How to be happy at work
In just 9 hours we (the whole company, ie. all 4 of us) fly to America to attend the ippa World Congress on Positive Psychology. After that we have some time in New York to meet with cool people and take in the city.
2009 has been amazing so far and there is much to celebrate – and a trip like this is a great way to do it.
And remember, celebrating your victories is really, really important:
Though of course it is possible to overdo it :o)
Try it yourself: Go to google, type in “my job is ” and look at the suggestions. Here’s what I got:
Yikes!
I don’t mean to be hasty here, but maybe – just maybe – there’s room for improvement in some workplaces :o)
Today I spoke about happiness at work and innovation at the FutureNext conference in Copenhagen. This event was arranged in part by the internationally famous Danish business leader Lars Kolind.
After my presentation, Lars was kind enough to give me his honest opinion of it:
Thanks, Lars – I’m blushing here :o)
One of the most popular posts on this blog is still the one about how not to manage geeks, which lays out the top 1o mistakes managers make in leading tech people. The post has been translated into several other languages, and now you can also read it in German: Wie man Geeks NICHT führen sollte.
A great big thank you to Peter Köves for the translation!
Here are the other translations of the post:
The London Sunday Times had an article yesterday about happiness at work and why it’s great to like your job. They’re asking many different experts in the field, and I’m quoted as well:
The biggest single step that individuals can take is to choose to be happy, said Alex Kjerulf, chief happiness officer at the Happy at Work Consultancy and the author of Happy Hour is 9-5. “Rather than settling for a job that’s not too bad, say to yourself ‘I want to be happy at work’,” he said. “You can be happy as a bus driver, as a mortuary worker, as a doctor . . . but a lot of people don’t seem to want to be.”
There’s lots more – read the entire article here.
Speakers at Arbejdsglæde Live! 2009, our annual conference about happiness at work.
Last week has been the best week ever in the history of our company. It’s fun to be able to look back at and go “whoah – I’m glad we don’t rock that much every week :o)”
Here are a few highlights from the week:
We had our conference about happiness at work on Tuesday. 12 speakers from Denmark and USA and a great audience made this the happiest conference on Danish soil this year.
You can read more about the conference here (In Danish).
Here’s Steve Shapiro, our morning keynote speaker, giving his take on the day:
My new book (Hurra, der er krise / Hooray, there’s a crisis) debuted on the Danish non-fiction top-10 bestseller list. I was mostly edged out of the top spot by sudoku books and cook books:
The book was also reviewed in JyllandsPosten (a major Danish newspaper) and receieved 5 out of 6 stars for usability and 6 out of 6 for entertainment value. Some choice quotes:
Every time you finish a page, you just want to read another one. One of the most relevant books on the shelves right now. Read it and get happy.
You can see the review here (In Danish).
To cap off the week, I went to London to speak at London Business School. I was a guest speaker at Dr. Srikumar S. Rao’s class on Creativity and Personal Mastery and I had a blast with them. I also really enjoyed the previous day’s guest speaker Ben Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic.
So here’s to a great week – and here’s hoping that not every week has to be this intense :o)
As I previously blogged about (and some commenters took waaaay too seriously) it’s good to be a Dane, because Google likes us :o)
Here are two more reasons why Danes are really lucky:
If you’re getting tired of all this talk of recession and crisis, we have a new web site out in Danish called www.hurradererkrise.dk (which translates to “Hooray, there’s a crisis” – trust me, it sounds a lot better in Danish :o).
You can test yourself to see how the crisis affects you, you can test your workplace or you can join our Facebook group. Aaaaaand you can read all about my new book which comes out on May 14. In Danish. Check out www.hurradererkrise.dk.
And then there’s our fantastic conference about happiness at work on May 26 in Copenhagen. No less than 14 great speakers will inspire us about how to achieve happiness at work – even in a recession.
This year’s reboot conference promises to be the best ever – and that’s saying something. The theme this year is Action – something that is very close to my heart.
From the invitation:
it’s time to act, time to focus on the act of acting, time to figure out where to begin the reboot. reboot11 is two days away far from the status quo, two days with old and new friends trying to figure out how to reboot the world!
This is a once in our lifetime opportunity, and so it could be the single most important reboot ever – because this year we’re not in a world that thinks the status quo is working – it’s not only the freaks at reboot that feel the need to reboot things. we’re in times of change and systemic failure unlike anything we’ll probably experience again in our lifetime. we’ve had visionary insights and reflections the last couple of years at reboot (renaissance, human and free – great journeys into the deep insights). now it’s time to act on the insights.
It’s up to us edgelings and participatory folks to take charge and begin building a better future – insight comes with responsibility.
We’re not afraid. we know that we need to reinvent and reboot everything on new scales based on trust, networks and participation.
We are at the cusp of a new approach to sharing, consuming, banking, insurance, journalism, democracy – well almost everything – all the core infrastructure we’ve build our societal systems on. how do we move forward?
Inspiring words. I’ll be there!
Samantha Wood over at The Insider blog has visited British Innovation Agency ?What If! Innovation to find out what makes them such a great workplace.
Here are some elements from Sam’s post:
Let’s start at the beginning – the reception area. It IS a reception area in so much as there are welcoming people who’ll point you in the direction of the right meeting, but there’s a bit more to this space than that. It’s an eating area, a kitchen, a place for meetings, a place for parties, an internet café and a space for congregation and recognition.
Recruitment:
“They just want to get involved. Everyone here does. We only hire the kinds of people who are really passionate and pro-active and who believe in our values”.
Even laying people off is done in a deliberate, positive way:
“It took a lot of hard work to plan a way of making redundancies that could be as painless as possible for those involved. But it was totally, totally worth it. These people are our friends, and they remain so – which I hope means we got it right”.
Go read Sam’s entire post – it’ll give you some excellent insight into a very happy and very successful workplace.
As I’ve mentioned before, our HQ here in Copenhagen is in a fantastic place called La Oficina. This is a shared office space for small businesses – but a very different one. The metaphor for the place is not really an office, it’s a café.
When you step inside, the first thing you see is the bar and the grand piano. In fact, there are no desks, office chairs, cubicles or bulletin boards anywhere. You go in, you pick a table like you would at any café and you work, have your meeting, have coffee or whatever.
In short, it’s a beautiful and brilliant place and the café setting makes it really easy to meet and learn from all the other amazingly cool people who come here.
But a place in England has just upped the ante. When I saw this, I became instantly green with envy:
Yes, that is a slide going down three floors. I have not tried it but it looks fast.
It’s in the newly opened Electric Works office complex in Sheffield.
November 3-6 2026 in Copenhagen
June 1-4 2027 in Copenhagen
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