The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Book review: Smart Love

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    I try to gather input for the Happy At Work Project from many sources. Web sites, books, movies, magazines – whatever may give me some new angle on what makes people happy at work. So please don’t read too much into it when I tell you, that I just finished reading a book called Smart Love: The Compassionate Alternative to Discipline That Will Make You a Better Parent & Your Child a Better Person by Martha and William Pieper :o)

    I saw the title, and thought that any alternative to discipline might be a nice thing to know about, in the search for ways to create better work environments. Indeed, much of what is says CAN be transplanted from the world of bringing up children to that of working together on the job.

    The obvious notion NOT to take with you, is the one where managers take on the roles of parents and employees become the children. Where knowledge, authority and responsibility is seen to lie only with some people (those who happen to be leaders) and employees are expected to do as they’re told. Fortunately this mindset is slowly disappearing.
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  • Happy at work – world-wide

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    At the Interactive Organizations Conference 2004, I offered the idea of creating an international IO, based on the happy at work project.

    Instead of getting all theoretical, we could simply organize around the purpose of making people happy at work, and create an IO for just that. Here’s the idea: We already have some proven methods and technologies in the work we do in Denmark. We have lectures, a workshop, a book, a game, a video, a conference and much more. All of this we are willing to give away to anyone who’s interested in using it, and we’ll make this the basis of the world-wide happy at work project.

    If you’re interested in participating in this drop me an email. The exact details are still a little hazy – but mostly, I think it could be a LOT of fun :o)

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  • Interactive Organizations Conference

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    The interactive organization is one that is less dominated by traditional control structures and where people are more free to do their work. Interactive organizations (IO’s) are therefore more efficient, adapt faster to changes in their environment – and they’re a lot more fun to be in. They can also be chaotic and frustrating :o)

    I’ve been a leader and participant (in interactive orgs everyone is both) in three different organizations which were interactive, and I can assure you, that I will never again work in a “traditional” workplace. I could simply never function again under the old, inflexible ways defined by the org chart.

    So when I heard that the first conference on IO’s was being organized in Krakow I knew that I had to be a part of it. The term Interactive Organization was defined in Harrison Owen’s book The power of spirit, how organizations transfrom and describes what a workplace organized around Open Space Technology might be like.
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  • There ain’t no such thing as change management

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    I’m currently reading “The spirit of leadership” by Harrison Owen and it has something to say on the difference between management and leadership:
    [Managers] control the system, whatever that system might be. And the operative word is control. A good manager makes the plan, manages to the plan, and meets the plan. The details are taken care of, the abberancies are controlled, and the problems are solved. … But when the balance swings to nostability and change occurs in radical, discontinuous jumps, the skills of management don’t work quite as well as they used to.

    Which would make “change management” an oxymoron – there ain’t no such thing. A better term would be “change leadership”.

  • Manifesto for growth

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    I’m currently putting together a two-hour session on change. One of the hot topics in management today is change management, and I would argue that you can’t manage change if you don’t understand change. So I’m looking at change from a lot of different angles right now: Science, philosophy, common sense, psychology, biology etc…

    And then somebody pointed me towards Bruce Mau’s An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth, and while I may not agree with all of it, it certainly stimulated my thinking on growth. And of course growth and change are, if not identical, then at least related. Here’s my favourite bit from the manifesto:
    2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you?ll never have real growth.

  • Corporate Culture and Spirituality Conference

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    Corporate culture and spirituality may look like strange bedfellows, but with the increasing awareness in businesses today on the importance of fostering personal development and excellence on the job, a spiritual focus is not a surprising development.

    Spirituality can be many things to many people, but to me it is a tool to get to know yourself, to improve your understanding of the world and to become happier. And these aims make a lot of sense at work.

    That’s why I think the 2004 conference on Corporate Culture and Spirituality looks very interesting. It’s held this year in Bangalore, India, and aims to:
    * Challenge the general perception about business & spirituality as dichotomous areas
    * Enhance the value and efficacy of conventional management practices by partnering with spirituality
    * Evolve a larger joint-role for corporate and spiritual leaders in addressing complex global issues like terrorism, corruption and poverty
    * Develop business models that create and sustain inspirational communication and bonds within organizations

    Which sounds pretty good to me. With sessions like “Maximizing Ethics and Profits”, “Persevering Excellence amidst the Chaos of Change” and “The Bottom Line, a Perspective in Time” it looks like the conference is firmly anchored in the current needs of organizations worldwide.

    The conference was held for the first time last year and was a great success. In 2003 it was mostly attended by indian business leaders, this year the focus will be more international. The conference fee is 700 euros, which isn’t too steep for a 3 day conference aimed at top executives.

    I’m going to Goa, India in September for the Open Space on Open Space conferece, and now it looks like I’ll have to seriously consider going to India twice in two months.

  • Athens 2004

    I’m back from a week in Athens, and what a week. Patricia and I have been visiting my sister who heads the Art of Living in Greece, and between touring all of Athens and catching some olympic actions, it’s kinda nice to be home again, so we can relax after our holiday :o)

    The people of Athens are incredibly nice. We were met with smiles everywhere we went, at the olympic games, on the beaches and in the streets. They’s all friendly, kind an open.

    There’s plenty to experience in Athens, and we made the most of it. The acropolis is beautiful of course, and evokes the concept of Greece as the birthplace of our culture. The food is excellent. How a greek salad (tomatoes, cucumber, feta and olives with a simple dressing of olive oil and vinegar) can taste so good is beyond me. We went to an outdoor cinema, and saw a greek movie (with english subtitles) under the starry sky, with the lights from the Acropolis just off to our left.

    We went to a couple of beaches and swam in the aegean sea. We also got great tans :o) We walked the streets of Athens withut much of a plan, sitting down at a caf? for beer or coffee frapp?s whenever we got too hot. We always pack books, so we can take a reading break if we want.

    We went to no less that six different sports events: Fencing, badminton, beach volley ball, athletics and two womens handball games. At one of the handball games I had the pleasure of teaching two american guys the basics of the sport. They worked as volunteers, got free tickets and had never seen a handball game before.

    We even made a new greek friend, Nick, who let us stay in his home for a few nights. That’s the hospitality of the greeks for ya.

    It’s been a great week, that’s given us a great feel for what the olympic games do for a city. My main question now is: How quickly can we get the games to Copenhagen?

  • Open Space world map

    Check out the new and improved Open Space World Map. It’s a seriously cool visualization of how Open Space Technology is spreading around the world.

  • More stuff from the happy-at-work conference

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    We’ve received some more follow-up material on the happy-at-work conference. Suna Christensen is an anthropologist who participated, and has now written a short report on the conference. It’s fascinating reading, and here’s one of my favourite bits:
    Work life and private, personal life is traditionally two separate worlds. But through inclusion of being human on the job this conference created a connection where human life as such stretched beyond the known borders. In me an experience was created which means, that it no longer makes sense to speak of work environment as terms or conditions under which we work. In stead, we must search for (new) words and concepts that – as the conference did in practice – kan represent the (contradictory) conditions under which we work.

    Music to my ears :o) You can find the whole report here – in danish only, though.

    Merete Klussman also participated, and she wrote a personal account of her day at the conference. Her article is an excellent description of the day and what participants could get out of the conference. Read Meretes story here.

  • Unemployment

    Here’s a very funny inside look at unemployment.

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