How to be happy at work
Can the business world learn anything from existential philosophy? Do concepts such as freedom, good and evil, accountability and anxiety have any meaning in a corporate setting?
After reading this book by Peter Koestenbaum and Peter Block, I have no doubt whatsoever that the answer is a resounding yes. The subtitle “Applying philosophical insight to the real world” is beautifully realized throughout the book.
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Project Happiness at work took a giant leap forward last saturday. I’d invited some people who’ve been following the project or who liked the idea of doing an effort to promote happiness at work, and we spent four hours refining the project and coming up with a game plan for the next three months.
The highlight of the meeting for me was to see how the idea of spreading happiness at work grabs people. To know that the project is now more than just my dreams and ideas. To hear people say “We” as in “We need to find ten companies willing to give this a try. How do we do it?”. To see people assume ownership and leadership in different areas, and to see each contribute according to their interest. (Need I say that the meeting was an Open Space meeting? Of course it was).
But mostly: Thanks the people who came. It’s a great feeling for me to know, that I’m no longer alone, and that it’s no longer just my pet project. I look forward to spreading some work-happiness along with you guys, and along with anybody else who wants to help. Thanks!
Click more to see pictures.
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Good question, huh? What exactly should you do with your life? Where is that one job that will make your life eternally happy and remove all doubt about whether you’ve made the right choice?
Well, Po Bronson has talked to a lot of people who have faced that very question, and he has some good news and some bad news for us in this book.
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If ever you’ve doubted that meaning and satisfaction can be found in any job, read this article about a guy whose job it is to clean up dog waste.
The CEO Refresher has an article that suggests ten conversation topics in organizations. This builds on the idea, that conversations are the way that human beings think together, as explored by Margaret Wheatley in Turning to one another.
An excellent way to conduct the discussions, would be circles of conversation. This is a very simple method that promotes deep discussion and deep listening.
This book is Harrison Owens second book about Open Space, and it contains stories of how he arrived at the concept of Open Space, and of how it has helped and transformed various organizations.
Also, the book touches on time, or rather on our perception of it. All we really have is now. The past is over, the future hasn’t yet begun. But how long is that now? A week? A year? An instant?
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Perhaps it is the hedonist in me, but I believe that gatherings designed to achieve useful results can only be fully effective when the participants are having fun. The issues on the table, and the implications of the outcome, may all be deadly serious, but creative interchange, to say nothing of innovative results, seems to disappear quickly when a dark cloud of solemnity hangs over everything.
– Harrison Owen in Expanding our now.
When you make room for play at work, great things happen. They discovered this at Pike Place Fish Market in Seattle. Selling fish can be hard, boring and repetitious, and a few years back they had very little fun doing it.
And then they changed that. Today they have a lot more fun, give their customers a better experience and sell a lot more fish. This has been documented in a film and accompanying book called “Fish!” and in an additional book in the series called Fish Tales, which contains some great, true stories of organizations at play.
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We currently act as if people are not inherently motivated, rather that they go to work each day and wait for someone else to light their fire. This belief is common among managers and employees alike…
It is right and human for managers to care about the motivation and morale of their people, it is just that they are not the cause of it. Managers should ask for feedback from employees about hot they could improve as managers, but they ask this out of their own interest and desire to learn, not for the sake of the employee. If we decide to view employees as free and accountable, then we stop fixing them.
– Peter Koestenbaum in Freedom and accountability at work.
I submitted a posting to Slashdot (News for Nerds) in the “Ask Slashdot” category. It basically asked readers to submit stories of positive job experiences. You can see the posting and the replies here.
There are some wonderful stories there but much of it is tinged with a sense that the good is the exception and not the norm. I’m working to change just that.
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