other wonderful people at the World Dynamics CEO round table.
* Seeing Seattle with Pam.
* Seeing the happy at work project take off like it has, and being able to make people happy.
(more…)
For those of you who read danish, I wrote this summary of the “Happy at work” project in 2003.
The short version in english: It’s been one hell of a year. In january it was just me and a few loose ideas, and none of the methods had been tested. Now, there are lots of interesting, skilled and dedicated people working on it, we’ve proven that our methods work, and there are lots of exciting projects coming out of it.
A HUGE thank you to everyone who participated. I can’t wait to see what we’ll do in 2004, I KNOW it will be wild.
I just saw one of those “on the set” TV specials about the latest Lord of the rings movie and the director Peter Jackson said something very interesting about the casting for the movies. It turns out that when they were looking for actors they went by three main criteria:
1: They wanted people who could bring the characters from the book to life, who could give you the feeling that Frodo or Gandalf had stepped out of the book.
2: They wanted good actors, but they avoided any really big stars. For instance, Orlando Bloom who plays Legolas was hired just before he finished acting school.
3: And then there was one final criterion, one that really interested me: Peter Jackson only wanted actors who were nice people. After all, they would be spending over a year shooting the movie, so they might as well have a good time.
The TV show showed some of the actors interacting, and it’s obvious that they like each other and had a great time. This is also witnessed by the fact, that the nine actors comprising the “Fellowship of the ring” all went out and got tattoos of the elvish number “9”. This stands in sharp contrast to the many Hollywood stars who are known more for the extravagant demands they can make on a movie production than for their easy-going natures.
Seen in the context of my “Happy at work” project this is very interesting, and it mirrors precisely the attitude at Rosenbluth International (one of the world largest business travel agencies) who “hire for personality and train for skill”. To them it matters more that a potential new employee be a nice person than highly qualified, as described in the book Put the customer second.
PS.
Please don’t watch any of those “behind the scenes” TV shows before seeing “Return of the king”, it will give away way too much of the experience.
I’m currently reading “Built to Last” by Jim Collins, which examines 15 really great companies and compares them to 15 good (but not legendary) companies to find the practices that separates great from good.
At one point, the book mentions Nordstroms personnel handbook. Where other companies have inch-thick employee handbooks, Nordstroms is a 5″ by 8″ card that says something like “Welcome to Nordstroms, we’re glad to have you with us.” It the goes to say:
Nordstrom Rules
Rule #1: In all situations, use your good judgement.
There will be no additional rules.
I really, REALLY like that.
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