What can your workplace learn from this guy?

Business is about results, processes, achievement, success, goals and profits.

Festivals, such as the carnivals in Rio and the Caribbean and other celebrations worldwide, are about music, dance, arts, self-expression, roots, traditions and fun.

So businesses couldn’t possibly learn anything from festivals, could they?

My Bahamian friend Roosevelt Finlayson is here to tell you that not only can workplaces learn from festivals and carnivals – it’s also good for innovation, team work and the bottom line. He’s been studying carnivals for a long time and, yes, his job does involve going to places like Rio, New Orleans, Barbados, Trinidad and cologne to study and participate in their festivals. The lucky bastard :o)

He’s also been applying those insights to various organizations, and now The Global Intelligencer has picked up on it and written an article about his work. From the article:

“Finally there is a philosophy that can be used in the workplace that brings together productivity, a positive work ethic and an environment that the associates will enjoy. Festival in the Workplace has brought together the need to blend the personal needs of employees to attain self-satisfaction as well as the critical activity to achieve excellence for the employer and the customer.”

Check the article out – it’s good reading.

In my opinion, there are many aspects of carnivals that we could introduce in our workplaces that would create more happiness at work. And no, I’m not talking about making ugly co-workers wear masks :o)

What people often forget about carnivals is, that while the actual parade or performance looks fun, a lot of very hard work goes into it. In fact, Roosevelt started his work when he noticed that while many Bahamians seem to dislike their jobs and always do as little as possible, they would work very hard to prepare for the annual Junkanoo celebration.

And according to Roosevelt, this work goes so well because in a festival:

• Everyone is equal
• Everyone learns from everyone else
• People want to be there
• People work hard without being told
• People care about the end result

Doesn’t that sound like a fairly good work culture to you?

So now, I’m stuck. I’ve been doing more or less the same work for three years (the last 12 months have been utter torture). I have learnt nothing new; my bosses don’t understand what I could potentially do (bad communication on my part) and they don’t know what they could give me to do… So, still stuck.
…
Sick of it all, I decided to take charge. I want a rewarding career and am sick of being a corporate nobody. By chance, I came across this. It has made a world of difference to my attitude. In the end, planning my escape begins with this positive frame of mind: I am responsible for my happiness at work.

Yaaaaaay! I live for feedback like this!

Click here to read my manifesto on happiness at work over at ChangeThis.

My life is now complete – I’ve been on radio in ireland :o)

Rowan Monaghan of Fortify Services appears regularly on Dublin’s Q102 station and invited me along for a ten-minute segment on happiness at work.

You can listen to the whole thing here. I urge you to do it, if just to hear Rowan’s and the presenter’s wonderful Irish accents. And also to read rowan’s hilarious comments on the event, which nearly had me spitting coffee all over my laptop :o)

And I’ve also been featured in a Turkish newspaper:

Click the image above to read the whole article.

It would seem that the idea of happiness at work is spreading far beyond Denmark. THIS IS SO COOOOOL!

Last Tuesday I spoke at The Power of Passion conference in Stockholm which is an annual event arranged by the wonderful people at 4good. I gave the last presentation – after (among others) Pigge Werkelin, a famous Swedish entrepreneur and Renata Chlumska, a lady who has circumnavigated the entire lower 48 American states in a kayak and on a bicycle.

After I gave my presentation (which was very well-received, if I do say so myself) I was interviewed by journalist Jennie Sjöström who asked some great questions about happiness at work.

Jennie also brought along a photographer who was determined to get some especially happy looking photos.

Hence this:

You can read the entire article here (it’s in Swedish though).

I recently visited the City Call Center here in Copenhagen Denmark, and they’re a bit of a novelty: A call center where the employees are actually happy to work.

Call centers are not known as the world’s best workplaces and many are plagued by high levels of absenteeism, stress and extremely high employee turnover. In some call centers, new employees typically last only a few weeks before moving on.

But Pouline Andersen, the founder of City Call Center, decided from the beginning to create a happy workplace and the results speak for themselves. As she puts it:

“We must be doing something right because revenue has grown by 30% annually the last five years running and we’re about to move to a new office that’s 15 times as big as our current one. Also, our employees say for 1.2 years on average, which is far higher than the industry average.”

Here’s a video of a chat I had with Pouline where she explains why she chose to make her company happy, and how she does it.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Pouline also sent me some additional comments on how she makes her employees happy, which you can find below. They’re in Danish though :o)
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Two weeks ago I had a day that I was NOT looking forward to. I had two speaking gigs on a Saturday (which is great!) but they were in opposite ends of Denmark. I had to get up disgustingly early to make the drive to the first one and then there was barely enough time to finish that and drive 350 km to the next one. After that, it was another 300 km drive home.

It’s starting to get cold here, so there was no way I could ride my motorcycle that day. That meant renting a car, and I was not looking forward to driving that far in some anonymous Ford or Toyota.

Which made me think of a question I often get: “So Alex – you make other people happy at work. What do you do if you have a bad day?”

And of course I have bad days too – everyone does. Happiness at work does not mean being utterly ecstatic every moment of every day. As Emma Thompson says in my favorite movie: “There was always going to be a totally shit moment.”

But in this particular case, I found the perfect solution. One that transformed the long drive from a chore to a pleasure. To something I almost couldn’t wait to do.

Here’s my trick:
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I’m going to the US next week to meet with and study some American companies and their approach to customer service. You may know some of them… where was that list… Oh, yeah: There’s Coca-Cola, Delta, Capital Grill and some place called Disney or something like that… Ever heard of them?

I have some free time in Orlando so if you want to meet and talk happiness at work – or if you know someone in the area that I should meet – just contact me. I have some free time on Wednesday Nov. 14 and Thursday Nov. 15. in the evenings.

Also, if your company is in Orlando and you need a dose of happiness at work, this is a great chance to book me to speak without having to pay my travel costs, since they’re covered already! You can read all about my speaking gigs here.

What does it take to make us happy at work? What’s one simple, easy, fun thing that we can all do – that works!

Well I’ve found one that seems way too simple to work, but does anyway: A daily reminder.

I’ve recently been working with a division of a Danish insurance company that were seriously in need of some happiness at work. They were stressed out, they were woefully understaffed, they had way too much work AND half the people there were new hires.

During my work with them, I found that giving them one small idea, action, thought or exercise every day to remind them about happiness at work was surprisingly effective.

This works because it helps you focus on happiness at work. If you don’t, it’s easy to have every intention of making yourself and others happy at work – and then forget all about it because we’re all so busy at work.

That’s why I’ve set up a new tool that you can use to make yourself and others happy at work. I’ll be using a website called Twitter to send out tips, ideas, quotes, thoughts and challenges as well as the occasional update about what I’m currently up to.

If you want to get these updates, you must sign up at Twitter.com and then sign up to follow my account. You decide whether to receive the messages as email, via IM or as text messages on your mobile.

I’ll be sending messages out daily (more or less) and it’ll always be something simple, easy and above all fun. You can of course stop receiving them any time, if you don’t like’em.

So sign up now, and see how it works for you!

Thanks to Tom Nixon for the idea and for convincing me to try it.