The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Quote

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    The radical, committed to human liberation, does not become the prisoner of a “circle of certainty” within which reality is also imprisoned. On the contrary, the more radical the person is, the more fully he or she enters into reality so that, knowing it better, he or she can better transform it. This individual is not afraid to confront, to listen, to see the world unveiled. This person is not afraid to meet the people or enter into dialogue with them. This person does not consider himself or herself the proprietor of history of all people, or the liberator of the oppressed; but he or she does commit … to fight at their side.

    – Paolo Freire in Pedagogy of the oppressed

    I’m a radical and I didn’t even know it. I especially like the part about “committed to human liberation”. To me, this goes beyond liberating people from external oppression, and includes bringing people to the realization of their own, basic human freedom.

    The “happiness at work” project expresses this. We believe that if you want to be happy at work, you must first choose to be so. That choice will not make you happy, it’s not that easy, but if you do not start with that choice, no external factor (not even a good boss, nice colleagues and a fat pay check) can make you happy. And that choice is the first step to taking your happiness and your freedom into your own hands. The first step towards realizing, that all change must start with you and be based on what you can do, rather than on waiting for “them” to fix what’s wrong.

  • Happy social workers

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    Today Mette and I facilitated a “happiness at work” workshop for 25 social workers from all over Denmark. It went extremely well, and in just five short hours people whose stories of the workplace are mostly dominated by bad management, stress, too much work and changing laws, suddenly remembered that they actually do good work, and that they have many good stories to tell also. Yeah!!

  • Denmarks best workplaces

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    I spent today at a conference that accompanies the announcement of Denmarks best workplaces, arranged by the greatplacetowork institute of Denmark. This year the winner is Kjaer group from my hometown Svendborg who sell cars to developing countries. Their motto is “Love cars, love people, love life”. You gotta love that.

    The day was fairly interesting, though I have to admit that once you get used to the efficiency, spirit and energy of open space meetings, more traditional conferences such as this one seem a waste of time. I did manage to get in some good conversations with other participants, though tellingsly enough, these all happened in the breaks.

    The keynote speaker was Robert Levering of the original great place to work institute. He set an international context by telling some stories from other such events in the rest of the worlds. Nice to know that the focus on creating good work places is growing all over the world. He also announced that the institute will focus more on the “how” of good workplaces; so far it’s only been about measuring the current status.

    The next couple of events were moslty forgettable with a few interesting highlights. This includes the panel debates; my life is too short for panel debates, though a good side effect seems to be, that while I’m thoruoghly bored by what’s being said I seem to get a lot of good ideas.

    The day ended with Peter Aalbaek of Zentropa, who has some very interesting ideas about how to run a company. Among other things he:
    * Once walked into the accounting department with a straight face and no pants (or underwear) on and asked for some invoice
    * Demands that people work menial and gruelling tasks for six months for free, before hiring them for real
    * Insists that contracts for employees are merely a sign that you expect trouble
    * Claims that it is the job of the workplace to save employees from their otherwise meaningless and boring existence.

  • Forget everything you know about change!

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    Jim Collins, the author of Built to last and Good to great examines our peceptions of how change in orgnizations happens, and finds that most of our current thinking is dead wrong. This is one of the best and most insightful articles I’ve read in a loooong time. A teaser:

    I want to give you a lobotomy about change. I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned about what it takes to create great results. I want you to realize that nearly all operating prescriptions for creating large-scale corporate change are nothing but myths.
    …
    Picture an egg. Day after day, it sits there. No one pays attention to it. No one notices it. Certainly no one takes a picture of it or puts it on the cover of a celebrity-focused business magazine. Then one day, the shell cracks and out jumps a chicken. All of a sudden, the major magazines and newspapers jump on the story: “Stunning Turnaround at Egg!” and “The Chick Who Led the Breakthrough at Egg!” From the outside, the story always reads like an overnight sensation — as if the egg had suddenly and radically altered itself into a chicken.

    The key to succesful change: Put “Who” before “What”. Read the article at (where else) Fast Company.

  • Quote

    Somebody has to do something, and it’s just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.

    – Jerry Garcia (of the Grateful Dead)

  • Cocktailparty

    We had our second fantastic open space, open source cocktail party in october. It was a great evening and here are the pictures to prove it.

    Want to do an open space cocktailparty yourself? Here’s how:
    1: Invite a lot of nice people
    2: Figure out what you’ll need to make lots of different cocktails – our list is here (in danish)
    3: Let each guest decide what they want to bring
    4: When guests arrive put everything in the kitchen
    5: Let each guest decide what cocktail to make and when
    6: Have a blast

    We didn’t serve any food but we did arrange for plenty of chips and snacks. We had the party on the same day we moved in to the appartment, and while it worked great for us I’m not sure I’d recommend that particular solution to everyone.

  • Book review: Hey Nostradamus!

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    I discovered Douglas Coupland what seems like many years ago (but was in fact in 1997) when I read Generation X, and he remains one of my favourite authors. His style has since been steadily moving away from the hyper-realistic stories of Shampoo planet and Generation X to a more surrealist, subjective and poetic style which is also evident in his latest book Hey Nostradamus.

    What it’s about? Good question. There’s a shooting at a high school, much like the one at Columbine, and this has consequences for many people, whose intersecting stories are told in the books four separate passages. The mood of the book is detached, somber and haunting but still moving and while the book offers very few answers it certainly poses many good questions. It is an elegant piece of fiction which I recommend highly.

  • Self-organizing political campaign

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    Howard Deans presidential campaign is different, and I certainly hope it’s an indication of how things will be done in the future. Wally Bock sums it up here. It turns out that the real difference between Dean and everybody else is that he treats his supporters like a giant, self-organizing staff of experts. The key to that is giving up control, reversing the great political campaign trend of the last decade or so.

  • Home again

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    Gee but it’s great to be back home
    Home is where I want to be boy
    I’ve been on the road for so long my friend
    And if you came along I know you wouldn’t disagree
    – Paul Simon, keep the customer satisfied

    I’m now home after my trip to the states, and it’s been a wonderful trip. It’s been all about interesting conversations, wonderful people and exciting new thoughts – I live for this kind of thing.

    And it’s equally great to be back home. I may even have tricked the jetlag in one day. I arrived sunday at 1PM, went home and unpacked (mentally and physically) and then Patricia and I went to the movies (Finding Nemo and and Matrix revolutions, they both rock) the evening to keep me awake until a suitable hour, following all of which I woke up refreshed and ready this morning.

  • Quote

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    Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive.

    – Harold Whitman

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