A great big thank you to:
I’m now back in Copenhagen after a nice, sunny flight home from Istanbul. Most of the way, I could look down on a snow-covered Europe which looked amazingly beautiful from 10 km up.
The conference was a great experience which touched on the many themes that are (or are becoming) central to HR, such as:
I went out to dinner thursday evening with a group of other speakers and we ended up talking about what the common, unifying theme of the “new HR” might be.
It will probably surprise noone, that I believe that unifying theme to be happiness at work. The basic challenge of modern business is to activate the full potential of the people who work there. For this to happen, peope need to be happy. It’s that simple.
This makes happiness both a goal and a tool, and it is my claim that happiness at work will become the most important strategic goal of modern businesses over the next few years.
I also predict that we will see a trend, where happy companies will put unhappy companies out of business, simply because happy businesses are much more efficient and profitable. It’s no contest.
What does this mean for the future of HR? I think it mainly requires a new focus, namely this:
The role of HR is to make people happy
If businesses make this conceptual leap and start prioritizing accordingly, we will see HR becoming an even greater asset than it already is and we will see many workplaces change for the better. And it’ll help the bottom line.
A big thank you to everyone who participated! If you have any comments or questions, please write a comment here and I will try to answer.
I’m writing this from the VIP room at the MCT HR conference in Istanbul (it’s good to be a speaker). The conference was kicked off by some good presentations:
After a very nice lunch, there are several sessions to choose from this afternoon – we’ll see who wins the race.
And of course the best part of any conference is making new friends and having great conversations – and this conference certainly doesn’t disappoint. More updates later.
Last night, american TV-pundit Stephen Colbert on his show The Colbert Report attempted to “fix” the growing controversy over the Muhammed cartoons by insulting Denmark with his own scribblings.
In two cartoons, which he drew himself, he managed to offend such major Danish icons as Hamlet, Hans Christian Andersen and Queen Margrethe. To top it off, he even went after Lars von Trier. We Danes cannot let this pass. Colbert admits to being afraid of muslim retaliation – let’s show him that Danes are not to be trifled with either.
You can see the segment here – but be warned, it is strong stuff. (5MB, 1 min, wmv).
I hereby declare a special Danish Fatwah over Stephen Colbert, to be removed only after he apologizes unreservedly to all of Denmark.
Sign your name in the comments, to support our protest! If you have any ideas for specific Danish penalties we might threaten Colbert with, please add those also. Maybe we can exploit his irrational fear of bears.
(Image taken from Madsenblog who also spotted these horrible slurs).
There will be no new posts for a few days, while I prepare to move this blog to a new server and onto WordPress (which is of course open source and free :o)
The blog will be back later this week with new posts, a new design and (yes, finally) an RSS feed. The URL will remain positivesharing.com, but all permalinks to previous posts will change. Sorry.
Wikipedia has an up-to-date overview of the whole brouhaha over the Muhammed cartoons.
What many seem to be missing is this: The problem is not Islaam, the problem is fundamentalism. There are fundamentalist moslems, yes, but also fundamentalist christians, jews, hindus, anti-homosexuals, conservatives, communists, etc…
And while fundamentalism seems to be on the rise these days, I believe there is cause for optimism. Today fundamentalist movements and organizations everywhere are being crowded by an increasing modernism driven primarily by science and mass media. Lately the internet has been pressuring them even further.
Fundamentalists everywhere currently lash out in panic at seeing their base erode, and we’ll see it again and again, though less and less. In that light it’s hardly surprising. I mean, we can’t really expect fundamentalists to go out quietly, can we? :o)
A short while ago I spoke at one of the best conferences I’ve ever been to: The WorldBlu Forum on Organizational Democracy. Previous coverage here, here, here and here.
The organizers have put up podcasts with many of the speakers including Dan Pink, David Weinberger and … me (7 min., 8 Mb mp3) being interviewed by the charming and delightful Susanne Goldstein. I somehow manage to go all the way back to Aristotle and the Dalai Lama and then talk about happiness at work and how it relates to democratic workplaces.
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