The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Happy At Work

How to be happy at work

  • Book review: Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky

    I just finished reading Inside Apple by Adam Lashinsky and I was struck by two observations:
    1: Apple gets a lot of things exactly right and some other things exactly wrong.
    Ie- the design-driven development, the commitment to making great products and the pride their employees can take in contributing to that are all fantastic.

    On the other hand, Apple’s culture of fear, paranoia and mistrust really comes through in the book. Check out this article about Apple’s secret police.

    I think Apple could be even more successful (hard as that is to imagine) without the paranoia and bad behavior shown in the book. However, I think some people will conclude that “Apple are assholes and Apple is successful. Being an asshole makes you successful.”

    2: The Apple culture is completely at odds with the Apple brand.
    The Apple brand is about individuality and freedom of expression. The Apple culture is about secrecy, uniformity and doing what you’re told. Is that duality sustainable in the long rung? I don’t think so.

    Finally, I simply can’t figure out from the book if Apple is a happy or unhappy workplace. It’s clear that employee happiness was certainly never a top priority for Steve Jobs and other top execs. On the other hand, their pride in their products and in working for Jobs’s vision makes them happy.

    In any case, read the book – it rocks.

  • When your boss saves your job

    Bob Sutton, author of the excellent book Good Boss Bad Boss tells this story from the very early days at Pixar:

    The company was under financial pressure and much of this pressure came down on the heads of the Division’s leaders, Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith.

    The new president, Doug Norby, wanted to bring some discipline to Lucasfilm, and was pressing Catmull and Smith to do some fairly deep layoffs. The two couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

    But Norby was unmoved. He was pestering Ed and Alvy for a list of names from the Computer Division to lay off, and Ed and Alvy kept blowing him off. Finally came the order: “You will be in my office tomorrow morning at 9:00 with a list of names.”

    So what did these two bosses do? They showed up in his office at 9:00 and plunked down a list. It had two names on it: Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith.

    Remember, there are many great managers out there. If you work for one who isn’t great, don’t just accept that as the natural state of things. Do something about it.

    Related posts

  • Kom til Arbejdsgl

    We just announced our annual conference about happiness at work in Copenhagen. Here’s the announcement – in Danish.

    Vi er super glade for igen at kunne invitere til Arbejdsglæde Live! konference, hvor du og 300 andre deltagere blandt andet kan høre:

    Will McInnes – Måske Englands gladeste direktør.

    Hans Erik Brønserud – Direktør for en af Danmarks absolut gladeste arbejdspladser.

    Wikke & Rasmussen – Fra Voldsom Volvo til Flyvende Farmor. Med glæde.

    Lise Egholm – Årets leder i Danmark 2011 fortæller hvordan hun skaber arbejdsglæde.

    Rowan Manahan – En ekspert fortæller hvordan arbejdsglæde fremmer din karriere – også i en krisetid.

    Paula Larrain – Dagens konferencier.

    Læs meget mere om konferencen og køb billetter her.

  • #h5yr and #h5is – find out how these two cryptic twitter tags promote happiness at work.

    H5is

    Take a moment to check out these two websites with some slightly cryptic links:

    They were created by Douglas Robar, a member of the Umbraco Community, that develops and uses the open source Umbraco CMS.

    They wanted a good way to share both success and mistakes and since there are hundreds of people working with Umbraco spread out all over the world they do this through twitter.

    If you want to praise a fellow member of the community for doing good work you can mention them on twitter and add the twitter tag #h5yr for High Five, You Rock (based on one of the exercises from our speeches).

    If you’ve just made a mistake at work and want to share it so others can learn from your example, you can tweet about it and add #h5is for High Five, I Suck.

    The two sites above list the most recent tweets that contain those two tags so the community members have a record of their successes and their failures and can appreciate and learn from both.

    And remember: It’s important for a workplace to celebrate when things go well, but equally important to celebrate mistakes and failure. Here’s why.

    PS.
    Also note that there is no h5ys (High Five You Suck) tag. That would NOT promote happiness at work!

    Related posts

  • Happiness at work in Bangkok

    I always say that happiness at work can be found anywhere, in almost any job. Here’s more evidence to support that hypothesis from a man who makes ice tea on the streets of Bangkok:

    Do you enjoy your job this much – or do it with half as much flair? If not… why not?

  • Give it your best shot

    Arbejdsglæde

    How do you think this word above is pronounced? Make a recording of your best guess (video or audio) and post it here…

    We need this for a little surprise project we’re working on. And yes, Danish is a weeeeeeird language.

    UPDATE:
    Here’s an attempt from the US:

    And another great one from Poland:

    Nice tries both… but not quite there. What’s your best shot?

  • Hmmm… is this me?

    Last night I was reading the excellent thriller novel Killer Move by Michael Marshall when I came to this passage where one of the main characters arrives at his office and runs into his assistant:

    “How’s…” I struggled and failed to come up with the name of her spawn. “Feeling better?”

    This was not something I cared about in the least, but that morning a Danish positivity blogger had suggested going out of one’s way to attempt to get inside other people’s lives and minds, however small and unappealing they might appear, as a thought experiment in connection building.

    Now this may be conceited of me but I gotta ask… is that me? There aren’t that many Danish positivity bloggers and this is exactly the kind of thing I write about, eg. here, here and here.

    I’ve been featured in The Times, The NY Times, Washington Post, BBC and Economic Times of India but this would be the first time I’ve ever been mentioned in a crime novel :o)

  • Happiness at work in The Dominican Republic

    A month ago I had the pleasure of speaking for the first time in The Dominican Republic. I was invited by Proaccion, a local consulting company who did a fantastic job advertising and arranging the event.

    70 CEOs and top level managers came to hear me speak for 3 hours about felicidad en el trabajo para la rentabilidad organizacional. There’s an article about the event here (in Spanish).

    I want to thank everyone who came for their enthusiasm and all the great questions. People seemed really inspired and from what I can tell the people of The Dominican Republic have a great capacity for happiness in life and a massive potential for translating that into their workplaces.

    And I especially want to thank Zoraima, Salvador and everyone else at Proaccion for taking such good care of us. They made sure we had a wonderful time, met many great people and even found a suit for me, so I could attend the private tour of the government palace, since the palace is a no-jeans-zone.

    So here – for the first time in years – is yours truly in a suit and tie:

    My next international gig is in December in Greenland… so a slightly different culture and climate :o) Should still be very interesting.

  • Grant a wish at work

    I’ve previously blogged about the American company Zappos and how happy they are. I’ve had the opportunity to visit them several times and their energy, vision and culture blows me away every time.

    My good friend Jamie Naughton who works for Zappos recently sent me this video from one of their all-hands meetings. This clip is from the Zappos Wishez part of the program:

    Here’s a video that explains the program a little more and shows some examples of previously granted wishes:

    I love this program because it ties into two of the most important things that make us happy. First of all, the happiness research shows that the best way to become happier yourself is to make someone else happy. I think it says something incredibly positive about us human beings as a species, that we gain the most happiness from increasing the happiness of others.

    Also, this program builds positive relationships inside the organization, again one of the most important drivers of happiness in the workplace.

    Your take

    What do you think? Does your workplace have something like this? Could it work? What would it mean to you be able to make a wish or grant one? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.

  • Celebrate your mistakes

    I gave a speech about happiness at work recently to a Danish IT company, where I talked about the importance of celebrating successes and mistakes in the workplace.

    After the speech, one of the developer emailed me this clip from the animated movie Meet the Robinsons.

    That’s it right there – failure and mistakes are not embarassing. They’re not meant to be hidden or explained away. Getting it wrong is a cause for celebration.

    I wrote about it previously – here are The Top 5 Reasons to Celebrate Mistakes at Work.