The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Category: Leadership

Leadership is an insanely important discipline. Here you’ll find the thought, tools and tricks of the trade of great leaders.

  • The happy leader

    What is it that the best leaders do that gives them their results? How do great leaders motivate and inspire? Why do they do it?

    I’m convinced, that it’s very simple: The best leader is the happy leader. One who sets the happiness of himself and his people above anything else. There are many examples of such leaders, and we’ve written an article about The Happy Leader that describes a few cases both in Denmark and internationally. The article also contains specific tips on how to get the same results for yourself.

    The article is only available in danish, but if there’s demand for it, I’ll translate it into english.

  • Moral imagination

    I found a very interesting article on Using Moral Imagination for irreplicable Strategic Advantage.

    Based on “The Moral Advantage Model” the author argues that there is a strategic, competitive advantage beyond the traditional two of low cost and differentiation. From the article:

    With agility, companies with moral imagination evolve their strategies and operational practices to changing worlds while simultaneously remaining steadfastly faithful to the values and purpose that define them.
    …
    The key … lies in using Moral Imagination to understand two dynamics. The first concerns the degree to which work satisfies the deepest human needs of employees and concerns the company’s Values and Ethics. The second concerns the degree to which a company’s product and service satisfies the deepest human needs of its customers and concerns the company’s Strategy.

    I like the article both for it’s logic which is clear and compelling but also for the way it talks about moral choices grounded in clear strategic concepts and thinking. Read it!

  • Ricardo Semler

    The ever blogging Chris Corrigan points to an excerpt of Ricardo Semler’s book The Seven-Day Weekend. A small teaser:

    I believe the old way of doing business is dying, and the sooner it’s dead and buried the better off we all will be. Incendiary words, yet Semco’s alliance with Cushman & Wakefield, as well as other joint ventures that I will describe shortly, suggests that the transition from the old to the new can be hugely profitable and not nearly as socially disruptive as might be feared at first. On the contrary, the path Semco has been blazing for more than twenty years has led to an unprecedented record of innovation, customer satisfaction, growth, and an end to repressive command-and-control management practices that cause much labor unrest and personal misery, from the top to the bottom of many organizations.

    That does it, Semler is going on my list of people I’ve gotta have a conversation with.

  • Happy at work – world-wide

    At the Interactive Organizations Conference 2004, I offered the idea of creating an international IO, based on the happy at work project.

    Instead of getting all theoretical, we could simply organize around the purpose of making people happy at work, and create an IO for just that. Here’s the idea: We already have some proven methods and technologies in the work we do in Denmark. We have lectures, a workshop, a book, a game, a video, a conference and much more. All of this we are willing to give away to anyone who’s interested in using it, and we’ll make this the basis of the world-wide happy at work project.

    If you’re interested in participating in this drop me an email. The exact details are still a little hazy – but mostly, I think it could be a LOT of fun :o)

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  • Interactive Organizations Conference

    The interactive organization is one that is less dominated by traditional control structures and where people are more free to do their work. Interactive organizations (IO’s) are therefore more efficient, adapt faster to changes in their environment – and they’re a lot more fun to be in. They can also be chaotic and frustrating :o)

    I’ve been a leader and participant (in interactive orgs everyone is both) in three different organizations which were interactive, and I can assure you, that I will never again work in a “traditional” workplace. I could simply never function again under the old, inflexible ways defined by the org chart.

    So when I heard that the first conference on IO’s was being organized in Krakow I knew that I had to be a part of it. The term Interactive Organization was defined in Harrison Owen’s book The power of spirit, how organizations transfrom and describes what a workplace organized around Open Space Technology might be like.
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  • There ain’t no such thing as change management

    I’m currently reading “The spirit of leadership” by Harrison Owen and it has something to say on the difference between management and leadership:
    [Managers] control the system, whatever that system might be. And the operative word is control. A good manager makes the plan, manages to the plan, and meets the plan. The details are taken care of, the abberancies are controlled, and the problems are solved. … But when the balance swings to nostability and change occurs in radical, discontinuous jumps, the skills of management don’t work quite as well as they used to.

    Which would make “change management” an oxymoron – there ain’t no such thing. A better term would be “change leadership”.

  • Manifesto for growth

    I’m currently putting together a two-hour session on change. One of the hot topics in management today is change management, and I would argue that you can’t manage change if you don’t understand change. So I’m looking at change from a lot of different angles right now: Science, philosophy, common sense, psychology, biology etc…

    And then somebody pointed me towards Bruce Mau’s An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, and while I may not agree with all of it, it certainly stimulated my thinking on growth. And of course growth and change are, if not identical, then at least related. Here’s my favourite bit from the manifesto:
    2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you?ll never have real growth.

  • Corporate Culture and Spirituality Conference

    Corporate culture and spirituality may look like strange bedfellows, but with the increasing awareness in businesses today on the importance of fostering personal development and excellence on the job, a spiritual focus is not a surprising development.

    Spirituality can be many things to many people, but to me it is a tool to get to know yourself, to improve your understanding of the world and to become happier. And these aims make a lot of sense at work.

    That’s why I think the 2004 conference on Corporate Culture and Spirituality looks very interesting. It’s held this year in Bangalore, India, and aims to:
    * Challenge the general perception about business & spirituality as dichotomous areas
    * Enhance the value and efficacy of conventional management practices by partnering with spirituality
    * Evolve a larger joint-role for corporate and spiritual leaders in addressing complex global issues like terrorism, corruption and poverty
    * Develop business models that create and sustain inspirational communication and bonds within organizations

    Which sounds pretty good to me. With sessions like “Maximizing Ethics and Profits”, “Persevering Excellence amidst the Chaos of Change” and “The Bottom Line, a Perspective in Time” it looks like the conference is firmly anchored in the current needs of organizations worldwide.

    The conference was held for the first time last year and was a great success. In 2003 it was mostly attended by indian business leaders, this year the focus will be more international. The conference fee is 700 euros, which isn’t too steep for a 3 day conference aimed at top executives.

    I’m going to Goa, India in September for the Open Space on Open Space conferece, and now it looks like I’ll have to seriously consider going to India twice in two months.

  • Going to Goa

    I just signed up for the 12th. international OSonOS (Open Space on Open Space) conference. Last year it was right here in Denmark but this year it’s in Goa, forcing me to travel to India’s most famous vacation spot. Dammit! I’ll have to take Patricia along, just to share the burden :o)

    I wrote a little about the 2003 OSonOS in Denmark here.

  • Open Space Status and future

    Harrison Owen wrote a brilliant summation on OST on the open space mailing list, which covers the origins, history and current status of Open Space Technology.

    The ending contains a wonderful challenge to all of us who know and use open space, and has certainly started med thinking about what the next step will be. Here is the entire text.
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