Last week I asked what makes you happy or unhappy at work.
I have a related question: How do you make others happy or unhappy at work? What have you done in, say, the last week that has made someone else happy or unhappy at work?
I’d really like to know. Leave a comment :o)
I’m currently in London and have met with some amazingly cool people. Last night I met with fellow Dane Lars Plougmann for a pint and some great sushi. Lars recently went independent and consults banks, law firms and others on how to improve collaboration. Think wikis and stuff.
We then went to Umair Haque’s as yet nameless weekly wednesday meeting on innovation. It was basically just a bunch of guys drinking (a lot of) beer and shooting the breeze in a nice pub. Topics included blogging, how traditional media companies are dooming themselves to a slow painful death, how all communities need “a dude” and The Colbert Report.
Lars and I rounded of the evening in a great Lebanese restaurant on Edgware Road where we celebrated iftar (when muslims can eat again during ramadan) with kebabs and a shisha (water pipe).
Today’s highlights include blogging in London and a visit to WhatIf? Innovation – Britain’s happiest workplace in 2005.
I thought you should all see some great comments that have come in recently with stories and ideas from all over the world.
First, this comment that Inkling left on my post about The Cult of Overwork:
I used to work at a company with a strong “overwork?? culture. After two years obsessing about getting in at 7, leaving at 7 (and then working even more from home), my wife had a baby. I took a week off, then felt justified in limiting my work to 40 hours for the next couple of months (due to my lack of sleep and need to help around the house).
In that two-month period I realized I accomplished exactly as much and was exactly as busy as I was when I worked ~60 hours/week. From then on, I was in at 8, out at 5, aside from the occasional large project, and I completely stopped working at home. I was never happier, more organized or more successful in that job.
With this peace of mind and free time, I was able to invest a few hours in learning the GTD system, learning more about my field and getting more involved in professional and community organizations. (This may have averaged about 3 hours/week at the max.) All that I learned in this time enabled me to get a new job and a significantly higher salary.
Meanwhile, when I talk to employees at the old company, they’re bragging about the 75-hour workweeks and discussing which anti-anxiety meds they take.
Great stuff!! Can we please all agree that it’s the results that count, not the hours?
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Your mission today is to perform at least three random acts of kindness at work. Three small, nice, generous, funny, surprising, silly, amazing, touching and/or kind acts for three different co-workers.
If you’re stuck for ideas, here are a few suggestions:
Do you have more suggestions? Write a comment!
For bonus points, do two more random acts of kindness to total stranges on the way home from work.
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.
The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
– Arnold J. Toynbee
Thank you to David Zinger for telling me about this excellent quote.
The anonymous british street artist Banksy made a hilarious piece on the side of a trash container in Notting Hill, that is highly relevant to happiness at work. The text is a parody of a La Fontaine fable and goes like this:
“Once upon a time there was a bear and a bee who lived in a wood and were the best of friends. All summer long the bee collected nectar from morning to night while the bear lay on his back basking in the long grass.
When Winter came the Bear realised he had nothing to eat and thought to himself ‘I hope that busy little Bee will share some of his honey with me’. But the Bee was nowhere to be found – he had died of a stress induced coronary disease”.
One large company finds that many of their top performers are absconding:
It’s like clockwork. Every year a portion of our top talent decides it’s time to move on. Once those bonus or holiday checks are cashed, the flood gates open and the resignation letters start flowing in.
They’ve done an exit survey among the top performing employees leaving the company:
Of the 178 files, 83 people listed money as a reason for leaving. 62 listed it as the only reason.
Their conclusion: They must adjust salaries and compensation. My conclusion: They’re wrong. Here’s why.
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I recently asked you what makes you happy or unhappy at work and got a lot of great answers. Thank you to everyone who responded!
Though small, unscientific and totally without academic merit, there are still a few things to learn from this mini-survey, and any managers reading this could stand to take a look at the answers. Here are some of my conclusions.
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Yesterday my wonderful girlfriend suggested crab chowder for dinner. We found a great recipe a few years ago by british TV chef Ainsley Harriott which quickly became one of our favorites. Ainsley is a man who is very obviously happy at work – as you can probably tell by looking here.
We Googled our way to a danish version of the recipe… which had lost a little something in the translation though:
And no, that’s not the danish spelling of crab chowder :o)
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