Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.
– Harold Whitman
Category: Happy At Work
How to be happy at work
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Quote
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Simplicity – complexity – simplicity
I posted an Oliver Wendell Holmes quote a while ago:
I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.
Sandy Wilder of Communico used this quote in his presentation at the CEO round table, and that got me thinking. I’d say that the first simplicity comes from thinking you understand any given system. Yep, we’ve got it figured – we know how the system will react in most situations, and we can manage that.
The complexity comes when you realize, that you don’t understand the system. An example: You give you salesforce bonuses to make them sell more. It works for a while, but suddenly sales drop. More bonuses help, but not as much as the first time. What’s going on? Apparently the system is more complex than we thought. The specific reasons, why additional bonuses don’t make much of an impact can vary. Maybe the first round of bonuses motivated the sales people to close a lot of easy sales, and now there are only the “hard” cases left. Maybt it has fostered strong internal competition, so they actually undercut each others work to get the bonus. The point is, that the system was apparently more complicated than we thought – and in truth, most systems are.
The “simplicity on the other side of complexity” does not come, however, from understanding the system. Most systems in a business setting are so complex, that we won’t ever be able to predict them. Trying to understand the system is, in all probability, ultimately futile.
However, trying to develop your values and principles, so that they align with your goals is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. And that is the simplicity on the other side of complexity. That simplicity comes from knowing yourself and your values, and living by them. It comes from the belief or faith that, as long as we work in the right way and stick to our principles, it will turn out right. And that’s a crucial distinction.
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Incentives do not work
If you want your employees to perform well, conventional wisdom says that you must give them lots of incentives. Stuff like free phone calls, company cars, gold stars, employee of the month awards are necessary, right? Wrong! Incentives, and the ensuing competition, actually make matters worse, and remove peoples attention from their work. This makes employees less motivated about their work.
According to this article by Alfie Kohn, you should in stead:
* Pay people well.
* Pay people fairly.
* Then do everything possible to take money off people’s minds.Notice that incentives, bonuses, pay-for-performance plans, and other reward systems violate the last principle by their very nature.
I could not agree more. The whole notion that you can motivate anybody is wrong, and money is certainly not the way. People can motivate themselves, and businesses can create environments in which it is easy or hard for them to do so. Incentives make it harder!
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Conference coming up
We’re hosting Denmarks (the worlds?) first conference on happiness at work. We’ve been working on it for a while now, generating ideas, lining up speakers, preparing the material, and here are the basic facts:
* Thursday January 29, 9-6
* Held in N?rrebrohallen
* 4 speakers before lunch
* Lots of workshops after lunch
* 300 participantsThis will be a fun, inspiring, energetic and innovative day, focused on why happiness in the workplace is a benefit to both organizations and employees, and how to do something about it. Let me know if you’re interested, and I’ll be sure to inform you when the conference website is up.
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Book review: All hat and no cattle
This book is the story of Chris Turner, and her work to bring change, learning and empowerment into Xerox. It’s a highly entertaining book, right from this first line: “My family never did hold much with organized religion. The fact is, we ended up in Texas because my great-grandfather roughed up a priest in Arkansas. Seems the good father didn’t want to bury a nonbaptized child the Catholic cemetery, and my great-granddaddy took offense at such malarkey… Given this background you’ll understand how I came by my habits of challenging rules and dogma. Questioning the status quo is something I have done all my life.”
And reading these “tales of a corporate outlaw” you’re left with little doubt that the status quo needs to be questioned. And here’s a tip: When you read the book, imagine it in a thick southern drawl – that makes it even better.
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Book review: Corporate Kindergarten
What is the value of play in the corporate world, and how could we go about introducing more of it? These are the main questions that Jesper Bove-Nielsen examines in his book Corporate Kindergarten.
This book falls somewhere between manifest, business book and academic book. It has the depth and reach of a good business book, but it clearly has a message, namely that playing is a good thing, and has tremendous value to offer the business world. The book is in danish, so non-danes will have to wait for a translation.
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Quote
I’m a businessman, but I’m still going to do things on my own terms. I’m going to break a lot of rules, and we’re going to blur the distinction between work and play. So we have a policy here – it’s called “Let My People Go Surfing.” A policy which is, when the surf comes up, anybody can just go surfing. Any time of the day, you just take off and go surfing… That attitude changes your whole life. If your life is set up so that you can drop anything when the surf comes up, it changes the whole way you do your life. And it has changed this whole company here.
– Yvon Chouinard, founder of Patagonia
Yvon explains the surf boards lined up in the entrance hallway of the companys headquarters in Ventura, California. Quoted in “Good Business” by Mihaly Csikszentmihaly.
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Beaten to it – by the Dalai Lama
We’re currently writing a book about happiness at work that will:
* Describe why happiness at work is important to both companies and employees
* Show concrete methods that are proven to work
* Attempt to energize the reader to work towards being happy at workThe writing is going beautifully. I’m finding my voice and the right style, and I’m simply churning out pages. Writing 10 book pages takes me about half a day. And fortunately I have a lot of help in the process, from fellow happiness-at-work-member Lars Henrik Nielsen.
And I’ve just discovered that the Dalai Lama has written a book called “the art of happiness at work“. Dammit! There’s a fine review of it here. I’ll have to read the book soon, to see if there’s anything in it that we can steal, er, borrow.
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Want happiness at work? Control your own time!
Giving employees something to smile about at the office may be as simple as offering them more control over their time, its recent survey suggests. One-third (33 percent) of workers polled said greater schedule flexibility would result in increased job satisfaction.
From an article in the Sillicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.
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Workday simulator
I can’t quite decide whether it’s funny or depressing.
