People who care, shareSeptember 15, 2006 @ 10:37 am · Filed under Best of site, Happy At Work, Learning




Knowledge Sharing is hot these days, and many companies are introducing processes and technologies that allow employees to learn from each other and to collect the implicit knowledge present in any company.

And very often, it doesn’t work. Companies put a knowledge management system in place… and nothing happens. Nobody uses it. It then becomes a struggle to convince employees that knowledge sharing is good for them and for the company, based on a “what’s in it for me” approach.

And that’s because the whole Knowledge Sharing approach is fundamentally flawed, and because businesses really need to focus on something else.

That something else is Passion Sharing.

It’s almost impossible to make people care about Knowledge Sharing if they don’t care about their knowledge in the first place. And if they don’t care, they don’t share (yes, I’m pretty proud of that little ditty :o).

Get people together who’re passionate about a topic, however, and knowledge sharing happens automagically. You don’t need to lift a finger to get them started. In fact, the most difficult part may be to get them to stop and take a break.

This is also why people meet on meetup.com around topics like crocheting, chihuahua dogs or camping. They’re not getting paid or being pressured. There are no consultants to tell them when or how to share their knowledge. It just happens. Because they care.

Here are some of the main differences between Knowledge Sharing and Passion Sharing:

Knowledge Sharing Passion Sharing
What matters is how much you know what matters is how much you care
Convince people to share their knowledge Let people get passionate about their work – knowledge sharing happens automagically
Create systems to share knowledge Create systems to let people find other people who share their passion
It’s about knowledge, processes and systems It’s about people
Is perceived as a burden by employees Is seen as a help
Boring! Fun!

Did I forget any?

Another advantage of Passion Sharing is that it plays into the whole “Nobody cares how much you know, untill they know how much you care” thing. People come across as more trustworthy and likable when they’re passionate about what they do.

This is one more reason why we need passionate people in the workplace. And of course, if you want people to be passionate about their jobs, you need to make them happy at work. You just knew I’d get around to that, didn’t you? :o)

If you liked this post I’m pretty sure you’ll also enjoy these:

Top 10 tips for creative, productive, fun writing
A challenge to all managers: Know your people
The strongest force in business (no, not money) Front page Happy Hour is 9 to 5 Book About the site About Alexander Kjerulf Speaking & Consulting Contact Alex Ask the CHO
About Alexander Kjerulf

Alex makes people happy at work. No, really, he does!

He speaks and consults in businesses all over the world, showing executives, managers and employees how to change workplaces from dreary and stressful to more fun, energized and happy. And profitable!

He is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5, a practical guide to making yourself and others happy at work. Because loving what you do is just that damn important!

Read more about Alex...
Book Alex to speak or consult...



Most Popular Posts
Top 5 reasons why “The Customer Is Always Right” is wrong
10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces
How NOT to lead geeks
Why secret salaries are a baaaaaad idea
How to handle chronic complainers
How to lose your fear of being fired
The top 10 advantages of low-rent living
Book review: The Seven-Day Weekend
Why “Motivation by Pizza” Doesn’t Work
Top 5 business maxims that need to go
More popular posts...

Recent Posts
Work as play – the great Alan Watts
My message for 2010
A question for ya
What do you do with $22 million?
We love IKEA – and they love us :o)
I’m back
Snowed out
Merry Christmas
Name us!
Friday Spoing


Recent Comments
Nick: Mary Poppins: In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and – SNAP...
Fialka: Just reading all the enthusiastic comments from people who care about happiness makes me happy on this dreary...
Mustafa Ulusoy: Thanks my friend Seriously cool. Thanks for sharing…
Mark: Congratulations on your bold move in a time when most are hanging onto jobs they hate by their fingernails!...
Kelly: I’m considering leaving my job-job to begin my own company. I’m doing this so that I can be...


Still more Alex
Follow me on twitter...
On Facebook (wanna be friends?)...
On LinkedIn...



Daily Happiness
Get a daily message about happiness at work as email, text message or instant message. Last 3 tweets:
Click here to subscribe to these messages.
Top 5 reasons why “The customer is Always Right” is wrongMarch 10, 2008 @ 12:07 pm · Filed under Happy At Work, Leadership




When the customer isn’t right – for your business
One woman who frequently flew on Southwest, was constantly disappointed with every aspect of the company’s operation. In fact, she became known as the “Pen Pal” because after every flight she wrote in with a complaint.

She didn’t like the fact that the company didn’t assign seats; she didn’t like the absence of a first-class section; she didn’t like not having a meal in flight; she didn’t like Southwest’s boarding procedure; she didn’t like the flight attendants’ sporty uniforms and the casual atmosphere.

Her last letter, reciting a litany of complaints, momentarily stumped Southwest’s customer relations people. They bumped it up to Herb’s [Kelleher, CEO of Southwest] desk, with a note: ‘This one’s yours.’

In sixty seconds, Kelleher wrote back and said, ‘Dear Mrs. Crabapple, We will miss you. Love, Herb.’”

The phrase “The customer is always right” was originally coined by Harry Gordon Selfridge, the founder of Selfridge’s department store in London in 1909, and is typically used by businesses to:

Convince customers that they will get good service at this company
Convince employees to give customers good service
Fortunately more and more businesses are abandoning this maxim – ironically because it leads to bad customer service.

Here are the top five reasons why “The customer is always right” is wrong.


1: It makes employees unhappy
Gordon Bethune is a brash Texan (as is Herb Kelleher, coincidentally) who is best known for turning Continental Airlines around “From Worst to First,” a story told in his book of the same title from 1998. He wanted to make sure that both customers and employees liked the way Continental treated them, so he made it very clear that the maxim “the customer is always right” didn’t hold sway at Continental.

In conflicts between employees and unruly customers he would consistently side with his people. Here’s how he puts it:

When we run into customers that we can’t reel back in, our loyalty is with our employees. They have to put up with this stuff every day. Just because you buy a ticket does not give you the right to abuse our employees . . .

We run more than 3 million people through our books every month. One or two of those people are going to be unreasonable, demanding jerks. When it’s a choice between supporting your employees, who work with you every day and make your product what it is, or some irate jerk who demands a free ticket to Paris because you ran out of peanuts, whose side are you going to be on?

You can’t treat your employees like serfs. You have to value them . . . If they think that you won’t support them when a customer is out of line, even the smallest problem can cause resentment.

So Bethune trusts his people over unreasonable customers. What I like about this attitude is that it balances employees and customers, where the “always right” maxim squarely favors the customer – which is not a good idea, because, as Bethune says, it causes resentment among employees.

Of course there are plenty of examples of bad employees giving lousy customer service. But trying to solve this by declaring the customer “always right” is counter-productive.

2: It gives abrasive customers an unfair advantage
Using the slogan “The customer is always right” abusive customers can demand just about anything – they’re right by definition, aren’t they? This makes the employees’ job that much harder, when trying to rein them in.

Also, it means that abusive people get better treatment and conditions than nice people. That always seemed wrong to me, and it makes much more sense to be nice to the nice customers to keep them coming back.

3: Some customers are bad for business
Most businesses think that “the more customers the better”. But some customers are quite simply bad for business.

Danish IT service provider ServiceGruppen proudly tell this story:

One of our service technicians arrived at a customer’s site for a maintenance task, and to his great shock was treated very rudely by the customer.

When he’d finished the task and returned to the office, he told management about his experience. They promptly cancelled the customer’s contract.

Just like Kelleher dismissed the irate lady who kept complaining (but somehow also kept flying on Southwest), ServiceGruppen fired a bad customer. Note that it was not even a matter of a financial calculation – not a question of whether either company would make or lose money on that customer in the long run. It was a simple matter of respect and dignity and of treating their employees right.

4: It results in worse customer service
Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency, took it even further. CEO Hal Rosenbluth wrote an excellent book about their approach called Put The Customer Second – Put your people first and watch’em kick butt.

Rosenbluth argues that when you put the employees first, they put the customers first. Put employees first, and they will be happy at work. Employees who are happy at work give better customer service because:

They care more about other people, including customers
They have more energy
They are happy, meaning they are more fun to talk to and interact with
They are more motivated
On the other hand, when the company and management consistently side with customers instead of with employees, it sends a clear message that:

Employees are not valued
That treating employees fairly is not important
That employees have no right to respect from customers
That employees have to put up with everything from customers
When this attitude prevails, employees stop caring about service. At that point, real good service is almost impossible – the best customers can hope for is fake good service. You know the kind I mean: corteous on the surface only.

5: Some customers are just plain wrong
Herb Kelleher agrees, as this passage From Nuts! the excellent book about Southwest Airlines shows:

Herb Kelleher [...] makes it clear that his employees come first — even if it means dismissing customers. But aren’t customers always right? “No, they are not,” Kelleher snaps. “And I think that’s one of the biggest betrayals of employees a boss can possibly commit. The customer is sometimes wrong. We don’t carry those sorts of customers. We write to them and say, ‘Fly somebody else. Don’t abuse our people.’”

If you still think that the customer is always right, read this story from Bethune’s book “From Worst to First”:

A Continental flight attendant once was offended by a passenger’s child wearing a hat with Nazi and KKK emblems on it. It was pretty offensive stuff, so the attendant went to the kid’s father and asked him to put away the hat. “No,” the guy said. “My kid can wear what he wants, and I don’t care who likes it.”

The flight attendant went into the cockpit and got the first officer, who explained to the passenger the FAA regulation that makes it a crime to interfere with the duties of a crew member. The hat was causing other passengers and the crew discomfort, and that interfered with the flight attendant’s duties. The guy better put away the hat.

He did, but he didn’t like it. He wrote many nasty letters. We made every effort to explain our policy and the federal air regulations, but he wasn’t hearing it. He even showed up in our executive suite to discuss the matter with me. I let him sit out there. I didn’t want to see him and I didn’t want to listen to him. He bought a ticket on our airplane, and that means we’ll take him where he wants to go. But if he’s going to be rude and offensive, he’s welcome to fly another airline.

The fact is that some customers are just plain wrong, that businesses are better of without them, and that managers siding with unreasonable customers over employees is a very bad idea, that results in worse customer service.

So put your people first. And watch them put the customers first.

Related posts
If you liked this post, there’s a good chance you’ll also enjoy:

When is it time to leave a bad job? Find your quitting point.
The cult of overwork
Why “Motivation by Pizza” Doesn’t Work
Top 10 reasons why happiness at work is the ultimate productivity booster
NB: This is a re-run of a previous post while I’m away from the blog for a day.Alex is the world’s leading expert on happiness at work. He has long known that happiness at work is the most important factor that contributes to good careers, happy lives and business success.

He is a speaker, consultant and author, presenting and conducting workshops on happiness at work at businesses and conferences all over the world. His previous clients include companies like Hilton, DaimlerChrysler and IBM.

His clients especially appreciate his unlimited energy, his dedication to happiness at work and his ability to keep his message simple and practical and fun.

Alex has a masters degree in computer science from The University of Southern Denmark, and was a co-founder of Enterprise Systems – a truly happy IT company.

Alex is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5 – How to Love Your Job, Love Your Life and Kick Butt at Work. The book has been extremely well received all over the world. David Maister called it “very, very good” and “extremely well written.” But the praise that Alex appreciates the most came from Anna Farmery, who said that “reading the book makes me happy and gives me faith that we can create great workplaces.”

Alex also writes about happiness at work on this blog, which is read by thousands of people every day.

And in case your wondering, his last name (Kjerulf) is pronounced a little like care-oolf.

More information
Hire me to speak or consult on happiness at work in your company.
My recent media appearances.
How to handle chronic complainersAugust 24, 2006 @ 10:53 am · Filed under Best of site, Happy At Work




Got any chronic complainers where you work? It seems like every workplace has them – the people for whom the weather is always too warm or too cold, the boss is a jerk, the food is lousy, work sucks and … you fill out the list.

No matter how good things get they still only see the bad – and they go to huge lengths to point it out to everyone around them.

I’m not saying we should outlaw complaining, but workplaces need to do something about the chronic complainers because they tend to make people around them unhappy at work. It’s a fact that negative people are highly contagious and one chronic complainer can easily get an entire department down.

We try many different strategies to deal with complainers – one german IT company even bans whiners from the workplace. Yep – if you have a bad day you are not allowed to come in.

But most of the strategies we normally use on complainers don’t help and often make matters worse. I’ve outlined these strategies below.

And then at the end of the post, theres a simple, devious trick that works amazingly well. Try it!


The things we normally do about complainers and why they don’t work
There are several strategies people use around complainers, none of which really work.

1: Cheering them up doesn’t work
As in “Oh, it can’t be that bad”, “Come on, cheer up” or the perennial favorite “Time heals all wounds”.

Saying things like this shows the complainer that you’re not taking their pain seriously. When you tell a complainer “it’s not that bad”, he will often complain even harder to convince you (and himself) that his problems are very serious indeed.

2: Suggesting solutions doesn’t work
“Why don’t you…”, “have you tried…” or even worse “You should really have…”

The complainers’ problems are really serious and can’t be solved by a few smart-ass suggestions from you. Or so they’ve convinced themselves. The more you try to suggest solutions, the harder they will work to convince you and themselves that these solutions could never possibly work for them.

3: Telling them to pull themselves together doesn’t work
“Quit complaining and do something about it” or one of my favorites: “You either want the problem or you want the solution”.

Yeah, telling them that their problems are trivial and they just need to pull themselves together is going to work juuuuust fine. All complainers magically stop complaining at this. Or do they?

4: Complaining about the complainers doesn’t work
“Damn, that Sally complains a lot doesn’t she?”

Guess what, you just became a complainer :o)

5: Ignoring them / avoiding them doesn’t work
This makes complainers clamor for attention even more – which usually makes people ignore them even more. That’s a vicious cycle right there.

6: Complaining along with them doesn’t work
“You know what, you’re right, the boss IS a jerk. And the weather sucks. In fact everything sucks.”

This can be kind of cosy because it creates bonding and an us-against-the-world feeling. But ultimately it’s a bad idea because the more people complain the less prone they are to doing something about their problems.

I remember one of the first jobs I had where my manager was a complete dolt. My co-workers and I couldn’t start a meeting, go out for a beer or just meet in the hallway without spending 15-20 minutes complaining about him and his stupid ways. But all those man-hours spent complaining changed nothing and none of us ever did anything about it. Except quit the company one by one :o)

7: Confronting them doesn’t work
You can drive the complaints underground where you don’t see them, but they will probably still be going on. And repressed complaining is worse than open complaining because it gets to stew and grow while it’s hidden.

A trick that does work
So what does work? Here’s a simple but very effective trick:

A friend of mine who’s a dentist told me about an elderly, grouchy patient of hers. Every time he came in for an appointment he’d complain about the weather, his children, his car, taxes, society, and any other topic that might come up.

Now you might think “Hey, she’s a dentist, fill his mouth with gauze and cotton and let’s see him complain then!” but my friend is a naturally happy person and would instead try to cheer him up. Didn’t work, just made him complain even more.

So I taught her this trick and the next time he came in for an appointment she was ready. He went in the chair, and immediately started complaining.

After listening to his usual litany for a while my dentist friend said, with deep sympathy in her voice, “You know, that sounds terrible. I don’t know how you deal with all of these problems.”

You know what he said?

“Weeeeell, it’s not THAT bad!”

This approach works because it gives the complainer what he’s really after: Empathy. Not cheering up, not solutions, not egging-on. Just understanding of what is, for him, a difficult situation.

There are two important things to notice here:

Don’t be sarcastic when you say it. Be sincere.
You don’t have to agree that these are huge problems. Even if everything the complainer says sounds trivial to you, remember that it feels like a huge problem to him or her wouldn’t go on about it. What seems trivial to one person can be a huge problem for others.
So you’re not saying “Yes, I agree that’s a huge problem”. And you’re certainly not saying “Oh, poor poor you” in a sarcastic voice. You’re just acknowledging the fact that this is a huge problem for that person. Which undeniably it is.

Does this make the complaining go away? Only sometimes. But it keeps you from being part of a vicious cycle of responses that just makes the complainers complain more and more and more. The cycle is cut at the point you take their distress seriously.

So try this approach on your favorite complainer and tell me how it goes.

If you liked this post I’m pretty sure you’ll also enjoy these:

The top 10 advantages of low-rent living
How to resolve conflicts at work
Being positive makes you lucky. No, really!
Top 5 business maxims that need to go – part II

Permalink biggest threats to happiness at work is having too many fixed expenses at home. When you’re completely dependent on bringing home a pay check (or two!) every single month, you’re vulnerable. If work turns out to be unbearable you can’t simply up and leave and take three months without income.

I’ve chosen low-rent living for myself. At first it was through accident rather than planning but now I would never live any other way. Read on to see how it has made me happy at work – and in life.

Some years ago, my wonderful girlfriend Patricia and I were hunting for a new place to live in Copenhagen. We were living in her small, 1-bedroom apartment and we really longed for more space, more rooms and a bigger kitchen. Homes are getting ludicrously expensive in all European capitals including Copenhagen, so we went through a process that is common to many people hunting for a new home:

We started looking at places within our budget that we could easily afford.
But those places weren’t really cool so we started looking at more and more expensive places
Untill we’d reached our threshold of pain and were only considering the most expensive places we could conceivably afford
We actually submitted bids on two different (expensive) homes and narrowly lost out in each case to other bidders. Back then we were devastated – we really had our minds set on those two places. Today we’re incredibly relieved that it never came through. We’re still living in Patricia’s apartment which costs us next to nothing and looking back I can see how much of an advantage that has been for the both of us. Obviously this applies not only to your mortgage or rent but to all fixed expenses. Rent/mortgage just happens to be the largest fixed expense most of us have.

Leaving lots of breathing room in my economy has brought me some huge advantages:

1: Freedom to leave a bad job
When a job doesn’t make me happy, I can quit without worrying about the money. I’ve done it once, Patricia twice. It’s not that we’ve quit at the fist sign of trouble – we have always tried to make it work. But when we’ve realized that a particular job wasn’t going to make us happy, we’ve had the freedom to say sayonara without first finding a new job.

2: Freedom to take a chance
In the startup I’ve been running the past three years I’ve been able to take some chances and focus more on building a happy, sustainable business than on bringing home a big pay-check every month. It has allowed the business to grow organically which has paid off immensely now that the business is up and running.

3: Freedom to do what I enjoy
I can decide to do stuff that lets me learn, meet interesting people or plain have fun but may not make any money here and now. This is a huge boon to me and my business in the long run because it means that I’m constantly developing and learning.

4: Freedom to do what’s right
I can do what’s right rather than what makes me more money. I can decide to work for free for a company that really needs me, but can’t afford me. I can give stuff away if I think people need it. I can set a high ethical standard and not need to worry about having to compromise it for profit.

5: Freedom to work less hours
There’s no pressure on me to work 50, 60 or 80 hours a week. I can if I want to and sometimes I do and if I’d rather work 20 hours one week I can do that. I’ve once and for all left The Cult of Overwork.

6: Freedom to say no to some customers
Some customers just aren’t right for your business. The chemistry is wrong, their needs dont’ match your solutions or they’re just too much trouble. I have the freedom to say no to some customers and yes to the best customers.

All of the above really comes down to short-term vs. long-term planning. Economic freedom let’s you invest in your future by doing things now that make less money, but will eventually make you more.

7: Peace of mind
I spend almost zero time and energy worrying about money – it’s just not an issue. I also don’t need to worry whether the interest rates go up or down half a point. Or whether there really is a housing bubble and house prices are about to start falling. That’s a huge relief and gives me more time and energy for business and life.

8: Focus on what really matters
When I’m not concerned with a bigger home, bigger car or bigger TV I focus on what really matters. My girlfriend, family, friends, business, writing, networking, learning, reading, etc… I waste no time keeping up with the Joneses.

9: Simple living
Living in a small appartment has taught us to own only the things we really need. We’ve been getting really good at throwing or giving away clothes, linens, kitchenware, furniture, knick-knacks etc. that we don’t use regularly. And this is a huge relief because you can form a huge attachment to the things you own and paring them down to only the things you really need teaches you to let go of that. There’s a mental relief and freedom that comes from that. Less stuff in your home = less stuff on your mind.

10: More money for fun stuff
When less money goes into the stuff I own, there’s more money for the stuff I do. Like snowboarding, conferences, travelling and more.

I want to make two things very clear:
1: This is not about being unambitious at work or setting small business goals. I can assure you that my aspirations are as big as the next person’s. It’s about realizing that economic wiggle room frees you to do things and take chances that lead to more happiness and therefore to great results in your work life and your private life.

2: I’m not knocking anybody else’s lifestyle and financial decisions. This is simply an observation of something that I discovered mostly by accident but which works incredibly well for me. Maybe you would be terribly miserable living in a small appartment instead of a huge house.

But I know that many people feel trapped in jobs they don’t like because their financial situation is precarious and leaves them no wiggle room. If that’s the case for you maybe you should consider trying the low-rent life and granting yourself some financial freedom. It’s a huge step towards more happiness at work and in life.

If you liked this post, I think you’ll also enjoy these:
Front page Happy Hour is 9 to 5 Book About the site About Alexander Kjerulf Speaking & Consulting Contact Alex Ask the CHO
About Alexander Kjerulf

Alex makes people happy at work. No, really, he does!

He speaks and consults in businesses all over the world, showing executives, managers and employees how to change workplaces from dreary and stressful to more fun, energized and happy. And profitable!

He is the author of Happy Hour is 9 to 5, a practical guide to making yourself and others happy at work. Because loving what you do is just that damn important!

Read more about Alex...
Book Alex to speak or consult...



Most Popular Posts
Top 5 reasons why “The Customer Is Always Right” is wrong
10 seeeeeriously cool workplaces
How NOT to lead geeks
Why secret salaries are a baaaaaad idea
How to handle chronic complainers
How to lose your fear of being fired
The top 10 advantages of low-rent living
Book review: The Seven-Day Weekend
Why “Motivation by Pizza” Doesn’t Work
Top 5 business maxims that need to go
More popular posts...

Recent Posts
Work as play – the great Alan Watts
My message for 2010
A question for ya
What do you do with $22 million?
We love IKEA – and they love us :o)
I’m back
Snowed out
Merry Christmas
Name us!
Friday Spoing


Recent Comments
Nick: Mary Poppins: In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and – SNAP...
Fialka: Just reading all the enthusiastic comments from people who care about happiness makes me happy on this dreary...
Mustafa Ulusoy: Thanks my friend Seriously cool. Thanks for sharing…
Mark: Congratulations on your bold move in a time when most are hanging onto jobs they hate by their fingernails!...
Kelly: I’m considering leaving my job-job to begin my own company. I’m doing this so that I can be...


Still more Alex
Follow me on twitter...
On Facebook (wanna be friends?)...
On LinkedIn...



Daily Happiness
Get a daily message about happiness at work as email, text message or instant message. Last 3 tweets:
RT @alexkjerulf Yay - Sweet Christmas is back: http://bit.ly/6SJzF3. Watch it daily until Christmas! 50 days agoRT @alexkjerulf: "When rewards are offered for good performance, they decrease motivation for interesting activities." http://bit.ly/n6FO 62 days agoFeeling happy? Share it here: http://piecesofhappiness.com/ 64 days agoClick here to subscribe to these messages.
Effective, easy, fun things to make yourself happy at workJuly 24, 2006 @ 11:07 am · Filed under Happy At Work, Happy at work book

This post is a draft chapter of the book about happiness at work I wrote right here on the blog.

The book is called:
Happy Hour is 9 to 5 -
How to Love Your Job,
Love Your Life and
Kick Butt at Work

I finished the book and it came out in December, so this page is now less relevant. I'm leaving it here, to preserve some of the process that led to the book.

Click here if you want to read the finished book. It's available free online and you can buy it on paper or as an e-book.


Here is the original post:
Happiness at work comes from the things you and I do here and now. Not from whitepapers, committees or corporate mission statements.

There are so many things you can do – the important thing is that you do something.

This chapter has plenty of things you can start with, and focuses especially on things that are:

Basic – so they work for most people in almost any job
Important – so they make a difference
Easy – so they don’t stress you out
Effective – so they give you quick results
Contagious – so they spread once a few people start doing it
Fun – so you’ll actively enjoy doing them
Imagine the opposite: A book that tells you, that the road to happiness at work is long, difficult and unpleasant. It would be best to drop such a book very quickly indeed.

With that in mind here are some great, easy, effective and above all fun places to start.


Make others happy
Patricia was leaving work after a long day. She was one of the last to leave, and she had to admit that she hadn’t enjoyed her day much. People seemed so intent on their jobs and nobody seemed to care about the people around them.

When Patricia went into the break room to wash her coffee mug, she noticed Lisa’s, a co-worker, mug by the sink, unwashed. She quickly washed both mugs, and then, on a whim, wrote a post-it note saying “Have a great day”, drew a smiley on it and stuck it on her Lisa’s mug. Then she went home.

The next morning Lisa walked through the entire department with a huge smile on her face saying “Who did this? What a great thing to do? Who was it? This totally made my morning!” Once Patricia admitted it was her, Lisa thanked her profusely, and could be found smiling broadly for a long time after.

Patricia’s one-minute gesture made a colleague happy at work not just that morning but that entire day.

It can’t be said too often: The very best way to make yourself happy at work is to make others happy. It works because:

Making others happy at work is a pleasure in itself.
Happiness is contagious, so more happy people around you means more happiness for you
If you make others happy at work, there’s a good chance they’ll get back at you and make you happy
It’s easy too. You could:

Bring someone a cup of coffee without them asking.
Write a nice message on a post-it and stick it on their desk or computer
Offer to help with their work
Or just about a million other things. Try it, it works wonders!

Be positive
In chapter X we saw how important it is to be positive at work. But how do you do that? You can’t really walk around all day mumbling “gotta be positive, gotta be positive” under your breath. That might make your co-workers slightly anxious.

But there are some simple, specific things you can do, that make you and the people around you more positive. Here are some ideas.

Open meetings with a positive round

Psychological experiments can be very devious and this one was certainly no exception. The focus was meetings and the format was simple: Groups of people were asked to discuss and reach consensus on a contentious topic.

Here’s the devious bit: Unbeknownst to the other participants one member of the group was an actor hired by the researchers. The actor was told to speak first in the discussions. In half the experiments he would say something positive while in the other half he would start by saying something critical. After that he simply participated in the discussion like the other group members.

The experiment showed that when the first thing said in the meeting was positive, the discussion turned out more constructive, people listened more and were more likely to reach consensus. When the first statement was critical the mood became more hostile, people were more argumentative and consensus became less likely.

The researchers concluded that the way a meeting starts has a large impact on the tone of the discusion and on whether or not the group will eventually reach consensus.

Ah – meetings. The most energizing, creative and fun activity in the workplace. What’s that you say? They’re not? Well they can be. In fact they should be. Here’s a monday tip that can help your group take a step in that direction.

Many groups, projects or departments open their meetings with a round where each participant can say what he or she is working on, and quite often this ends up as a litany of complaints and problems. But as the experiment cited above shows, this is likely to affect the whole meeting.

So do this instead: Open staff meetings with a round where each person answers one of these questions:

What have I done since the last meeting that I’ve been proud of?
Name a person who has helped you since the last meeting.
What are you looking forward to the most in the coming week/month?
What’s the funniest thing someone has told you in the last week?
Pick a new question for each meeting and make some up yourself as long as they focus on something positive.

Don’t spend a lot of time on this, just give each participant 30-60 seconds to share something positive. It can change the entire mood of a meeting when you start with something positive instead of with a round of collective and individual moans.

Keep a happy at work log
At the end of every work day, just before you go home, write down five things that made you happy at work that day. Do it in a text document or just on a piece of paper, that’s not important, but what matters is that you take a few minutes at the end of every work day to remember what was good about that day. Big or small, doesn’t matter, as long as it made your day a little better. Meat loaf day at the cafeteria. Making a deadline. Talking to a nice co-worker. Anything.

If you can’t come up with five items for the list, that’s fine, write down as many as you can. If you can’t think of a single one, then either it’s been a bad day, or it’s time to look for a new job.

Why is this a good thing? Well, let’s say you’ve had ten good experiences at work today and one bad one. If you go home, thinking only of the bad one, you will remember this as a bad day. It will even feel as a bad day. And most people do have a tendency to remember negative experiences better than positive ones. This makes it a good idea to take extra care to remember good experiences, in this case by writing them down.

The “good stuff first” rule

At Enterprise Systems, the IT company I co-founded, we suddenly discovered that we’d become extremely critical of everything. This is no wonder, as IT developers a large part of our job was debugging and finding errors. Furthermore, we were mostly engineering types, a profession trained to think of everything that can go wrong.

The problem was that our discussions and meeeting got unpleasant, and in a few cases even nasty. Nobody could agree on much and people were constantly nitpicking on each others ideas.

So Martin, another co-founder, came up with a simple rule: The good stuff first. When someone makes a suggestion, you don’t have to agree. But you have to first say what you agree with in the idea, and then the stuff you disagree with. This made discussions much more constructive and fun. It also opened our eyes to the fact that where we’d previously thought that we were completely disagreeing, we were often 80-90% in agreement, and only disagreed on a few details.

Consider making this a rule in the workplace: First say what you agree with. Then say what you disagree on. And even if you can’t make it a rule, you can always practice it yourself.

Praise
Kjaer Group, a company that sells cars in developing nations, instituted the order of the elephant a few years back. It’s a huge plush toy that any employee can award to any other, along with an explanation of why that employee deserves the order. The praisee gets the elephant for a couple of day, and the thing being two feet tall it’s kind hard to overlook standing on that persons desk.

Other employees stopping by immediately notice the elephant and go “Hey, you got the elephant. What’d you do?” which of course means that the good stories and best practices get told and re-told many times. This is an excellent, simple and cheap way of enhancing learning and happiness at work.

Praise may be the single most effective method to make people happy at work and the great thing is that it takes no money and almost no time. Remember that good praise is:

Relevant – Dont’ praise just to praise, but make sure to praise whenever there’s a reason
Timely – Praise as soon as there’s a reason
Personal – Tailor it to that particular praisee
For extra bonus points:

Praise someone you don’t talk to often. It’s a great way to establish contact.
Praise your manager. Managers often hear very little praise from their employees. But: Don’t kiss butt – only genuine praise counts.
If you really want a challenge, praise someone you don’t like much or someone you’re currently having a conflict with. It can be a great way to get un-stuck. Can’t think of anything positive about that person? Try again – there’s always something.
Some companies practice a philosophy of “Catch people making mistakes and punish them quickly”, but “Catch people doing things right and praise them quickly” is much more likely to make people happy at work.

This does not mean that you can’t criticize people and correct them when they make a mistake. In fact, if you routinely praise people when they get it right, they’re more open and positive towards criticism.

Some great ways to praise include:
In person
Don’t make a big production out of it, just go up to a colleague, deliver your praise and then get back to work. Do not hang around waiting to be praised back :o) Also do not add a “…but you really need to improve your…” after the praise – that kinda ruins the whole point :o)

Use a token
Like the elephant that Kjaer Group uses. If you can find something with relevance for your company even better.

Chain letter
Pass around a piece of paper with “Things we appreciate about Linda” at the top around your department or team. Let everyone write down all the things they appreciate about Linda. Then give it to her.

Poncho
This is an exercise we developed for our Happy At Work Workshops, and it never fails. It takes about 15 minutes and works in groups of up to about 40 people. All you need is a flipover chart and a marker pen for each person.

Ask each person to tear a whole in the middle of the sheet of paper and then put it on like a poncho. Give each person a marker pen. Once everyone is wearing their poncho, give people the following instructions: “Go around and write on the back of other people. Write the stuff you like and appreciate about the person. The stuff they excell at and do well. Write on as many people as possible.”




Then give people timeto write on each other.

Groups of 10-20 people will need about 5 minutes, larger groups may need 10. Once people have finished writing on each other, give them these instructions: “I bet you’re all wondering what people have been writing on you. Please keep your ponchos on and sit down. Now for the next minute, you’re not allowed to speak. You’re only allowed to read what it says on your poncho and to enjoy it. Please, take them off and read them now”. Give them a minute or so to read their ponchos then end the exercise and thank them for participating.

We’ve done this exercise with leaders, employees, government workers, school teachers, social workers, secretaries, lab workers, prison guards, kitchen staff and many, many other groups and it works every single time.

Participants especially enjoy that:

It’s easy to give praise
It’s easy to receive praise – you don’t have to respond to it, only to enjoy it
They learn what people appreciate about you
They can save their ponchos and take them out and read them when the need a boost
My favorite part of the poncho exercise is when you get chains of 5-10 people, each writing on the back of the next one.

Meaning
A traveller is walking down a hot, dusty road when he passes three men chopping up stones. The first one looks unhappy, and clearly has the look of a man wishing he was anyhwere else. No wonder, it’s hot, hard, unpleasant labor after all. The traveller asks him “What are you doing?”. “Cutting stones” the man replies.

The second man looks fairly happy with what he’s doing despite the hot air and hard work. “What are you doing?” the traveller asks him? “I’m cutting stones to make money to support my family.”

The third stone-chopper looks happy verging on blissful. He’s giving the stones his full attention, attently and carefully cutting them into smaller rocks. When he stops for a sip of water, the traveller asks him “What are you doing?”. In a proud voice he replies “I’m building a cathedral.”

This story is old and corny and you’ve probably heard it a thousand times but it aptly illustrates the three levels of meaning you can find at work:

No meaning. Work makes no sense to you.
Work makes sense because it supports yourself and your family
Work makes sense in itself – you’re making something great or making the world better
I’m not telling you that every job has meaning or even that your job has it. Some jobs do, some jobs don’t. Some people see that meaning, some don’t.

What I am saying is that meaning is important to making us happy at work, and it’s much easier to be happy when your job has meaning and you keep that meaning in mind. Knowing how your work contributes to the company’s success, to your local community or even to a better world makes you proud of what you do.

To uncover meaning in your job, if it’s not already clear to you ask yourself

Who am I making happy in the company?
Who am I making happy outside the company through my work?
Who is the company making happy? How am I contributing to this?
George Bernard Shaw had the right idea when he said that:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Finding your purpose at work, one you recognize as mighty, is a great way to become happier at work. To paraphrase Shaw, “This is the true joy in work”.

Relationships at work
Get to know the people around you at work. You don’t need to make friends with everybody, but positive relationships are one of the most important factors for happiness at work. And remember: Positive relationships can be with co-workers, employees, customers, suppliers or even competitors.

It doesn’t take much to build and maintain good efforts, but it does take a consious effort for most people. It’s something you do need to focus on or relationships can atrophy so co-workers end up as mere strangers sharing the same office building.

Say good morning and goodbye

I was once a consultant at a company that had a strange practice: All employees greeted each other with handshakes in the morning. Every time you ran into a co-worker in the morning, up till around 10 AM, you greeted that person not just with a “Good morning” but with a handshake as well.

As an outsider and newcomer I felt weird about it at first but soon it became perfectly natural and even something I looked forward to. Greeting people became not just a mumbled “mornin’” from behind the computer screen, you had to get up and give that person your full attention.

It was also interesting to see how it worked to break down barriers between people and to re-establish good relations every day. It’s a little harder to be mad at a person whom you’ve greeted with a firm handshake that same morning.

When you get in in the morning, make a round of your department and greet everyone there. When other people arrive after you, take a moment to greet them with your full attention. Do the same thing when you leave. It’s such a simple thing to do but it makes a big difference to relations at the office. People feel more connected to each other and establish better communications throughout the day.

Learn one new thing about a co-worker every day
What do you know about your co-workers? Do you know who has children and how many? Who has what hobby? Where was their last vacation?

Take an interest and absorb at least one new fact every day.

Work-free lunch hours
Outlaw all talk about work during lunch breaks and other breaks. They are, after all, breaks so treat them as such.

Go bowling
Or go to a pub, a café, a dinner at someones home, to the park, have an office party. Anything that gives people a chance to see each other outside of work and to get to know each other as people rather than only as co-workers. Whichever type of event you choose don’t make it too traditional and don’t make it fancy or expensive – make it personal and memorable instead.

Kirsten Gehl, the HR manager at Accenture Denmark, and her party team were forced to get creative. Accenture in Denmark had had a rough year in 2003 and were forced to rethink their usual annual company summer party. Normally this was a huge affair at some fancy hotel or restaurant – we’re talking traditional and above all expensive. That was out of the question this year, so what would work? How could she give the people at Accenture a much needed positive collective experience on a much more limited budget?

First the party team decided to have the party at a smaller, cheaper and much more cozy venue. And then they had a brilliant idea: They would get the partners to staff the bar. At first some partners were apprehensive. These guys (and they’re almost all guys) are known more for their dedication to work, dark suits and businesslike manner than for their ability to get down and party.

Kirsten and her party team cornered a few senior partners and got their support and that convinced the others to give it a try. The result: this became Accenture’s best party ever. Not only was it more fun than the traditional parties, but suddenly the partners were approachable to all employees who could simply step up to the bar and order a gin and tonic from them. The employees loved it and, maybe most surprisingly, the partners loved it. Each of them had to be forced to leave the bar when their shifts were over.

Even after the party the effect was felt through better relations and communication between Accenture’s partners and employees.

Watch your working hours
Watch your working hours. As we saw in chapter X, there is a clear connection between working too much and stress, depression, heart disease and a number of other conditions guaranteed to maek you unhappy at work.

Don’t work too much. It’s that simple. What is too much? Experiment and find out. You may find that you get more work and higher quality work done in 40 hours a week than you do in 60.

Reduce your expenses
This may appear totally unrelated to work at first, but one of the biggest threats to happiness at work is having too many fixed expenses at home. When you’re completely dependent on bringing home a pay check (or two!) every single month, you’re vulnerable. If work turns out to be unbearable you can’t simply up and leave and take three months without income or on unemployment benefits until you find a better job.

This means you’re trapped and ironically that makes things much worse. A bad situation is unpleasant. A bad situation you can’t escape from is excruciating.

If you reduce your personal spending to a level where you can quickly decide to not work for a while or to work at a lower pay, you’re much more free and will have a much easier time becoming happy at work. This may of course mean a smaller house or appartment than you would prefer, no 40-inch flatscreen TV, no second car, etc… The question you must ask yourself is this: Are owning all these things worth it? It may well be worth it to you, in which case staying in a job that does not make you happy is the right choice.

Or you may decide that since your work makes you unhappy you’re not really enjoying all the things your salary buys much anywyay. In which case it makes sense to reduce your expenses to a level that affords you more freedom at work.

Remember that you have a body
Physician Claus Hyldahl, an expert in work-related stress and diseases, rarely pulls any punches. In fact his style involves provoking working professionals to direct their attention to the fact that their lifestyle is bad for them. Says Hyldahl: “Many of the people who think that they’re suffering from stress are just out of shape. That’s why they’re sweating, breathing heavily, their heart is pounding and they’re feeling weak. Not stress, simply bad physical shape. They don’t need to reduce their workload they need to increase their physical load”.

He goes on to talk about the fact that the human body is designed to be used. “Human beings evolved from nomads and consequently evolution has optimized our bodies to a nomadic lifestyle ie. one that involves a lot of walking. Walking 10 km a day is what we’re built for and sitting still is bad for us. In fact, walking less than 10 km a day is as bad for your health as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.

More and more work today is knowledge-based and goes on mainly inside people’s heads. In many workplaces the body has been reduced to to “that thing that carries the head from meeting to meeting.” That’s not good. Your physical well-being has a huge influence on your mental state, including your happiness at work.

I can tell you nothing new about how to tend to your body at work, you already know what it takes:

Exercise – even mild exercise a few times a week makes a difference
Stop smoking – or cut down
Eat right – Watch what you eat and how much
As for eating right, the most important tip may be this: Eat between meals. It’s a well-known fact that when people’s blood sugar drops they get grumpy. I have noticed this in myself often – I start getting cranky, even the smallest things annoy me and I snap at people. An apple later, I’m fine.

(blood sugar graph)

The book “The Power of Full Engagement” by Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz advices us to eat five to six low-calorie, highly nutritious meals a day to ensure a steady level of blood glucose. Sustained performance depends not just on eating at regular intervals but also eating only as much as you need to drive your energy for the next two to three hours. Snacks between meals should typically be between 100 and 150 calories and should focus on low-glycemic foods such as nuts and sunflower seeds, fruits, or half of a typical-size 200 calorie energy bar.

Fun
Fun matters. And any job can be a platform for fun. Even in the most serious situation, fun can be the tool that makes it bearable. Patch Adams is a doctor with a very different view of how to treat patients. You may remember the movie where Robin Williams plays him. In his excellent book Gesundheit! Patch tells this moving story:

I remember an eleven-year old girl who had a huge bony tumor of the face with one eye floating out in the mass. Most people found it difficult to be with her because of her appearance. Her pain was not in the dying but in the loneliness of being a person others could not bear to see. She and I played and joked and enjoyed her life away.

Make room for fun at work. Give up the idea that fun is somehow unprofessional and frivolous. Even if you’re not in the mood for fun that day, let others have theirs – never ruin it for them. Just as importantly: Don’t force people to participate. Some are up for it that day, som aren’t.

Don’t worry too much about what is appropriate or proper. Fun is about being spontaneous and open. Try some things out – here are a few ideas:
Ideas needed!!! Send me some!