The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

Black is the new thrill

April 10, 2006

Life

The wonderful girlfriend and I hit the slopes in Alpe d’Huez 2 weeks ago and just kept on hitting them. I expected her to improve, this being only her second time skiing. I did not expect her to start tackling red and black runs with total abandon. Gotta be those swiss genes.

I also did not expect myself to turn into a total off-piste hound. Untill now I’ve been your normal, polite, never-stray-outside-the-slopes snowboarder. Now it’s more like “Hey look: Powder! I’m going over there.”

The steepest slope in Alpe d’Huez is called Le Tunnel. You take the lift to the top of the mountain (at 3.330 meter), then ski down a 200 meter long tunnel they drilled straight through the mountain top. On the other side, this view greets you:

Yep, I did that. Didn’t even blink :o)

I had more trouble dealing with what has to be the world’s largest cappucino:

It’s been great and it’s just as great to be back.

A special, great big thank you to Traci Fenton for guest blogging while I was away. Traci, you rock!
Links

April 6, 2006

Happy At Work, Open Source Business, Silly

If you stand up for too long you may pass out, as this video demonstrates. Am I a bad person for finding this hilarious?

The band Arctic Monkeys became hugely popular by giving their music away. This make more sense to me than, say, signing your music over to a record company for next to no money.

David Myers has a lot of great articles on happiness.
The artist as a young geek

April 5, 2006

Happy At Work, Leadership

A couple of weeks ago I posted this list of the top 10 mistakes managers of geeks make, which instantly became one of the most read posts on the site.

Mike Wagner (of Own Your Brand) has a lot of experience working with geeks, and he emailed me his take:

Some of the mistakes I remember making with Geeks or seeing others make are:

1. Treating their work and its results like a hammer when Geeks see it as a work of art. Managers must respect the different perspective each brings to IT development. Business managers see it as a tool. Geeks see it as a work of art. This is one reason Geeks often feel undervalued in the corporate culture. Geek temperament is really an artistic temperament.

2. Building on this; managers must understand the cynical feelings Geeks have towards commerce in general. Like artists who resent people putting a dollar value on their art, a Geek feels that all the business manager wants to do is make money. This is big time Geek turn off.

3. Geeks respond to critique and suggested changes of their “creations/code” like an artist. When a manager or client says we want you to change the functionality or code – it is like saying “can’t the Mona Lisa have blonde hair instead? Blonde tested better with the focus group.”

All of this can be worked with in a positive way IF the manager can practice empathic understanding – but if not, well…that’s the rub.

Great insights, Mike! People are increasingly approaching their work as art. It’s not that their painting or sculpting at work, it’s just that the nature of work has changed, so that the way people approach work is looking more and more like the way an artist approaches art.

This is true for geeks and for many other employee groups, and it profounfly changes the nature of work. Thanks Mike, for your great (as usual) input.
Marvel at the planet

April 4, 2006

Art

Check out these 200 amazing pictures from the movie Koyaanisqatsi (scroll down a little on the page), one of my all-time favorites and proof that we live on a beautiful planet.
Links

March 29, 2006

Happy At Work, Leadership

Even CNN says that you should take it easy, and not work to hard.

Great website on strength-based leadership. I am deeply envious of a last name as cool as “Zinger”.

Philip Greenspun has an excellent piece on early retirement. I say we should all do this intermittently, and work a couple of years, retire for a year or two and then stage a come-back. Semco’s part-time retirement scheme is also cool.
Wikimania

March 27, 2006

Politics
The Wikimania conference is the international conference of the Wikimedia foundation. The 2006 iteration is August 4-6 in Cambridge Ma., and they’re currently calling for papers and topics (the deadline is March 30).

One of my current pet projects is a fundamental rethinking of the way democracy is practiced. A shift from the current top-down political process to one that directly involves large numbers of people bottom-up. I wrote about it here, and there’s a website in Danish about it.

The fundamental meeting place of this party would be a Wiki. This is where policies would be suggested, examined, improved and voted on. I would LOVE to present this idea at the conference, so I submitted the following abstract:
The political process in most modern nations suffers from a number of problems including:
- General mistrust of politicians
- Disengagement and disillusionment by most citizens
- Low voter turnout
Basically, a small group formulate policies and the vast majority of people get to vote every few years.

The solution is to reshape the political process to allow many more people to participate actively in formulating the policies.

This can be done by creating new political parties where the fundamental meeting place is a Wiki, where issues are proposed, examined and decided upon bottom-up involving large number of people. Wikipedia already demonstrates how a community can come to decisions on complex and emotionally engaging topics.

This session lays out a specific plan for a wiki-based political party including:
- What’s wrong with politics today
- The technologies and principles involved in the wiki-based party
- Advantages of the wiki-based party
- How to implement it
- Case studies from nations and communities who practice similar approaches
I would sure love a trip to the US in August to present the idea of the wiki-based party.
Gone skiing

March 24, 2006

Life, The Site

Allrighty then, I’m outta here.

I’d love to hang around, but there’s fresh snow in the alps, and Patricia and I can’t possibly stay in Copenhagen and leave those pristine slopes unskied/unsnowboarded by us. It would be against our religion. This time we’re going all out and staying for two weeks of fun in the snow.

While I’m gone, I have a special treat for all the readers of positivesharing.com: I’ve snagged one of my all-time favorite people as a guest blogger.

That’s right, the one and only Traci Fenton, one of the most determined, energetic, creative, fun, visionary people I have ever met, has agreed to blog right here.

Traci is the CEO of WorldBlu, a company dedicated to organizational democracy. She is also the woman behind one of the best conference events I have ever attended, the WorldBlu forum in 2005.

It’s only fitting that Traci should blog here, because we actually met through this very blog – way back in 2003 I wrote about a mention of Traci in Fast Company. Traci saw that and contacted me.

I’ve also pre-blogged a few posts of my own which will come online while I’m gone. Through the magic of technology… (start spooky voice) it will seem as if I’m still here.

And while I’m gone, why not read my best article on happiness at work so far: Make your business rich and happy.
Make your business happy and rich

March 24, 2006

Best of site, Happy At Work, Leadership

It pays to be happy. Studies show that businesses with happy employees consistently outperform their less happy competitors in the marketplace and in the stock market.

Considering the challenges that modern organizations face, creating a happy organization is the number one strategic imperative and the only way to long-term success.

This article will tell you why happiness is so important for businesses today, and how you can make your business a happy one.
(more…)
Links

March 23, 2006

Open Source Business, Science/Technology, Silly

I wouldn’t mind seeing my colleagues row past my desk some day.

Nonzero, one of my top 10 books, has a great website with lots of excerpts from the book.

In this great interview, Ward Cunningham, creator of the wiki, says that the power of collaborative development has only just begun to be realized, and open-source software will continue to spur more collaboration and more innovation. I will probably surprise absolutely no one by saying I agree :o)
The proven path to happiness

March 22, 2006

Psychology

Positive psychology can make you happier and this article by Martin Seligman et al proves it (pdf). With diagrams! The paper studies a number of very simple actions (eg. writing down three positive things each day) and shows that they work very well.

Martin Seligman is the author of the excellent book Learned Optimism (read my review here) and the founder of the positive psychology movement which is based on the idea that psychology should focus more on what makes people happy, rather than focusing solely on curing mental illness. Makes sense to me :o)