The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Tournament theory – the worst argument ever for overpaying executives

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    Overpaid

    The executives in your company may be paid way more than they’re worth, but don’t worry – it’s for your own good.

    That’s the point of a recent Forbes article defending overpaid executives which contains the single most disingenuous and illogical argument it has ever been my misfortune to see in a business context. From the article:

    The ugly truth is that your boss is probably overpaid–and it’s for your benefit, not his. Why? It might be because he isn’t being paid for the work he does but, rather, to inspire you. In other words, we work our socks off in underpaying jobs in the hope that one day we’ll win the rat race and become overpaid fat cats ourselves. Economists call this “tournament theory.”

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  • Top 5 reasons to make your startup a great place to work – and how to do it

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    Happiness leads to profits

    When I co-founded an IT company back in 1997 we had many dreams, but one overarching ambition: We wanted to make it a happy place to work.

    We’d tried working for organizations that cared only about sales, billable hours and profits and we were determined to break away from this mentality and make our company a place where people had fun, did great work, constantly learned and developed and had time for their private lives and families.

    It turned out that we were right on the money. The company became happy and successful and four years later when the dot-boom happened and the company’s very survival was threatened, that is what saved us – the fact that everyone at the company loved working there and were willing to go extraordinary lengths to save it.

    Quite simply, happiness at work saved our startup.
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  • Why job descriptions are useless

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    Job description

    Let’s do a quick reality check on job descriptions. Ask yourself these three questions:

    1. When was the last time you read your job description?
    2. Do you remember what it says?
    3. When was the last time you did something at work that you could not have done without your job description?

    If your answers are 1) When I interviewed for the job, 2) Ehmmmm… not really and 3) I don’t think that has ever happened – then maybe it’s time to rethink the value of job descriptions.

    I say job descriptions as they exist today amount to little more than organizational clutter and could easily be dropped altogether. Here’s why we should lose’em and what to do instead.
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  • Comment roundup on secret salaries vs. open

    Everybody hates open salaries

    When I wrote my post on why secret salaries are a baaaaaad idea I didn’t realize what I was getting myself into. On most other posts I’ve written, 3 out of 4 commenters agree – in this case 3 out 4 thought that open salaries are a really baaaaaaaad idea. How many a’s are there in baaaad anyway?

    There’s about 60 comments on the post itself, 50 on reddit, 80 on digg and more on other sites, most of which, as mentioned, are dead set against the idea of open salaries.

    Interestingly, the comments from people who have tried open salaries are overwhelmingly in favor of the idea – many cite great benefits. I still think open salaries are a great idea for employees, businesses and the bottom line.

    I’ve summed up the major arguments from the comments against secret salaries and my arguments against these arguments below, not so much because I want the last word (well, that too :o) but mostly because most of the arguments are really good arguments, many of which I hadn’t thought about before.
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  • Dilbert: “Reduce employee turnover… Check!”

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    Today’s Dilbert strip is pretty funny :o)

  • The time I learned to say “No” at work

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    Nyet!

    It was only my second job out of university, working as a software developer for a small consulting company in Copenhagen. I was 26 years old, dressed in a suit and tie that still felt like a halloween costume to me, having meetings with the customer’s VP of finance, trying to find out exactly what the IT system we were developing for their new factory should be capable of.
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  • The six practices of happy, succesful workplaces

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    This chapter is not yet finished – but I really need your help, so I’m posting it now.

    Am I on the right track? It kinda feels like the advice here is either too simple or too complex to be useful. I want people to read this chapter and be inspired by what other great companies are doing. To get ideas they can implement themselves.

    Is it working? What do you think?

    How to make your business happy – in practice

    What can a workplace do to make its people want to be happy there? Given that raises, bonuses and perks don’t work what are the things that do? We could start from scratch and invent some methods and tools, but it makes much more sense to learn from the best practices already out there. What is it that the best, happiest and most successful companies do to reach high levels of happiness, excellence and profits? What makes their people consistently choose to be happy at work and lets employees and leaders work together to create great workplaces?

    And let’s not just look at what they do, let’s look at what they do that can readily be stolen implented in your workplace. Let’s focus on practices that are:

    • Generic – so they apply to almost any workplace, big or small, private or government
    • Effective – so they make a real difference
    • Fun – so they make people happy
    • Good for business – so they’ll get you more results

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  • Monday tip: Bring a co-worker a cup of coffee

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    The Chief Happiness Officer's monday tipsThis tip is really, really, really simple:

    Bring a co-worker a cup of coffe.

    At some point during the day, without being asked, bring a co-worker a nice cup of hot coffee. Substitute tea, cocoa, a coke, etc. based on your co-workers preference.

    For extra bonus points:

    • Do it for someone who obviously needs a fresh cup of energy
    • Stealthily find out that person’s coffee preference, and bring a cup that’s just right (milk, sugar, etc).
    • Bring someone you don’t talk to much (or even someone you don’t like much) a cup
    • Use the coffee as a chance for a chat with that person

    Once you’ve done it, please report back here and tell us how it went. Did it work or fail miserably? Did you do it exactly as proscribed or improve upon the mission in your own way?

    Share what you did with other people around the world so we can all create more arbejdsglaede together :o)

    Previous monday tips.

  • Weekend videos

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    EuroGELMark Hurst emailed me some apetizers for the upcoming EureGEL conference.

    1. Seth Godin talks about broken things at GEL06.
    2. Jimmy Wales explains Wikipedia at GEL05

    I can’t wait to go – GEL looks excellent!

    Oneopenwindow is a pretty cool project which aims to collect lots of videos of people telling cool stories and sharing their knowledge.

    My absolute favorite video on the site so far is Brad Blanton explaining how to achieve enlightenement in three minutes. Guaranteed. Though the site is in danish, this video is in english and you can find the link at the bottom of the front page. It’s hilarious – check it out!

    You can also find 12 short videos of me telling stories about happy companies (in danish).

    And over on youtube there’s a video of me doing a 6-minute peach-kucha presentation on happiness at work at Reboot8 (in english).

  • The top 10 advantages of low-rent living

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    Trap

    One of the biggest threats to happiness at work is having too many fixed expenses at home. When you’re completely dependent on bringing home a pay check (or two!) every single month, you’re vulnerable. If work turns out to be unbearable you can’t simply up and leave and take three months without income.

    I’ve chosen low-rent living for myself. At first it was through accident rather than planning but now I would never live any other way. Read on to see how it has made me happy at work – and in life.
    (more…)

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