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)

Politics aside, last night the most positive of the two US presidential candidates won. This is no coincidence, as research by Martin Seligman shows:

Psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania have measured what they call the level of pessimism in the nomination acceptance speeches by candidates in 1948 and in every succeeding Presidential campaign. They found that, with one exception, the more optimistic candidate won.

It is not clear, however, whether a hopeful message alone leads to victory or if it is merely a powerful signal of factors that voters find appealing.

The candidate who offered the greater message of hope won 9 of the 10 elections studied, according to Harold Zullow and Martin Seligman, psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania. And even in the exception, the 1968 race, the ebullient Hubert H. Humphrey came from 14 points behind in the polls to within one percentage point of defeating Richard M. Nixon.

More here. Mind you, this study is from waaaay before Obama and his platform of hope. The study is also referenced in Seligman’s book Learned Optimism (read my review), which is one of my all-time favorite books about happiness.

“Yes we can” is not just a slogan for the ages, it’s the optimist’s fundamental creed. Optimists don’t deny that bad things happen, they just believe that they can cope with them which of course means that they cope much better than pessimists.

Today we’re launching yet another resource for happiness at work (in addition to our Facebook app and our Twitter account): The Happy at Work Link Collection.

It’s based on the popular link sharing site reddit (where I waste waaaaaay too much time), and this is where we’ll be posting all the cool, interesting and funny links we find about happiness at work.

You can of course read all those stories, but if you sign up as a user on reddit (which is free) you can also vote stories up or down and even submit links yourself.

Go check out the happy at work link collection on reddit.

More resources

• Our facebook application: Do you make others happy or unhappy at work.
• Our twitter account: Get quotes, thoughts and exercises about happiness at work.
• The Happy at Work Manifesto.

I’m is quoted in this article as saying that:

a happy work environment is no longer a luxury – but essential to creating a successful and profitable workplace.

The concept is simple but challenging for many workplaces, which still buy into a “protestant work ethic,” according to Kjerulf, who is an international speaker and business consultant on the subject.

“There is a pervasive sense that work is tough, hard and unpleasant – and that’s why you get paid to work.”

The article is released in the run-up to the WorldBlu Live 2008 conference in New York on October 16+17 where I’ll be speaking. If you haven’t signed up yet, go do it now – it’s this year’s best and most inspiring business conference.

I’ll be speaking at WorldBlu Live 2008 (October 16+17 in New York), the best and most exciting business conference I know. The theme is Democratic Organizations, i.e. organizations that believe in and practice freedom, openness, transparency and engagement instead of top-down, command-and-control management.

There will be some GREAT speakers there – I particularly look forward to hearing Bill Taylor, Tim Sanders and Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson, Co-authors of the best-selling Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It.

Another major treat is the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, who have won Grammy awards despite the fact (or because of it) that they have no conductor.

But the most interesting thing will be to hear from CEOs who practice organizational democracy on a day-to-day basis and learn from organizations who know how to do it and achieve success through it.

Check out this short video invitation from WorldBlu:

The last WorldBlu conference in Washington DC was one of the most inspiring business conferences I have ever attended – I have never seen so many cool, fascinating and fun people gathered in one place. If this sounds interesting to you, check out the web site and go sign up.

I also have upcoming gigs in the UK and France, so there’s some serious travel in my future :o)

Samantha Wood interviews Pret A Manger’s Head of Communications, Jay Chapman, and she is more than happy to divulge some of their secrets of success.

I especially love the opening:

She tells me she’d love to have a scary sounding formula to impress people with, but in her mind it’s all pretty simple stuff:

“If you treat your employees well and involve them in the decisions that will affect them, they’re much more likely to be engaged in carrying out the effects of those decisions.”

There’s another gem when they talk recruitment:

“You can’t hire someone who can make sandwiches and teach them to be happy,” says Jay, “So we hire happy people and teach them to make sandwiches”.

If you don’t know Pret A Manger, they make coffee, sandwiches and other great food. It’s sort of like the British Starbucks – only better!

What I’ve always liked about them (apart from the outstanding quality of their products and the great service you get) is their passion. It’s obvious that this company cares deeply about what they do – and that’s huge to me.

Go read the whole thing – it’s excellent!

Why must change in organizations be so hard?

No company can thrive and survive if it can’t adapt and innovate and yet there’s an almost universal cry going up today that “change is tough and takes too much time and energy!”

You’ll have upper management on one side pushing for innovation, employees on the other side clinging to the old ways and middle managers caught (where else?) in the middle trying to actually get stuff done. Sound familiar?

My work with organizations all over the world has shown me that there is one vital factor that is being overlooked practically everywhere. One factor that can not only help companies change more rapidly and effectively but which contributes massively to the bottom line. That factor is happiness at work.

Here are the top three reasons why happy companies change more effectively and painlessly.

1: Happy people get more ideas
In times of change, companies cannot rely on the old ways of doing business and thus need new ideas. Preferably lots of them. And a fascinating study by Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School shows that creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety. In other words, happy employees generate more ideas.

2: Happy people buy into new ideas.
It’s not enough to generate lots of ideas, you also need people to believe enough in them to actually want to implement them. Many managers work from a belief that change comes from dissatisfaction, pain and unhappiness, but psychological research proves them wrong. It turns out that what a business needs is optimists. Optimistic employees believe that change projects will pay off and are thus much more likely to commit. Unhappy, pessimistic employees only see all the ways a project can fail and often only go along on the surface – offering compliance rather than commitment.

3: Happy people implement new ideas.
And finally, once you have the ideas and people buy into them, you need to have the motivation to actually do something about it. And once again research shows that happy, satisfied employees are much more motivated. In fact, while managers must constantly work help dissatisfied employees find their motivation, happy employees motivate themselves. If you like the company you work for, you want the company to succeed – if you hate your workplace, you don’t give a damn.

In short, happy companies change willingly and effectively, while their unhappy competitors cling to business as usual and throw up massive resistance to all things new and uncertain.

And it doesn’t stop there. Additional research shows that happy workplaces are more productive, have happier customers and (most importantly) make more money! Unhappy workplaces on the other hand waste huge sums on high absenteeism and employee turnover rates. One Danish company reduced their absenteeism from around 20% to less than 1% and their annual employee turnover from 25% to almost nothing – simply by becoming a happy workplace. It’s incredibly easy (but potentially depressing) to calculate how much money similar improvements could save your company every single month.

In fact, studies indicate that happiness at work is the most important success factor for businesses today. Don’t just take my word for it. Richard Branson of Virgin says that “More than anything, fun is the secret behind Virgin’s success” and Apple CEO Steve Jobs says that “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” Many other hugely successful companies like Google, Disney Southwest Airlines and SAS Institute also focus relentlessly on employee happiness – because it helps them change and grow and make more money.

And the good news is that happiness at work ain’t rocket science. Any company, big or small, public or private, can do it, provided it is willing to engage both managers and employees in efforts to create a happy workplace, where people actually enjoy themselves and look forward to coming, rather than one where they show up reluctantly to do as little as they can get away with.

This piece was originally written for the South African management magazine Strictly Business.