The Chief Happiness Officer Blog

  • Seeing Seattle

    I’m now in West Seattle relaxing after a long day exploring this wonderful city. This wonderful lady by the name of Pam Earle offered me to stay at her place, and has been showing me the sites, including but not limited to:
    * A water taxi ride into Seattle
    * Pike Place market
    * Coffee at the very first Starbucks
    * Fresh crumpets
    * A walk through downtown Seattle
    * The Elliott Bay bookstore (I restrained myself and only bought $200 worth)
    * Pioneer Square

    We even talked to a couple of the Pike Place Fish Market guys, and they do seem really happy. The place was kinda quiet when we were there, so I may return on saturday when the fish are really flying.

    While Seattle has the urban look of New York city with lots of skyscrapers, the feel of the place is much more relaxed and friendly. And the variety and quality of foods you can get at the Pike Place Market and at Pam’s local market is mind-blowing.

  • The media – a collective bad dream?

    One of the sessions here at the Practice of Peace conference was about the media, and after the session, I grabbed one of the participants, Doug who is a psychotherapist, and asked him a little about his views. Specifically, I wonder why negative news have a much stronger pull on us than positive news, since that goes a long way towards explaining why the media mostly carry bad news.

    He offered two insights:
    1. The media are a collective bad dream, that we need to wake up from.

    2. The media reflect whatever we repress, because what we repress is what we seek out, and what has the greatest psychological energy for us. So, if we as a culture repress our negative side, then that aspect of the world attracts us the most, and the media pick up on that. The solution therefore, is not to change the media, but to change our own perception of the world, to be more in tune with our own negative sides.

    Again, change starts with us.

  • Practice of peace – part 2

    We’re coming up on the end of day 2 here at the practice of peace conference. If you’re interested in what’s going on, all meeting transcripts are coming online here.

    We had a really funny experience today, during a talk about “How to bear it when you realize it’s all your fault?”. The guy who was taking notes was doing it on a computer, and towards the end of the meeting, he suddenly says “I have a message from a person who’s not here.” We’re thinking “Is he channeling the spirit of a dead ancestor, or what?”. It turns out, that as we were talking and he was writing, he got an email from a friend in Ecuador, sent her the transcript, she read it and sent a comment back, which he then read to us, the comment being perfectly on topic, by the way. How “Smart Mobs” is that?

    I’ve also done impro theatre in a session, confirming my knowledge that I’ll have to take that up soon. There is so much to learn from the exercises and practices in impro theatre. Tonight I’ve offered to do laughter exercises after dinner – more on that later.

  • Strong democratic leaders, a paradox?

    One of the things that came up in the discussion at the democratic CEO round table was the apparent paradox, that a democratic organization needs a strong leader. You’d think that the whole idea of democratic organizations, would be to eliminate the need for strong leaders so that everyone could lead according to their interests and passion. In practice this is not the case, as evidenced by the experience of those present at the round table.

    I came up with the idea, that the strong leader is necessary not to make actual business, but rather to keep the democracy alive and healthy. The one thing, that is not up for the vote in a democratic organization, is whether or not to be democratic. And since the transition to democracy and the practice of democracy once you’re there is untried and can be confusing, frustrating and difficult (in addition, of course, to being fun, dynamic and energizing), someone needs to hold on strongly to the democratic principles and values.

    That got me thinking about a model I came up with a couple of years ago – heavily inspired by some work in NLP, namely that at any given time, you can operate on three levels:
    * Values
    * Process
    * Production

    The lowest level is production. This is where things actually get done, and if you never spend time there, all your efforts will come to nothing. The middle level, process, is when you work on how you produce, eg. having a meeting to decide how to organize your work. The top level is values, and here you identify and strengthen the values and principles which shape the way you work.

    A strong democratic leader then, is one who is active in the middle level of democracy, ie. the principles. He will not make decisions at the production level, those are made democratically. But he or she will operate at the process level, to ensure that democracy is practiced and kept alive, according to the values of the company.

  • Is Arena a lap?

    One of the many fascinationg people I’ve met at the Practice of Peace conference is Max Gail, who runs an organization called lap. This is based on the metaphor of a lap. We all have one, and it is, among other things, wher our kids sit to hear a story or to feel safe.

    So what is a community lap? According to Max, it’s a computer-empowered, creativity inspiring, consensus building community communication center or network. Does that sound like Arena? It does to me: Imagine a lap for small businesses, where people can network, innovate, hear and tell stories, learn and recharge their batteries. That could be Arena, and I think it ties in nicely with the idea of a third place, outside of home and work.

  • Muddling through

    Harrison Owen just finished his opening talk here at the Practice of Peace conference, and todays topic centered around “muddling through” – the idea that for 14 billion years the universe has moved towards higher and higher levels of complexity with no central planning involved. It’s not perfect, but it’s amazing that we’re around to complaing about how bad it all is.

    And that got me thinking about something I’ve heard people saying previously, namely that “the good is the enemy of the perfect.” In other words, that accepting a good solution prevents you from finding the perfect solution. Frankly, that’s just not right. It’s the other way around: The search for the perfect solution often keeps us from achieving a good solution. Instead of perfection, we could go for perfectly allright.

    Researching this on the net, I just discovered that Voltaire is with me on this one :o) Here’s to muddling through, 14 billion years of it so far.

  • Practice of peace – part 1

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    You know, when I planned my trip to the US and planned to fly from DC to Seattle, I was kinda thinking “OK, domestic flight, how long can it be – 2-3 hours?” Well, flying across the US takes five and a half hours!

    I’m now at the Practice of Peace conference, and it’s quite a far cry from the CEO round table. The round table was at a fancy Marriott hotel – here I share a room with two other guys one of whom snores constantly, though fortunately not very loudly. The round table meetings were in your traditional windowless conference room, here it’s this grand hall with windows, wooden beams and skylights. But notice, that where the luxury hotel had wired internet access in the rooms at $9.95 a day, this place has free wi-fi. Woohoo!

    The conference is just taking off, but I think I may have overextended myself, and I’m afraid I’m all conferenced out. Let’s see what happens. Oh, I talked briefly to Harrison Owen – seems like a very nice person.

  • Simplicity – complexity – simplicity

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    I posted an Oliver Wendell Holmes quote a while ago:

    I would not give a fig for the simplicity this side of complexity, but I would give my life for for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.

    Sandy Wilder of Communico used this quote in his presentation at the CEO round table, and that got me thinking. I’d say that the first simplicity comes from thinking you understand any given system. Yep, we’ve got it figured – we know how the system will react in most situations, and we can manage that.

    The complexity comes when you realize, that you don’t understand the system. An example: You give you salesforce bonuses to make them sell more. It works for a while, but suddenly sales drop. More bonuses help, but not as much as the first time. What’s going on? Apparently the system is more complex than we thought. The specific reasons, why additional bonuses don’t make much of an impact can vary. Maybe the first round of bonuses motivated the sales people to close a lot of easy sales, and now there are only the “hard” cases left. Maybt it has fostered strong internal competition, so they actually undercut each others work to get the bonus. The point is, that the system was apparently more complicated than we thought – and in truth, most systems are.

    The “simplicity on the other side of complexity” does not come, however, from understanding the system. Most systems in a business setting are so complex, that we won’t ever be able to predict them. Trying to understand the system is, in all probability, ultimately futile.

    However, trying to develop your values and principles, so that they align with your goals is certainly a worthwhile pursuit. And that is the simplicity on the other side of complexity. That simplicity comes from knowing yourself and your values, and living by them. It comes from the belief or faith that, as long as we work in the right way and stick to our principles, it will turn out right. And that’s a crucial distinction.

  • Democratic CEO round table, part 2

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    The round table is now over, and it’s been an amazing ride. Some of the highlights were:
    * Hearing real-life stories of organizational democracy – the ups AND the downs
    * Meeting some wonderful, courageuos people
    * Exploring the link between political democracy and organizational democracy. Fredo Arias-King gave a fascinating presentation on the transition to democracy in eastern Europe and the ex-Soviet countries and why some succeeded and others didn’t. Key factor: People! The countries that completely got rid of the old guard (the Nomenklatura) succeeded.
    * Seeing Traci Fenton and her team in action. Relaxed, creative and on the ball
    * “Singing in the rain” with Victor Aspengren of Schafer Systems

    I’m jetting of to Seattle in a few hours, and I’m looking forward to just chilling on the flight. Then the Practice of Peace conference starts tonight.

  • Democratic CEO round table, part 1

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    I’m now in Washington DC, and the first 24 hours of the World Dynamics round table for democratic CEO’s has been fantastic. There are some great people here, who can tell some amazing stories. There’s an incredible level of experience, openness and curiosity present – and it’s just plain fun.

    The conference started thursday evening Mart Laar, the first prime minister of Estonia. He talked about democracy and about values and principles he beliveves are necessary to practice democracy. And he should know: Under him, Estonia went from a hopeless ex-soviet backwater, to a modern, fast-developing economy. His speech was very inspiring and moving, and his down-to-earth authentic and slightly underplayed style was wonderful.

    Today several of the participants have had a chance to present, and I talked briefly about the principles behind Enterprise Systems (my old IT company). In the afternoon we did a short open space session, which seemed to go over really well with this crowd – as I’d hoped it would. If there’s one tool that can promote organizational democracy, I believe it’s Open Space meetings.

    The day ended with a wonderful dinner with everybody in really high spirits. My mind is still racing from all the input and all the incredible stories I’ve heard today, and I hope tomorrow will be just as interesting.

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