“The corporate world means nothing unless it improves the lives of people and the conditions in poor countries.”
– Dr Haldor Topsøe
From a legendary Danish business leader. More here.
-
Quote
-
Materials from my speech at Boston University
Happiness at work is a serious topic.If you attended my speech about happiness at work at Boston University on Wednesday: Thank you! You guys were awesome. I loved the energy and all the great questions and comments in the Q&A session. I would also like to thank the Center for EU Studies for bringing me in to speak and Tim Sullivan for the excellent introduction. It was an absolute pleasure to be back in Boston to speak. Thank you!
If you want more information, you can find my slides and some of our most popular articles and blog posts here.
And if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch.
-
See me speak in NYC and Boston next week (psssst: it’s free!)
Next week I am giving speeches in New York and Boston that are open to the public. Usually when I speak it’s at a conference or at a company where only conference goers or employees can attend so this is a rare chance. Even better, both events are free :o)
Here are the details.
Monday March 25: NYC
Time: 6 – 8 PM
Location: Aamanns restaurant, 13 Laight Street, New YorkFree and open to the public. More information here.
Wednesday March 27: Boston
Time: 6 – 8 PM
Location: Boston University, Trustees Ballroom, 1 Silber Way, 9th floorFree and open to the public | Reception and book-signing to follow. More information.
Sign up is not required for this event.
See you there.
UPDATE: And if you can’t make it to any of those, I’m also speaking at the amazing WorldBlu LIVE conference in Denver in May. Read all about it and sign up here.
-
Thinking of quitting? Watch this video first.
Are you considering quitting your job? Watch this video first.
In it I talk to the always awesome and funny Rowan Manahan, MD of Fortify Services in Dublin about quitting.
Some of the question we cover are:
- How do you know it’s time to quit?
- How should you quit?
- Will quitting look bad on your CV?
- Why is quitting a job so hard, even if it makes you unhappy?
Basically, we think that too many people stay way too long in jobs that are very, very bad for them.
Related posts
-
I was a HUGE hit in South Africa
Audience at my speech in Cape TownI was in South Africa last week to do 6 speeches for ICAS and some of their clients.
They just sent me an email with the participant feedback, and check this out:
Thank you ! Thank you ! Thank you for bringing Alex to SA to come and talk to us. What an inspiration ! I’ve been practicing some of the tips he shared with us and it does make a difference.
Thank you the talk was Great, we really need more of it, and it would be good if the entire company attends.
The talk was awesome and I really took something back to the office with me.
I thoroughly enjoyed the session and would like to encourage my team members.
Thank you to all involved in organizing the talk and especially to Alexander for availing himself and coming to talk to us!!
I really felt inspired and already implemented some of the small changes that can make a huge difference.
I wish my whole department was able to attend, because we could sure use some happiness and enthusiasm in the office!
We should have more of these sessions here at our company. Maybe have one specifically aimed at managers.
I enjoyed it and came back much more in a happy mood.
It is chats like these that gets me going again , back on track & I appreciated the guidance to change my own world with the tips given in the presentation. Thank you for arranging this & I look forward to the next presentation.
I really enjoyed the session and I am tapped into more happiness. Perhaps this would be useful as motivation in one of our newsletters.
I think this should be compulsory rolled out through the whole of our company. That talk was absolutely needed.
It gave me a new outlook towards MY happiness in my workplace. I think Alex is an awesome speaker and does a brilliant job because he is correct in saying happy people produces happier results.
Keep it up guys WOOHOO !!!Thank you very much for your email. I am so glad that I attended the presentation of Alexander Kjerulf on Thursday. It was excellent.
THANKS ,I have learnt a lot and have change my approach already,my colleuges are in AWE about the New man.
It was really very valuable and enjoyable. The session made me realize that it IS possible to be happy at work.
… I think they liked it :o)
-
Watch my interview about happiness in non profits
I recently did an interview for Roy Opata Olende of Green Mango about happiness at work in small businesses and non-profits. These organizations face their own set of challenges and we had a great talk about it.
You can see the whole thing here:
-
Over 180 tickets sold to our conference about happiness at work
I am really proud of the fact that we’ve sold over 180 tickets to our conference about happiness at work in Copenhagen on May 30 in less than 3 weeks.If you’re coming you can look forward to an awesome day with speakers like Stephen Shapiro, Mikael Kamber, Rowan Manahan, David Marquet and many others. If you haven’t bought your ticket yet, you should probably do it soon.
And this year, you get to set the ticket price!! Read all about it.
-
Some great questions from #askkjerulf
I’m in South Africa this week to do 6 speeches for ICAS and as part of that they set up a twitter tag called #askkjerulf for anyone who wanted to ask me something.
Some questions came in that were really to good to reply to only on twitter, so here goes.
Is happiness in the workplace a product or a process?
This reminds me of the old saying that “There is no way to the Tao, Tao is the way.”The same thing applies to happiness. You’re never done creating a happy workplace. You can never rest on your laurels. So you can’t look at it as a project with an end goal that, once you achieve it, you can forget about. And that makes it a rather than a product
I highly recommend watching this video from one of our conference, where professor Srikumar Rao talks about “investing in the process, rather than the outcome.”
Some say happiness in the workplace begins at the top, cascades down to the bottom or is it the other way round?
It needs to be both – but that being said, if you want to create a truly happy workplace, you need a leader at the top who is 100% committed to this ideal. Someone like Richard Branson at Virgin, Tony Hsieh at Zappos or Ingvar Kamprad at IKEA.If such a leader is not present in the organization, you can still create local pockets of happiness in one division or one department, but it will never permeate the entire organization.
Who is responsible for ensuring happiness in the workplace?
That differs. In many companies it’s HR. In many more, no one has that responsibility (and the happiness will suffer as a consequence).I like the idea of appointing a Chief Happiness Officer in a company – someone who is tasked with promoting the happiness of everyone in the workplace and who is given the necessary resource to do it.
Would you say there is a positive correlation between happiness in the workplace and employee engagement?
There is a massive correlation between happiness and engagement and it’s much easier to be engaged if you’re happy. There’s an interview here, where I talk about this.
-
Top 5 reasons we should play more at work
Jane works in HR in a large Danish organization where I was giving a speech about happiness at work. I talked to her in preparation for the speech to learn about their situation and challenges, and she told me the she and some co-workers wanted to do something fun for Halloween a few years back, so they carved pumpkins and put up decorations in hallways, meeting rooms, and offices.
The reaction from some co-workers was immediately dismissive and they were told in no uncertain terms that “this is a workplace, not a kindergarten.” They have not since attempted anything like that.
Pretty surprising considering Denmark was named the happiest country in the world in 2011 by a UN backed survey, right?
To most people, work and play are mutually exclusive. Work is serious, play is frivolous. Work is something you have to do, play is something you want to do. Work is hard, play is fun.
But does it really have to be that way? What would happen if we played more at work?
A while back, I asked the readers of this blog how they play at work and here are just a few examples.
Three great ways to play at work
How about introducing play into brainstorming:
When brainstorming for new ideas we wanted to exclude critical thinking and encourage divergent thinking. Rather than having a facilitator policing the workshops we introduced water pistols. Any mistimed critical thinking led to a soaking.
The pistols did not however become a distraction, they raised the energy levels massively and resulted in great, off the wall, ideas being proposed.
Even the house “Mr Negative” could not resist and started to come up with great ideas….after shooting himself several times as he realised that he was being negative before ideas had properly emerged.
Why not simply play a game on break time:
On Fridays, it’s not unusual for a game of darts to break out. We have a dart board in our office and it serves as a great way to take a break (a game usually lasts less than half an hour), build a little camaraderie, and get our minds off of work a bit. I have found that it’s a great team building activity and it actually makes work time more effective and productive.
Oh, and it’s fun, too.
One company even uses play in hiring:
Where I work, we do our best to weed out the unhappy and cynical employees before they even get hired.
After each candidate goes through his/her well-rehearsed and pre-meditated interviews with HR and management, the entire engineering team (it’s a small company) comes into the room, closes the door, and starts a game of Jenga like it’s no big deal. Meanwhile, we strike up a casual conversation with the candidate and insist he or she play with us.
Without fail, the candidates true colors are almost immediately revealed. Candidate scoffs at the idea of playing a game in an interview? Obviously too uptight for our group and not capable of handling rapidly changing situations. Focusing on Jenga also takes the candidate’s mind off of all of the pre-meditated answers and pages of ‘interview tips’ articles that we’ve all read at one point or another.
Works every time. We end up with engineers who are laid back and easygoing, but who know their stuff, and can think on their feet.
I have heard countless other great examples of workplaces making themselves more like playgrounds – and this is also good for business. Here are the top 5 reasons why it’s a good idea to mix work and play.
1: You relax and de-stress
A play-break is a great way to laugh and focus on something besides work, emails, meetings, deadlines and clients. That break gives us a chance to relax during an otherwise busy work day and makes us less stressed.
2: We build relationships
In play you can be yourself and so can your co-workers – as in the Jenga-hiring-game above that brought out an applicant’s true self. Playing, especially together is a great way to build better relationships with your co-workers.
3: It broadens your mind
Play stretches the mind and makes us more creative. More and better ideas come to you when you’re in a playful state of mind than when you’re being serious and professional.
4: We take work less seriously
To many people, work is life and death, forever locked in a bloodthirsty, winner-take-all battle to end. No surprise that this attitude tends to make people cramp up mentally. Introducing play in the workplace gives us a break from this mentality and a chance to take ourselves less seriously.
5: We become happier at work
But most of all, playing at work would serve to make a workplace happier – and we know from many studies, that a happy workplace is a profitable one!
The upshot
There is a great case to be made for playing way more at work. And what’s more, introducing play can be fun and easy. It’s not without its challenges, and as we saw from the example above, some workplaces have an anti-play brigade that insists on keeping any and all aspects of fun and playfulness far away from the workplace.
Well nuts to them, I say – let’s do it anyway! I suggest we make the new battle cry in the workplace ”Wanna play?”
Your take
How do you play at work? Does your workplace even allow that kind of thing? What would happen if you made work a little more like play? Write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.
Related posts
