The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • A question for ya: Back cover text

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    BookI’m writing the text for the back cover of my book. How does this sound:

    Work used to be tough and unpleasant – something we did only to make a living. This is changing.

    Today, happiness at work is no longer a luxury – it’s essential. People who love their jobs are more productive, creative and motivated. They’re also happier in life. Happy companies are more efficient, innovative and more profitable than their unhappy competitors.

    Anyone can be truly happy at work – whether you are an employee or a manager; a new hire or a grizzled veteran; work in a small startup, a huge corporation or the public sector; this book will give you everything you need to make work fun, inspiring and energizing:

    • The theory of happiness at work. What it is, why it matters, and what makes people happy or unhappy at work.
    • Simple, effective tools that you can use to create a better worklife for yourself and a happier workplace.
    • A massive dose of energy to get you to do something about it right here and right now.
    • A specific plan to get you great results.

    Only you are responsible for your happiness, so it’s up to you to read Alexander Kjerulf’s “Happy Hour is 9 to 5? and find out what steps you can take to make yourself, your colleagues, and your staff happier at work. The book’s knowledge, tips, and real-life case studies will equip and inspire you to change your working life for the better.
    – Angela Beesley, co-founder of Wikia

    Happy companies will win. Happy companies will grow and happy companies will innovate. The company of the future is—happy.
    – Lars Kolind, chairman of the Grundfos Foundation

  • Arbejdsgl

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    Best BuyI got an email from Christian Thompson who wrote:

    I’m a big fan of the site, and have given my principal a copy of the draft of “Happy Hour is 9 to 5”. He really seems to be liking it and has actually put a sign up outside of his office that says “Arbejdsglæde” in big letters, and then he has a tiny paper next to it that has a link to your site.

    Thanks!

    Anyhoo, here is a link to a fantastic article on the ROWE system at Best Buy. It’s quite detailed and shows the pros of flexibility and the possible difficulties in implementing it.

    First: Thanks! It’s great to see the concept of arbejdsglæde spreading :o)

    Second: I agree on the Best Buy point – that is a great article and a great system that Best Buy are putting in place. From the article:

    The endeavor, called ROWE, for “results-only work environment,” seeks to demolish decades-old business dogma that equates physical presence with productivity. The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.

    I’ve always felt that companies that treat their employees like responsible adults, capable of making decisions for themselves are much more likely to make their people happy at work.

    After all – who is in a better position to manage your work conditions than you?

  • Do not – I repeat – DO NOT like your job

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    Liking vs. loving your job

    With thanks to Kathy Sierra for letting
    me borrow her visual style for a blogpost.

    Except of course that her stuff looks much better :o)

    After one of my recent speaking gigs about happiness at work, one participant told me this story:

    I work as a programmer in a major bank. I used to go in every week, work my 40 hours (more like 50, but hey) and get paid a nice salary. It was a nice job in a good company, my boss was a good guy, my co-workers were neat people and the work was OK.

    But as time passed, I felt like something was missing. Work was comfortable and secure, but I felt that there were sides of me that I never really got to use. I wanted to do work I could really feel proud of. I wanted to make more of a difference. And mostly, I was never really excited about work.

    So I asked myself what it would take to improve things. I came up with three things:

    1. Being more creative and working on more varied projects, as opposed to only maintaining the bank’s internal programs.
    2. More fun at work. The mood in the department was very serious and professional, to the point of being boring.
    3. Learning some new professional skills.

    I asked my boss about this and he was very supportive. We drew up a plan for some courses and certifications and found some new tasks that I could work on. We recruited some like-minded allies in the group and worked on lightening the mood in the group together.

    To my surprise, this didn’t just change my work life a little, it made a big difference. With my new skills, new projects and a more positive mood at work, I went from feeling OK about my job to feeling really great about it.

    I do much better work as well. Partly because I’ve increased my skills and increased my work experience but mainly because I feel so much more enthusiastic about work now. The difference between being OK with my job and being happy about it has been huge for me.

    Most job satisfaction surveys can divide people into three groups:

    • People who HATE their jobs. Usually around 10%
    • People who like their jobs. Around 70-80% of us.
    • People who LOVE their jobs. Usually around 10-20%

    This may sound strange coming from me, but I’m deadly serious here: Do not like your job.

    Liking your job is nice. It’s comfortable. It’s safe. It’s OK. When you like your job you’re pretty efficient. You’re fairly satisfied. You can get by for years on liking your job.

    But when you LOVE your job – MAN, what a difference that makes.
    (more…)

  • The Happy At Work Manifesto DRAFT VERSION – What do you think?

    SignBelow the fold is the draft version of a manifesto for happiness at work. The idea is that those of us who agree can sign it to support happiness at work.

    A manifesto must of course be bold, provocative and inspiring. Take a look at this one and tell me what you think. Would you sign it?
    (more…)

  • “Make Love, Not War” In Business

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    Business as war

    When Kai-Fu Lee, a key Microsoft employee, decided to leave to go work for one of their competitors he had an… interesting experience:

    Prior to joining Google, I set up a meeting on or about November 11, 2004 with Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer to discuss my planned departure… At some point in the conversation Mr. Ballmer said: “Just tell me it’s not Google.” I told him it was Google.

    At that point, Mr. Ballmer picked up a chair and threw it across the room hitting a table in his office. Mr. Ballmer then said: “F*cking Eric Schmidt [Google’s CEO] is a f*cking pussy. I’m going to f*cking bury that guy, I have done it before, and I will do it again. I’m going to f*cking kill Google.”

    – Source: John Batelle’s blog

    I don’t know about you, but I’m getting really, really tired of the “business as war” approach. I’m sick of hearing about the market as a battlefield, competitors as enemies who should be killed and employees as foot soldiers.

    Executives who buy this kind of thinking can be found looking for business advice in Sun Tzu’s “The art of war”, Clausewitz’s “On War” or even Machiavelli’s “The Prince”. A recent business book called “Hardball” praises companies who are “ruthless”, “mean”, “willing to hurt their rivals” and “enjoy watching their competitors squirm”.

    But war is a terrible metaphor for business. It locks a company into an adversarial approach in which almost everyone becomes an enemy. It means spending time looking for ways to defeat your enemies, rather than making your own business great. It leads to zero-sum thinking, in which others have to lose, in order for you to win.
    (more…)

  • Monday Tip: Who are your helping?

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    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsYour mission this monday is to ask yourself who you have been helping today.

    Before you leave work, take five minutes to sit down and write down a list of five ways you have contributed today. Five ways:

    • You have helped others today
    • You have made other people’s lives easier
    • You have made others happier at work

    It can be big things or small things. It can be helping co-workers, customers, business partners, suppliers or others.

    There are three reasons why it’s important to stop once in a while and remember who you’re helping:

    1. When you help someone, you obviously make the helpee feel good
    2. It also feels great to know that you are able to contribute.
    3. It helps you to find meaning in you
    4. job. Work is now about more than just doing your work – it’s about helping others and contributing to something other than just your own welfare.

    Do this exercise today and write a comment to tell us how it worked. If you liked it, repeat it every day this week to get a more complete picture of who you’re helping.

    The Chief Happiness Officer’s monday tips are simple, easy, fun things you can do to make yourself and others happy at work and get the work-week off to a great start. Something everyone can do in five minutes, tops. When you try it, write a comment here to tell me how it went.

    Previous monday tips.

  • My favorites

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    Happy SprayJust so you know it, I’ve put all my favorite blogposts from this site in one category, called best of site.

    Some of my all time favorites are:

    Enjoy :o)

  • Friday Links

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    HappyThe Slow Leadership Blog has The Truth about Communication. Have you ever asked yourself why so many communications are “top down???? The answer is simple: because they are all about control.
    That’s a critical insight. I agree!

    Negative people are bad four your brain – a classic from Kathy Sierra. The idea seems to be that “happy people” implies those who are oblivious to the realities of life, in a fantasy of their own creation, and without the ability to think critically. The science, however, suggests just the opposite.
    Where did we ever get the idea, that negative people are somehow more realistic and smarter than positive people? In my opinion, it’s just way too easy to be negative and you can always criticize and shoot ideas down. Being positive and supportive demands more from a person.

    And speaking of negative people, the world sucks, and the Helsinki Complaints Choir will tell you exactly how.

  • A question for ya: Books about happiness at work

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    QuestionSay, I’ve been hankering to read some good books about happiness at work.

    You can see my top 10 favorite books so far here (fiction and non-fiction), with my reviews. Hmmmm… that list is from 2004 – gotta update it soon.

    Can you recommend some more great ones? Write a comment!

    If you’d like to recommend a really great novel as well, don’t hold yourself back :o)

  • How to procrastinate effectively

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    Procrastinate effectively

    Search for procrastination on google and you’ll find a massive number of articles on how to stop procrastinating and get stuff done.

    They will tell you that there is only one reliable way to get stuff done:

    1. Check todo-list for next item
    2. Complete item no matter what it is
    3. Go to step 1

    They’ll tell you that if only you had enough willpower, backbone, self-control and discipline this is how you would work too.

    Well guess what: Most people don’t work that way. Sometimes you’re in the mood for task X and doing X is ridiculously easy and a lot of fun. Sometimes doing X feels worse than walking barefoot over burning-hot, acid-covered, broken glass and forcing yourself to do it anyway is a frustrating exercise in futility.

    Sometimes procrastinating is exactly the right thing to do at a particular moment. This is largely ignored by the procrastination-is-a-sign-of-weakness, the-devil-finds-work-for-idle-hands crowd.
    (more…)

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