The beginning of a new year is a great time to take stock of your work life. Did everything going the way you wanted it in 2010? Were you happy or unhappy at work? What would you like to change?

Unfortunately, most people look back and think almost exclusively in terms of everything that went wrong. The things they should have done. They goals they ought to have achieved. The progress that didn’t come.

We think you can achieve much more by turning that around 180 degrees, so here’s our suggestion for a little new year’s exercise in happiness at work. Think back at your work life in 2010 and answer the following 10 questions. It works best, if you take some time to do it and if you write down the answers.

1. What went really well for you at work in 2010?
2. What did you do that you were proud of?
3. Who did you make a difference for at work?
4. What new things have you learned professionally?
5. How have you grown and developed personally at work?
6. Who has helped you out at work in 2010=
7. Who have you admired profesionally?
8. What have been some of the most fun moments at work in 2010?
9. Which 5 things from your work life in 2010 would you like more of in 2011?

And last but not least:
10. What will you specifically do to become happier at work in 2011?

Have fun – and I wish you a very happy 2011 at work!

I’m not a huge fan of employee satisfaction surveys for a number of reasons:

1. They measure job satisfaction, which, to me, is not what matters. What matters is happiness.
2. They’re no fun. Filling out 50 (or more) questions in an online survey is a chore – not something people enjoy.
3. They’re so time consuming that companies typically perform them once a year. But what good is knowing how happy employees are once a year? What if they’re really unhappy now, and the next survey is still 7 months away?

So how DO you measure happiness at work? This is exactly the question British social media agency Nixon McInnes were asking themselves:

According to recent studies, happiness in the workplace is positively correlated with productivity, so as happiness increases, productivity follows suit, but when unhappiness gains a foothold, productivity and, ultimately, the health of the business, suffer.
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The first prototype, or version 0.1, has been live for a couple of months now and has provided some illuminating insight into our collective emotional condition (Tuesdays, for instance, are a regular, recurring low point in the week).

So, what’s the ground-breaking technology that makes all this possible?

The answer… A couple of buckets and a few dozen tennis balls. :)

Exactly – why not go low-tech and do it with balls. Tennis balls, that is.

Every day as employees leave work they drop a ball into either the “Happy” or “Unhappy” basket. The balls are counted and the daily and weekly results are displayed on a monitor in the office:

Yup – that’s all it takes. It’s simple, so it actually gets done and it’s almost real-time because it presents daily data. An additional benefit is that it gives employees a chance to reflect every day on their happiness at work, which is also a good practice. Kudos!

Have you tried something similar in your workplace? Would this work for you?

Related posts

• Happiness at work at Nixon McInnes
• Top 5 business maxims that need to go

Samuel Culbert is not a fan of performance reviews:

To my way of thinking, a one-side-accountable, boss-administered review is little more than a dysfunctional pretense. It’s a negative to corporate performance, an obstacle to straight-talk relationships, and a prime cause of low morale at work. Even the mere knowledge that such an event will take place damages daily communications and teamwork.

Culbert is a professor of management at the UCLA Anderson School of Management in Los Angeles and author of the excellent book Get Rid of the Performance Review!: How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing–and Focus on What Really Matters.

In this excellent article, he sums up his main arguments against performance reviews, which include:

• The mind-sets held by the two participants in a performance review work at cross-purposes.
• It’s a myth that performance determines pay.
• They disrupt teamwork.

I agree completely. Waaaaay back in 2008, I wrote about my top 10 reasons why performance reviews suck.

Culbert even offers an alternative – the performance preview:

The alternative to one-side-accountable, boss-administered/subordinate-received performance reviews is two-side, reciprocally accountable, performance previews.

The boss’s assignment is to guide, coach, tutor, provide oversight and generally do whatever is required to assist a subordinate to perform successfully. That’s why I claim that the boss-direct report team should be held jointly accountable for the quality of work the subordinate performs. I’m sick and tired of hearing about subordinates who fail and get fired, while bosses, whose job it was to ensure subordinate effectiveness, get promoted and receive raises in pay.

Holding performance previews eliminates the need for the boss to spout self-serving interpretations about what already has taken place and can’t be fixed. Previews are problem-solving, not problem-creating, discussions about how we, as teammates, are going to work together even more effectively and efficiently than we’ve done in the past. They feature descriptive conversations about how each person is inclined to operate, using past events for illustrative purposes, and how we worked well or did not work well individually and together.

The preview structure keeps the focus on the future and what “I” need from you as “teammate and partner” in getting accomplished what we both want to see happen. It doesn’t happen only annually; it takes place each time either the boss or the subordinate has the feeling that they aren’t working well together.

What a fantastic idea!

Your take

What do you think – do you personally find, that performance reviews make you happier and more effective at work? Is it a process you actively enjoy? Please write a comment, I’d love to hear your take.

Related posts

• Top 10 reasons why performance reviews should be abolished.
• Top 5 business maxims that need to go.
• A letter from your new boss.