The Chief Happiness Officer
Make Yourself and Your Business Happy At Work
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A question for ya: Work culture in Latin America
Later this month I’m speaking at an HR conference in Guatemala (and possibly also in Nicaragua – details are still being worked out). The conference web site is here and there’s an article on it here (in Spanish). Which gets me thinking: I know too little about work culture in Latin America. What’s it like. Do you know? Are people generally happy at work? What’s the mood like in a typical workplace? Are managers very authoritarian or more laid back? Do workplaces... |
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Friday Spoing
Have a very happy weekend :o) |
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Introducing: The Happiness at Work Newsletter
This is it – today is the day that I can finally announce our international newsletter about happiness at work. We’ve had a thriving and highly popular newsletter in Danish for years, but somehow never got around to doing one in English. Well, no more procrastination – here it is :o) When you sign up for it you can expect: About one email a month. Tips, links, inspiration and ideas about happiness at work. Articles and videos about happiness at work. The occasional thinly veiled... |
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Another great comment
One of my most popular posts is still the one about The Cult of Overwork and it just got another great comment from Dee: I work in retail, and it’s true, some enjoy spending all their time at work, and that’s fine. If you want to spend 60 hours at work, that’s your prerogative. What I don’t like is the judgmental attitudes surrounding work hours– the unsaid expectation that if you don’t work 9-9, you’re a failure, or letting your team down. No, working 12 hours, five days in a... |
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Friday Spoing
I’m now back from Vegas and the WorldBlu Award celebrating the world’s most democratic companies (it was fantastic – more later) and it’s now time for this week’s Friday Spoing: Have a happy weekend! |
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This is how you improve happiness AND productivity at the same time
Yesterday I spoke to 200 people at Umbraco Codegarden 2010, an annual IT developer conference for web developers who use the open source CMS system Umbraco. Niels Hartvig, the founder of Umbraco, has a clear vision that focuses on both a good platform (so that the actual product is great) but equally on creating a great community, so that people want to be actively engaged in sharing knowledge, developing code and helping each other. I kicked the conference off with a high-energy presentation... |
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Get my first book on your Kindle, Nook, iPhone, Android phone, …
We just made a deal with Fifobooks to make my first book Happy Hour is 9 to 5 available electronically for a number of e-book readers including these: Amazon Kindle Barnes & Noble Nook Apple iPad Sony Reader Blackberry Apple iPhone Android Phones And best of all: It’s only $5.99. Read more about the book here or click here to buy it for your ebook reader without all the hassle and stress of paper and ink :o). |
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Interview
I just had a great interview with executive coach Lisa Pasbjerg about a wide range of topics from happiness at work to what happens to people who have all the outward signs if success but still hate their jobs. You can hear the whole interview here. |
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Speaking of mistakes…
Danish physicist, Nobel prize winner and all-round nice guy Niels Bohr once said this: An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field. Remember that the next time someone calls themselves an expert. And, yes, I do it too :o) |
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Happiness on the field
The New York Times has a great article about the talent school at Dutch football (ie. soccer) club Ajax, where young players are discovered and train to be the stars of the future. But how do you know who’s got it? How can you tell if this or that 10-year old kid will be a football legend? Interestingly, the biggest talents are not necessarily the ones who score the most goals. One coach says: I am never looking for a result — for example, which boy is scoring the most goals or even who... |
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Top 5 reasons to celebrate mistakes at work
Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh recently tweeted this: “$1.6 million mistake on sister site @6pm.com. I guess that means no ice cream for me tonight. Details: http://bit.ly/blfLnF” Apparently an employee had made a mistake while updating the prices on the web site, which meant that for a whole day, no item could cost more than $49.95. Some of their items cost a lot more. Ouch! Now what do you do? In many organizations, a mistake like this would be the starting point for a witch hunt. Who is... |
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5 reasons why “the customer is always right is wrong” – now as an ubercool wall chart
I was recently interviewed for an article in Call Center Magazine and they liked my blog post on The Top 5 Reasons Why “The Customer is Always Right” is Wrong so much that they’ve turned it into a wall chart that is waaaaay more colorful and attractive than my original post. Download it here. |
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Friday Spoing: Mukthar’s Birthday
A group of Copenhageners surprise their bus driver on his birthday: Think that made him happy at work? I wish you a very happy weekend. |
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Book review: Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh
There are some companies that seem completely unafraid to do things differently. While others cling desperately to business as usual, I admire organizations who try alternative ideas and Zappos is one of these companies. For those outside of the US who have not yet heard of Zappos, they sell shoes and clothes online and they do so with huge success: Their sales for 2009 was $1 billion. That’s a lot of shoes and for a company that’s only 10 years old, that’s nice going. Zappos... |
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Happy Birthday to me
Today is my Birthday – it’s fantastic to be 42 and fantastic to be me. Here’s what my desk looks like today: In fact, the whole country is celebrating the occasion by flying the Danish flag… though that may have more to do with the fact that the Danish crown prince was born on the same day as me :o) |