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.

  • Chaordic gathering in Denmark

    Next week (Monday to Wednesday), the Kaospilots are self-organizing a conference about chaordic organizations. The term chaordic was put forth by Dee Hock the man behind VISA in his excellent book The chaordic age.

    To me, the implications of complexity theory (chaos theory) in business are most aptly realized in the concept of chaordic organizations, organizations that live in the thin and dynamic borderland between chaos and order. I look forward to meeting some of the people behind The Chaordic Commons, and to sharing my experiences in exploring chaordic thinking and practices.

  • Art and fear

    Chris Corrigan links to a review of the book Art & Fear: Observations on the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, from which comes the following quote:

    The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality,” however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one – to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

    Hehehe, I looooove that. And here’s another thought: I think art and work are approaching each other, or rather, I think that the way we work is coming more and more to resemble the way we produce art. Work used to be about producing something, and of course it still is, but increasingly work is also about self-expression and creating meaning for yourself and others, as in art.

    This book is going in my shopping basket.

  • Advertising Arena

    Arena is turning out to be one seriously cool place. Interesting people, good conversations, exciting cooperations and lots of fun. A place to work away from work. Or maybe a place to meet a person who can bring your project a small step forward.

    Run by everyone, owned by noone (or everyone). Nobody is responsible for buying coffee, and yet there’s always coffee when you need a cup. An interesting experiment in self-leadership and co-creation.

    Won’t you join us?

  • Rule #1

    I’m currently reading “Built to Last” by Jim Collins, which examines 15 really great companies and compares them to 15 good (but not legendary) companies to find the practices that separates great from good.

    At one point, the book mentions Nordstroms personnel handbook. Where other companies have inch-thick employee handbooks, Nordstroms is a 5″ by 8″ card that says something like “Welcome to Nordstroms, we’re glad to have you with us.” It the goes to say:
    Nordstrom Rules
    Rule #1: In all situations, use your good judgement.
    There will be no additional rules.

    I really, REALLY like that.

  • I’m featured in the CEO refresher

    The december issue of the online magazine the CEO Refresher has an article I wrote in it. It’s about the art of hosting, and the editor called it a brilliant insight into leadership… one of the most creative insights I have seen. You’ll have to imagine me strutting around a hotel room in DC (I was at the World Dynamics round table), my arms raised above my head when I recieved that mail :o)

    The article is based on my experiences at a conference in Slovenia which i wrote about here.

  • Denmarks best workplaces

    I spent today at a conference that accompanies the announcement of Denmarks best workplaces, arranged by the greatplacetowork institute of Denmark. This year the winner is Kjaer group from my hometown Svendborg who sell cars to developing countries. Their motto is “Love cars, love people, love life”. You gotta love that.

    The day was fairly interesting, though I have to admit that once you get used to the efficiency, spirit and energy of open space meetings, more traditional conferences such as this one seem a waste of time. I did manage to get in some good conversations with other participants, though tellingsly enough, these all happened in the breaks.

    The keynote speaker was Robert Levering of the original great place to work institute. He set an international context by telling some stories from other such events in the rest of the worlds. Nice to know that the focus on creating good work places is growing all over the world. He also announced that the institute will focus more on the “how” of good workplaces; so far it’s only been about measuring the current status.

    The next couple of events were moslty forgettable with a few interesting highlights. This includes the panel debates; my life is too short for panel debates, though a good side effect seems to be, that while I’m thoruoghly bored by what’s being said I seem to get a lot of good ideas.

    The day ended with Peter Aalbaek of Zentropa, who has some very interesting ideas about how to run a company. Among other things he:
    * Once walked into the accounting department with a straight face and no pants (or underwear) on and asked for some invoice
    * Demands that people work menial and gruelling tasks for six months for free, before hiring them for real
    * Insists that contracts for employees are merely a sign that you expect trouble
    * Claims that it is the job of the workplace to save employees from their otherwise meaningless and boring existence.

  • Forget everything you know about change!

    Jim Collins, the author of Built to last and Good to great examines our peceptions of how change in orgnizations happens, and finds that most of our current thinking is dead wrong. This is one of the best and most insightful articles I’ve read in a loooong time. A teaser:

    I want to give you a lobotomy about change. I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned about what it takes to create great results. I want you to realize that nearly all operating prescriptions for creating large-scale corporate change are nothing but myths.
    …
    Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken. All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!” and “The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!” From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation — as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken.

    The key to succesful change: Put “Who” before “What”. Read the article at (where else) Fast Company.

  • Blame and responsibility

    Another topic that came up at the conference was the issue of blame and responsibility. How do you react, when a situation is all your fault? Or when somebody accuses you of it? We talked about it, and a thought came to me: There are a few differences between blame and responsibility.

    Blame is looking back, responsibility is looking forward. If I blame you, it’s about something that’s already happened. If I give you responsibility for something, that means the outcome is still uncertain.

    Blame means you’re essentially powerless. It’s done, it’s in the past, all you can do now is argue about whether or not it’s your fault. Responsibility means you have the power to change things.

    But perhaps the most important difference to me, is that blame can be divided, whereas responsibility can’t. If something bad happens, it can be 50% my fault and 50% yours. If we have a shared responsibility for something, we both have 100% responsibility. Acting as if you can pass around shares of responsibility has some weird consequeces. In my thinking, 10 people working on the same project all have 100% responsibility.

    This reminds me of a story I heard once, of the CEO of a danish company who went around in the organization taking the blame. Whenever there was a conflict or a crisis, he’d step in and say “It’s my fault”, leaving his people free to work out solutions. He took the blame, they got the responsibility.

  • Strong democratic leaders, a paradox?

    One of the things that came up in the discussion at the democratic CEO round table was the apparent paradox, that a democratic organization needs a strong leader. You’d think that the whole idea of democratic organizations, would be to eliminate the need for strong leaders so that everyone could lead according to their interests and passion. In practice this is not the case, as evidenced by the experience of those present at the round table.

    I came up with the idea, that the strong leader is necessary not to make actual business, but rather to keep the democracy alive and healthy. The one thing, that is not up for the vote in a democratic organization, is whether or not to be democratic. And since the transition to democracy and the practice of democracy once you’re there is untried and can be confusing, frustrating and difficult (in addition, of course, to being fun, dynamic and energizing), someone needs to hold on strongly to the democratic principles and values.

    That got me thinking about a model I came up with a couple of years ago – heavily inspired by some work in NLP, namely that at any given time, you can operate on three levels:
    * Values
    * Process
    * Production

    The lowest level is production. This is where things actually get done, and if you never spend time there, all your efforts will come to nothing. The middle level, process, is when you work on how you produce, eg. having a meeting to decide how to organize your work. The top level is values, and here you identify and strengthen the values and principles which shape the way you work.

    A strong democratic leader then, is one who is active in the middle level of democracy, ie. the principles. He will not make decisions at the production level, those are made democratically. But he or she will operate at the process level, to ensure that democracy is practiced and kept alive, according to the values of the company.

  • Practice of peace – part 1

    You know, when I planned my trip to the US and planned to fly from DC to Seattle, I was kinda thinking “OK, domestic flight, how long can it be – 2-3 hours?” Well, flying across the US takes five and a half hours!

    I’m now at the Practice of Peace conference, and it’s quite a far cry from the CEO round table. The round table was at a fancy Marriott hotel – here I share a room with two other guys one of whom snores constantly, though fortunately not very loudly. The round table meetings were in your traditional windowless conference room, here it’s this grand hall with windows, wooden beams and skylights. But notice, that where the luxury hotel had wired internet access in the rooms at $9.95 a day, this place has free wi-fi. Woohoo!

    The conference is just taking off, but I think I may have overextended myself, and I’m afraid I’m all conferenced out. Let’s see what happens. Oh, I talked briefly to Harrison Owen – seems like a very nice person.