I’ve been hard at work over the last couple of days putting together a tremendously cool event here in Copenhagen.

The theme is goals. Do you have the right goals in life and at work? What do your goals do to you? Are you always chasing goals other people set for you? Are you one of the people who never seem to reach their goals? Or do you reach them – but forget to enjoy it?

Maybe you’re a goal-a-holic, like so many others these days. You can test yourself here, to see if you are.

This event will highlight:

• How to find the right goals
• How to find the energy to reach your goals
• How you can live goal-free

The speakers include Nicolai Moltke-Leth, one of Denmark’s leading business speakers, Stephen Shapiro, author of Goal-Free Living – and yours truly :o)

The event takes place on Friday Oct. 5 from 1-4 PM in Copenhagen. It will be partly in English and partly in Danish and it only costs 300 DKK per person. Sign up fast, there’s only room for 200 people and I have a feeling this is going to be huuuuuge :o)

You can learn more and sign up here.

I’ve just come across one of the most fantastic things I’ve ever seen on the net.

Background: A photographer is taking some pictures of huskies in the snow in northern Canada. The huskies are chained to stakes in the ground (as they normally are). Then a huge, wild, male polar bear appears and heads straight for one of the huskies.

At this point in the story I was thinking “so long, husky. Nice knowing ya.” And then something astonishing and beautiful happens.

Watch the slide show and tell me if this isn’t one of the strangest things ever.

Here’s what I take from this video: If the husky had met the polar bear with aggression, he’d have been toast. Or served on toast. But by meeting a huge(!) danger with a playful attitude it became a moment of fun instead of violence.

I think this can work often in life. It’s not the way you meet an oncoming, jackknifed tanker truck – they don’t respond well to a playful attitude.

But in many other situations, meeting risk or sticky situations with an invitation to play can in itself make a huge difference. At least, you’re not escalating a bad situation yourself.

This is of course contrary to common wisdom, where you should always “expect the worst”. Well, sometimes expecting the worst, brings about the worst.

Have you ever tried meeting a tricky situation at work with a playful attitude? How did you do it? Write a comment, I’d really like to know!

What do you do about co-workers or employees who don’t pull their weight? Sheila Norman-Culp has taken a look at that situation and interviewed a few experts, including yours truly.

In the American workplace these days, teams are the hot commodity. And where there’s a team, there’s always one person whom others feel is not pulling their own weight.

So should the lazy worker be put on notice? Get more training? Be promoted? Be fired? Don’t laugh — experts say every one of those solutions could work.

I’m quoted as saying that the only cure for lazy employees is to fire a few of them, to put the fear of God into the rest. Or something like that – it’s been a while I since I talked to Sheila, I honestly can’t remember.

Read Sheila’s article here.

Related posts:

• How to procrastinate effectively
• The cult of overwork
• The cult of overwork revisited
• Book review: The Lazy Way to Success by Fred Gratzon
• My lazy life – how laziness made me a better student, developer and leader

I’m having a massively interesting week here. Monday I did a workshop for The Danish Union of Librarians. The workshop focused on making the libraries happier workplaces and on promoting better cooperation between management and union reps.

In my opinion, the one place where management and unions can always meet and work together is happiness at work. On all other areas, like salaries, policies, vacations, leadership, etc. they can easily end up on different sides. But everyone can agree that happiness at work is a worthy goal that serves both employees AND the workplace and that makes it a great place to start to improve working relations.

Today I’m going to Estonia to do a workshop for a new company called Arigato. Arigato is the newest, shiniest fitness center in the Baltic and a company with huge ambitions. Simply put, they want excellent customer service, and they’ve realized that the only way to achieve it is to have happy employees. That’s where I come in :o)

As you may know if you’ve watched Shogun as avidly as I have, domo arigato means thank you very much in Japanese, and one of the company’s core values is indeed gratitude. It’s very difficult to come up with new corporate values (everyone seems to end up with some variation of respect, openness, excellence, quality and trust) but gratitude is new to me. It’s a great idea though – as studies show that gratitude is a key to happiness.

After the workshop my wonderful girlfriend and I will be relaxing for a few days in Tallinn. I’ll be back on Monday, but I’ve set up a few posts to appear for the rest of the week, so things won’t have to go quiet here on the blog.