My good friends at jiibe have come up with a really cool little game that let’s you play God with another person’s career. Mwah-ha-ha-ha.

In this career version of a matchmaker TV show, you first watch a short video where job seeker Claire introduces herself and her career dreams. You then see three suitors (ie. three workplaces) describe themselves. Your job is to figure out where Claire would fit in best.

Go play Connection at jiibe.com. There ARE prizes :o)

We’re all different and every companies is different. One person’s ideal workplaces is another person’s living hell. Jiibe helps you look at that.

It’s really simple – the website asks you a series of questions, and you tell it how things are at your current company and how you’d ideally like them to be.

At the end you get a description of your ideal corporate culture and a list of the companies that match it best – based not on how those companies define themselves but on how other jiibe users rated their workplaces.

Go try jiibe. My ideal culture is:

consensus
encouraging
empowering
improvising
innovating
fun
flat
cooperative
transparent

What’s yours?

I got this in an email today:

You know, if we all lived in a comic book, your super power would be making people happy. You really do have a knack.

Thanks Greg, that would be my super power of choice :o)

Interestingly, though I am a comic book fan, I can’t think of a single superhero or -villain who has that particular power. There are plenty that can generate fear – but none that have happiness as their primary talent.

Maybe the time has come for… Happyman!

Another email came in from Rodney North from Equal Exchange who also spoke at the best business conference ever (WorldBlu Live in New York):

I just wanted you to know that one, good thing that I definitely got from the WorldBlu conference was your talk. More specifically it was the importance of making eye contact, and maybe a touch, and saying — and really meaning — “good morning” to my colleagues.

It has, of course, made a positive difference for me, and I think to others, too.

It’s like I always say: Happiness at work is not rocket science. It doesn’t come from reports, strategies, policies or white papers – it comes from the little things that you and I do here and now. Of course stuff like saying good morning and making eye contact is banal – that’s why it works!

Top Dog Live 2008

I spent Tuesday in London at Top Dog Live, an innovation conference arranged by WhatIf Innovation, the world’s largest independent innovation agency.

I’ve been a long-time fan of WhatIf, both for the cool way they do business and for the amazingly nice people who work there, and this event did not disappoint. It was interesting, different, fun, inspiring and worth every penny of the (fairly high) ticket price.

The theme of the event was innovation in tough times. With a recession looming, many businesses are cutting back on innovation and that’s precisely the wrong thing to do. Remember: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

The speakers were many and varied – my favorites included Rachel Mooney, head of HR at Google, Lars Gejrot, head of HR at IKEA, Mike Addison og Procter & Gamble and Wim Roelandts, chairman of the board of Xilinx.

And here’s my main take-away from the day: Though the conference was about innovation, 80% of the talk was about people – and more specifically about making employees happy at work. That’s what they do at Google and IKEA and that’s why they’re innovative.

Furthermore, there was very little talk about compensation schemes, bonuses and stock options and much more focus on praise, recognition, good leadership, openness, trust, freedom and fun in the workplace.

I’ve written about this before. According to research by Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School, happy people are more creative:

If people are in a good mood on a given day, they’re more likely to have creative ideas that day, as well as the next day, even if we take into account their mood that next day.

There seems to be a cognitive process that gets set up when people are feeling good that leads to more flexible, fluent, and original thinking, and there’s actually a carryover, an incubation effect, to the next day.

So most of the speakers who could’ve been talking about innovation processes or creativity or brainstorming techniques or reward structures for new ideas were basically focuses on making people happy at work, knowing that that will make them more creative.

I like it :o)

Related posts

• Happy companies change more effectively.
• The Feel Factor – why no workplace can afford to ignore how people feel.
• Death to job titles.

This inspired the heck out of me:

According to Amy Wrzesniewski, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Yale School of Management, there are three ways you can approach your work.

• A job – You do it for the money.
• A career – You do it to advance and get ahead.
• A calling – You do it because it gives you a sense of fulfilment.

Want to take a guess how the young man in the video above sees his work?

This year’s WorldBlu Live 2008 conference was without any doubt the best business conference I have ever attended.

First of all, the topic itself is ground-breaking. The world needs democracy at work. We need workplaces that are more open, inclusive, democratic and positive.

Secondly, the content at this event was unique. You will not hear this stuff at any other conference.

Finally, the people were amazing. The place was overrun with smart, nice, passionate people.

Karl Staib (who I finally got to meet in person) has a great blow-by-blow write-up of the entire conference. Karl starts his piece with:

Would you love to meet the brightest minds in your industry?

Who wouldn’t?

Well, I just did.

I agree completely. But my favorite article from the event may be this one by David Russell, simply because it starts with these words:

Alexander Kjerulf, Chief Happiness Officer, as his title suggests – is happy..! As he bounds on to the stage he exudes energy, and with a twinkle in his eye – also a sense of mischief.

I had no idea I do that. But I’m going to do it even more now :o)

Today’s big news has nothing to do with happiness at work and everything to do with happiness in life: This weekend I proposed to my wonderful girlfriend Patricia and she said yes.

Here are some pictures. Yes, I’m wearing an Elvis costume – it was a Vegas party :o)

We will marry October 1st. 2009 – in Las Vegas. Woooo-hoooooooooooooooo :o)