How to be happy at work
We’ve shared lots of ways to create more happiness at work – but now it’s your turn to get creative.
Your mission this Monday is to:
All clear? Awesome. Go!
The articles on this blog have been viewed more than 10,000,000 times. I can hardly believe it. Here are the 10 most popular of all time.
10: Top 5 reasons why “The Customer is Always Right” is wrong
The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909. Ironically it often leads to unhappy employees and bad customer service. Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.
9: Ten seeeeeeriously cool workplaces
Physical space matters. It’s easier to be productive, creative and happy at work in a colourful, organic, playful environment than in a grey, linear, boring one. Take a tour of 10 really cool, beautiful workplaces.
8: How NOT to lead geeks
The main reason IT people are unhappy at work is bad relations with management, often because geeks and managers have fundamentally different personalities, professional backgrounds and ambitions. See the top 10 mistakes IT managers make.
7: Secret salaries are a baaaaaad idea
It’s a golden rule in most businesses that salaries must be kept secret. Except for a few heretics, it is almost universally accepted that mayhem would ensue in the workplace if people knew what their co-workers, their managers or – gasp – the CEO was making. Making salaries open inside a company instead seems like a wild idea sure, but it makes a lot of sense and brings advantages for both the workplace and for its people.
6: Top five business maxims that need to go
Much well-known business advice is sadly obsolete but can still be found in articles, business books and, not least, in daily use in the workplace. The worst of these old maxims are not only wrong, they’re bad for people and bad for business. Here’s my pick of the top 5 business maxims in serious need of an update – with a replacement for each.
5: Rewards don’t motivate. No, really, they don’t.
Many people don’t feel motivated at work, and there’s a very simple explanation for this: The motivational techniques used by most managers don’t work.
4: Top ten bad excuses for staying in a job you hate
If you’re unhappy at work, I’m sure that the thought “Man, I really should quit!” crosses your mind occasionally. So why don’t you? Here are 10 of the most common bad excuses for staying in a crappy job.
3: 12 ways to pimp your office
I’m not going to claim that a fancy desk or a weird chair is going to magically improve your creativity and productivity – but I am damn sure, that all that sameness and eternal corporate grayness, does nothing good for your ability to come up with great new ideas. Here are some ways to spruce up a workplace that may actually inject some color and fun into your work environment.
2: Top ten signs you’re unhappy at work
How do you know that you’re unhappy at work? In my work, I talk to a lot of people who are not happy with their jobs. Here are the top ten symptoms of unhappiness at work that I’ve observed. How many apply to you?
1: Don’t let The Cult of Overwork ruin your life
I know it’s normal to view people working constant overtime as heroes of the organization. But still I think they would be more efficient and enjoy life more if they cut down their time at work. They may find that they become more open, less stressed, have more fun AND are better role models for their employees. This cult of overwork has got to stop.
I’ll be keynoting at the People Innovation Summit in Moscow on May 19-21.
In preparation for that, I did a short video interview with them, where I talk about the link between happiness and business success. Check it out – it summarizes the idea of happiness at work from a business perspective quite well.
I’ve written a lot about the obsession companies have with tracking and increasing employees’ working hours – based on the myth that working more hours leads to better results.
But the clearest and most concise commentary on this comes from Zach Holman of American software company GitHub, who puts it like this:
Hours are bullshit!
I could not agree more. Stop focusing on hours worked and start focusing on results delivered. And realize that there is not a linear relationship between the two.
Read more about what makes GitHub an awesome workplace here.
There are boring offfices, cool offices and offices that just take your breath away!
In December we got a tour of dPOP in Detroit and what we saw there blew us away completely.
This is hardly surprising – dPOP’s business is to design office spaces for their clients – but still, this space was beyond awesome.
Here are a few of the pics we took at one seeeeeeriously cool office.
Why NOT have a space suit in your lobby?
The office is in an old bank vault and the vault doors are still there.
Inside the vault is this amazing meeting room.
This meeting table spins like one of those playground carousels.
Besides your desk, there are many other places to meet and work.
Another vault door.
Behind which is another meeting room.
They’ve kept all the safe deposit boxes, many of which are still locked.
These shelves contain objects found during the renovation, arranged by two local artists.
This mural was chiseled into the concrete wall by an artist.
Another meeting space.
Not only is dPOP’s own HQ cool, the spaces they’ve designed for their clients are just amazing. You can see some of their work here.
I’m not going to claim that redecorating the office space is a surefire way to create a happy workplace. I’ve seen some very unhappy workplaces, that had beautiful bright airy office spaces but completely toxic cultures. I’ve also seen incredibly happy workplaces, whose offices look like crap.
But I still think that office design matters. And on a more fundamental level, why does every workplace have to look the same? Why does every office or meeting room inside a company have to look the same? We know that our minds thrive on variety and I think you can let the office design reflect that.
What do you think of dPOP’s office? How does the look compare to your office? What are some things you love about the design of your workplace? What are some things that just don’t work?
Some researchers have sat down and crunched the numbers and figured out that there’s a day called Blue Monday in late January which is supposedly the unhappiest day of the year. They even have a formula for calculating when it is, so you KNOW it’s scientific :-)
And when is Blue Monday 2014? Why it’s next week on January 20. So if you woke up this morning tired and wishing you didn’t have to go to work, maybe that’s why.
What’s bringing you down at work? We’d love to know, so click this link and tell us all about it. Is your boss a jerk? Are your co-workers mental? Are your clients demanding and unreasonable? Is work hectic and stressful or maybe incredibly boring?
I’m featured in this article in The London Evenings Standard.
What’s especially funny is the way the healthy British scepticism towards happiness does shine through :o)
The beginning of a new year is a great time to take stock of your work life. Did everything going the way you wanted it in 2013? Were you happy or unhappy at work? What would you like to change?
Unfortunately, most people look back and think almost exclusively in terms of what went wrong. The things they should have done. They goals they ought to have achieved. The progress that didn’t come.
We think you can achieve much more by turning that around 180 degrees, so here’s our suggestion for a little new year’s exercise in happiness at work.
Think back at your work life in 2013 and answer the following 10 questions. It works best, if you take some time to do it and if you write down the answers.
Enjoy – and I wish you a very happy new year at work!
This article from Harvard Business Review by Matthew Lieberman asks whether leaders should focus on results or people. It quotes a study by Jamez Zenger from 2009 who found that:
If a leader was seen as being very strong on results focus, the chance of that leader being seen as a great leader was only 14%…
If a leader was strong on social skills, he or she was seen as a great leader even less of the time — a paltry 12%.
However, for leaders who were strong in both results focus and in social skills, the likelihood of being seen as a great leader skyrocketed to 72%.
But here’s the kicker:
Less than 1% of leaders were rated high on both goal focus and social skills.
Ouch!
Our theoretical framework says that happiness at work comes mainly from results and relationships – we need both to create happy workplaces. And while our traditional image of a leader is someone who is extremely results-oriented, it seems that great leaders have both skills.
So why is that so rare? It goes against the way our brains are wired says Lieberman in the article and in his book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect:
These two networks (results and relationships) function like a neural seesaw. In countless neuroimaging studies, the more one of these networks got more active, the more the other one got quieter…
Its safe to say that in business, analytical thinking has historically been the coin of the realm — making it harder to recognize the social issues that significantly affect productivity and profits. Moreover, employees are much more likely to be promoted to leadership positions because of their technical prowess. We are thus promoting people who may lack the social skills to make the most of their teams and not giving them the training they need to thrive once promoted.
Again: Ouch!
In December we did a tour of some of the happiest workplaces in the US to see what ideas we could steal borrow from them.
Above is an interview I did with Richard Sheridan, the founder and Chief Storyteller of Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In this brief video, he shares some of the great things they’ve done to make Menlo a very happy workplace.
Among other things Rich talks about:
Watch it and let me know what you think. Is there anything your company could learn from Menlo? Are you already doing something similar?
Rich is also the author of the excellent book Joy Inc, which I’ve reviewed here.
The Chief Happiness Officer Academy is our most in-depth 3-day training where we share everything we know about creating happier workplaces. Get an in-depth background in happiness at work, hear about the latest research in the field and learn how to use this in your own business.