The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Book review: The customer comes second

    The title of this book is a deliberate provocation. After endless messages about putting the customer first, Hal Rosenbluth, CEO of Rosenbluth International, says you should “put your people first and watch’em kick butt”. (Rosenbluth International is a world leader in corporate travel management, with over 5.000 people in more than 50 countries).

    The same principle works so well for Southwest Airlines, as described in the book “Nuts!“. And indeed there seems to be many similarities between the approaches taken by Southwest and Rosenbluth, and the results they achieve.

    Both companies enjoy huge financial success. They both lead their markets in quality of service and customer satisfaction. They both have a motivated, caring work force, willing to go very far for their customers, each other and the community. They both care deeply about people, and strive to make work a place where people learn, have fun and grow. They both hire people who have the right personality, and then train them to have the right skill.

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  • Exercise: Talking stick

    Talking stick is an excellent way to promote better and deeper dialogue. If you need to slow down the pace of a discussion, to make room for more reflection and listening, consider trying it. It’s really simple. Basically, you find a stick (or some other object), and whoever holds the stick can speak, everybody else listens. When you’ve finished talking, you can put down the stick (for somebody else to pick up), or you can hand it to somebody, allowing that person to speak.

    It sounds almost too simple to work, but it does. It usually has several effects:
    People listen more to what is being said, in stead of waiting for their turn to speak.
    People don’t talk too much. If you’re constantly holding the stick, you’ll notice, and pass it on.
    The pace of the discussion slows.
    There’s less disagreement.

    There’s a detailed description of talking stick here.

  • Book review: Nuts!

    Nuts!, Southwest Airlines crazy recipe for business and personal success is the story of Southwest Airlines. Lars Pind told me about this book, and I have to agree: It’s a joy to read about a company that values freedom, creativity, people and, yes, love.

    If your driving principles are love and fun, can you still make a profit in todays harsh business world? Well, here’s a few stats on Southwest:

    • They’re the only airline in America who have had a profit every year since 1973
    • They’ve grown from 3 planes and 250 employees in 1973 to 200 planes and 25.000 employees in 2002
    • They service twice as many customers pr. employee as any other airline
    • They have never mass-fired employees
    • They have the highest customer ratings

    So there!
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  • Quote

    Rational structures of control inhibit creativity. Managing as if people had souls requires that we de-mechanize management and instill it with the diversity and depth of our own humanity. The point is to respect people and allow them to make the fullest contribution they can. We need more reflection in business not more strategizing. Meditation takes thinking even further because it allows for the wisdom of the heart to interweave with the knowledge of the head.
    – John Dalla Costa

  • Book review: Getting to yes

    This is the classic book about negotiating, from way back in 1980. I like the book, because it stresses a positive mode of negotation. A mode that is based on honesty, integrity, fairness and mutual understanding.

    The basic view is, that in a negotiation, the two extreme positions are hard and soft. Hard negotiators are adversaries, soft negotiators want to be friends. And between these two poles stands the principled negotiator, who ses himself and the other side as problem solvers. A very constructive view.
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  • An honest company

    Imagine a company that practices total, uncompromising honesty in their advertising. If they have a great product they’ll say so. And if they’re trying to sell you something mediocre, they’ll tell you that too. They might actively warn you along the lines of “Don’t expect good service from these people” or “The product here is nothing to write home about”, or even “If you have any complaints talk to Benny. If he breaks down crying, ignore it, it’s just a trick he uses.”

    Do you think a company like that could possibly survive?

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  • Book review: The dance of change

    Whew!

    I’ve finally finished Peter Senge’s trilogy on learning organizations. After The fifth discipline and The fifth discipline fieldbook, comes The dance of change: The Challenges of Sustaining Momentum in a Learning Organisation.

    The first book lays the theoretical foundation, and introduces the five disciplines which Peter Senge believes are the key to creating learning organizations. They are personal mastery, systems thinking, shared vision, team learning and mental models. The second book contains practical tips on how to implement each of the five disciplines. By now we’re already past the 1000-page mark.

    The dance of change brings the tally up another 550 pages, and deals with the challenges that all change initiatives in organizations meet. The link between change and learning permeates the book. You can’t turn an organization into a learning organization without changing. Conversely, any strategic change in a company, that doesn’t contain learning in some form is probably doomed. So change is learning and learning is change.
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  • Quote

    People don’t burn out because they’re trying to solve problems. People burn out because they’ve been trying to solve the same problem over and over and over.
    – Susan Scott

  • Book review: The living company

    I always thought that the really big companies were immortal. That once an organization attained a certain size, it would last forever, barring some catastrophic event or weird fluke. But it turns out, that the average life span of Fortune 500 companies is under 50 years!

    Arie de Geus pioneered a study at Shell that uncovered this fact, and looked at companies that have lasted a long time, and “The living company: Growth, Learning and Longevity in Business” summarizes the characteristics of these organizations. The most important fact that sets them apart: They are not in business only for the money!

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  • Po Bronson: What Should I Do with My Life?

    Po Bronson (the author of “The nudist on the late shift“) takes on the most fundamental question “What Should I Do with My Life?” in his new book. There’s an article on it in Fast Company, and it’s excellent stuff.

    Here’s a teaser:
    Instead of focusing on what’s next, let’s get back to what’s first. The previous era of business was defined by the question, Where’s the opportunity? I’m convinced that business success in the future starts with the question, What should I do with my life? Yes, that’s right. The most obvious and universal question on our plates as human beings is the most urgent and pragmatic approach to sustainable success in our organizations.
    …
    [People] thrive by focusing on the question of who they really are — and connecting that to work that they truly love ( and, in so doing, unleashing a productive and creative power that they never imagined ).

    Yes! Thank you Mr. Bronson. Some of these thoughts lie at the center of my project (projekt arbejdsgl?de), and it’s beatiful to see a writer with his clout popularizing the same thoughts.

    However, I do have one observation to add.
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