Check out this comment on Euan Semple’s blog:
I was – seriously – asked in my annual review last year to stop saying ‘I have a fantastic job’… apparently it’s not fair on those who don’t.
I told my manager that the freedom to say that I love my job was indeed a dealbreaker… he looked sheepish and the conversation ended.
Interesting approach – rather than make the unhappy employees happier at work, managers could just stop the happy ones from expressing their happiness. Sheesh!
Related posts:
I’ve been updating my Danish website, partly because it was getting a little outdated – but mostly because the server it ran on crashed suddenly and it turned out that no backups were available. Yikes!
You can find the new and improved website for Projekt Arbejdsglæde here, though it will be of limited use to you, if you’re one of the poor unfortunates who don’t speak Danish.
Best of all, the site now also features a blog about arbejdsglæde in Danish.
And if you’re wondering what the heck arbejdsglæde is, you can read all about it in a previous post called Karoshi vs. Arbejdsglæde.
One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.
She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.
Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’
In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’”
The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:
Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim – ironically because it leads to bad customer service.
Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.
Michael Stallard, president of E Pluribus Partners, read my book about happiness at work and liked it:
Alex’s writing has a fun, conversational style, just like you would expect from the Chief Happiness Officer. Don’t mistake this for fluff, however. He covers a lot interesting material in a thoughtful, smart way.
You can read Michael’s entire review here.
But someone has Michael beat… Zeke Chan has read my book three times! Here’s what he thinks:
I have read it 3 times and have been constantly referring to it every now and then for inspiration and ideas. A whole lot of things have happened since then which has just been unbelievable. I started by making myself happy. In your book, you champion the concept of doing something to make you happy. So I did just that… I did things that made me happy, tried to be positive, helped my colleagues and made an effort to learn something new about someone each day. I always start my day by doing something that I love and enjoy. Only then do I start my day… which has been a habit of mine the past 2 months.
When I successfully made myself happy on a daily basis, I realized there was something else that needed to change to be truly happy… my attitude. That has really taken some time to do and I’m still learning to master my attitude and thinking. Here’s how things have changed since I’ve started. I really love my work and enjoy the company of my colleagues. I have tonnes of ideas that have great potential and could be worth something. I have started a freelance business that I’m positive will be successful. My relationship with my wife has gotten even better… so much that I’m encouraging her to discover what makes her happy and to find that happiness in the work she would love to do. She is struggling somewhat with this new concept of happiness at work, but I have no doubt that things will turn out great.
I want to thank you for your book. It is simple to understand and your suggestions are highly practical and easy to do. I’m trying to spread some happiness at my workplace but it has not been easy due to the culture… but one thing I’m certain of is that I’m at YAY! happiness level.
God, I’m good :o)
Click here to read the book free online or buy it on paper or as a pdf e-book.
Here’s a piece of important advice for all managers who find that their calendar is wall-to-wall meetings three months into the future.
“Remember – you’re a leader, not a meeter”
This came up today in a meeting(!) with some of the nice people from Danish software company Maconomy.
Related posts:
In a previous post I argued for doing away with job titles. They’re rarely relevant, they say very little about what you do and they can lead to internal competition and bickering.
The marketing department at Quicken Loans (America’s 2nd best workplace according to Fortune Magazine) just did this and liked the results.
Now, a fatwa on job titles may sound great in theory, but how could it work in practice in a large organization?
Rick asked some great questions in a comment:
I’m trying to understand the difference between calling someone “The guy in charge of fixing things in the plant when they’re broken” vs. “Maintenance Manager” or the like. The former is long, the latter is short. If you say he or she can self-title as “Chief Fixer” well that’s still a title, isn’t it?
Now supposing we have one opening for a Production Engineer (actual title) for a plant in Georgia and another opening for a Process Engineer (also actual title) for a plant in North Carolina. Two distinct positions, though both engineers and both working in a plant environment. If I want to apply for one of those positions, it’s valuable for me to know I can discard the one and not the other based on my knowledge of what the jobs are in general and how they link to my skills, yes?
Several years ago, I worked for a (now bankrupt) company that worked in the dot com space. The company was the product of a multitude of large and small mergers. At some point, there were over 117 job titles in the company as one of the merged entities, which itself was just a conglomeration of small mom and pop dot coms, never streamlined titles in the organization. The result? Absolute confusion. And, as I say, the company is bankrupt (for a variety of reasons, of course, not just titles).
Let’s go back to the example of the company I currently work for and the concept of the matrix. You suggest that people find each other “more randomly and serendipitously.” That’s terrific…unless there are deadlines to meet, markets to pursue and stiff competition. Then, I want to know who to include on the team *now* in order to get the work done. Offer me a way that happens without at least a cursory glance of people/positions/titles and I’m interested. That means knowing who is available in Europe, Asia, the Americas across a variety of business groups and units, with a population of over 20,000 employees. Random isn’t going to cut it.
As you see, I’m still not convinced, but I’m willing to keep the dialogue going as I’m intrigued and really want to understand how this works on a practical (not abstract) level.
Good question! If there are no formal job titles, how will you find, say, all the engineers with a certain background? And how do you handle the chaos that comes with people having no job titles or choosing their own?
I have some thoughts on this, but I’d love to know what you think. Can large organizations live without formal job titles? How would this work in practice? What would the organization gain or lose?
A while back I wrote a post about killing off job titles. I think they’re a waste of time and contribute nothing to our productivity, creativity or happiness at work. In fact, job titles can be the source of a lot of disputes and bickering in the workplace.
Matt Cardwell of Quicken Loans (a home loan lender based in the US) read this and liked it so much that he decided to issue a fatwa on job titles in his department. Here he explains why:
We never used to have titles on the Marketing Team at Quicken Loans because we always prided ourselves as having a marked anti-corporate and non-hierarchical culture. Actually, we did have titles, but everyone was called a “Marketing Manager.” So it was kind of a forced equality and no one EVER even talked about titles. But as the team grew from a few dozen people to over fifty, HR decided we needed some “consistency”, especially for purposes of external salary comping. So against our better judgment we relented and started creating a bunch of silly titles like: Marketing Coordinator, Marketing Program Manager, Project Manager, Jr. Project Manager, Sr. Project Manager, etc.
Well, it only took about 12 months for our brilliant decision to come back and bite us in the ass. Needless to say, it created all kinds of unnecessary noise within the team as people started to grumble about why a person who had only been here for 12 months just got promoted to Sr. Project Manager when another person who had been here for three years was still a Project Manager. I got so fed up with the divisiveness of it all that I just decided to banish titles altogether yesterday morning. So I went looking for some inspiration and Googled “job titles” or something to that effect and found your blog post from December. It was EXACTLY what I was looking for. So I dropped it into an email, added my two cents and started a revolt. Initially it was just within my 20 person eCommerce Marketing team, but it snowballed over the course of the afternoon to include most of the broader marketing team.
That is music to my ears and in response to Matt’s challenge, people got very creative. Here are some of the new titles:
You can see more titles in my previous post on this.
How did Matt inspire people to do this? Here’s the email he sent out:
Okay, team, so I want each one of you to take 15 minutes today to really think hard about what YOU DO and what MAKES YOU HAPPY at work and create a title for yourself that expresses who you are and your impact on the business and your team mates. Forget about what Salary.com or some HR person said your title is or should be. Forget about what you get paid, how many years of experience you have, or what other people’s “titles” are in comparison to you. Tell us WHAT YOU DO and make that your new “title”.
As of this morning, traditional titles on the Website Marketing Team are DEAD. D-E-A-D. Somehow over the past year people have become WAY too caught up in who has what title. So we’re going to end the madness today.
If this scares you, makes you feel like we’ve taken something away or makes you wonder how your resume will look without that title-that-really- never-does-justice-to-you-and-your-talents-anyway, ask yourself when was the last time someone called you by your title? When was the last time Todd Lunsford or Bill Emerson or Dan Gilbert called you by your title? Worried about how this might impact future compensation? Don’t. Numbers and money follow, they do not lead. Kick ass at whatever you do, and the wealth will eventually flow to you. I’ve seen it happen again and again in my career … and especially here.
If you are concerned about someone not recognizing how important you are because you no longer have a standard title, then here’s your chance to create a title for yourself that will convey exactly how important you are. And because you are creating it, it will be all yours. No one else will have that title. Think of the conversations your new title will start with complete strangers. Think of the opportunities it can create for you in terms of expressing who you are, not what someone CALLS you.
“But what if I don’t like my description in three months …” you ask? What if what I do CHANGES? Well, then you can change your description. It’s that simple. No one ever stays the same … we are all growing … so let your “title” do the same when it’s time.
Here’s your chance. You have until the end of the day to let us all know who you are. Have fun, be creative, be humorous, but above all, be real and true. Remember, this will be on your e-mail signature, so please be aware of that.
I can’t wait to see what all of you come up with.
DEATH TO TITLES!
Matt
Matt Cardwell
Idea Salesman, Energy Focuser and People Unleasher
eCommerce Marketing Team
Quicken Loans
My title challenges your title to a duel. I predict a draw. – Me
I had to know more, so I emailed Matt with a few follow-up questions, and here’s an update from him on the fatwa on job titles:
You had a couple of questions around the titles Fatwa from your previous e-mail. One question was about whether we had abolished titles company-wide. So far only the Web Marketing Team and the Idea Lab (our creative team – basically an in-house agency for our advertising production) took up my challenge. Not surprisingly, the team that actually got the title “promotions” that started this whole thing opted not to join us in our little revolution. I threw the challenge out to them, but I haven’t really seen anyone take up the torch.
I do know that our CMO, Todd Lunsford was extremely supportive of the no-title revolution. As I mentioned, we really only started using titles recently for comping purposes. But even there, they are generally not very useful for the more specialized people on my team (usability pros, search engine optimizers, etc), because until very recently, Salary.com didn’t make distinctions between interactive marketers (which are in high demand) and traditional marketers. As an organization, we’ve been pretty ambivalent about titles. Most of our Sr. Leadership Team and many of our team members simply have no title on their email signature, or just identify themselves with their team. For example: Joe Smith, Web Marketing Team
So I think this will still spread … we won a couple battles, but we still have a war going on. It will come. And I’ll keep preaching.
This is fantastic! I’m adding Quicken Loans to my list of “Companies that get it.” And I’m not alone – they recently placed second in Fortune Magazine’s Best Company to Work list, one behind Google.
What’s your take? Is your workplace ready to issue its own fatwa on job titles? Or do you see some value in having a “real” title on your business card? Please write a comment, I’d really like to know.
Today I’m in Stratford-upon-Avon (birthplace of William Shakespeare) helping Hewlett-Packard promote their Happy People campaign to their UK channel partners.
I wrote about this campaign previously. The cool thing about it is that they’re using happiness at work to promote their products – and of course that they hired me for it :o)
As part of the campaign, they made this sweet little flash presentation:
Neat, huh?
And remember, if you work in the UK, there’s still a chance for your company to win a workshop with me. More information here:
Full disclosure: HP are paying me to participate in media activities related to this project and to do the workshops for the winning companies.
Here’s another great little video from youtube: My friend Stephen Hopson who is deaf from birth and a pilot and a professional speaker talks about a life changing moment.
Also, catch Stephen’s excellent blog at Adversity University (and isn’t that a great name).
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