I go to work to be happy, but the company gives me work to make money. This looks like a conflict, as any marxist would expect. Happiness research, however, indicates that us salary slaves and our employers really want the same thing. I am the happiest when I feel really productive at work. The clarity of this pattern surprised me.

I realized this by joining  Track Your Happiness which is described in  the smiley issue of Harvard Business Review. I get three surveys a day, each starting with the question "how do you feel right now?" The result of that issue is related to what I'm doing, where and with whom. 

I'm a bit concerned that I'm almost as happy talking to my boss as I am talking to my kids. Sure, I have a good and very friendly boss, but this cannot be right. I cannot reasonably be almost 100 percent happy when I talk to her!

..and I should be the most happy when talking to my lovely girl friend. She ends up at the bottom of the list(!?) Could this be due to the renovation project that starts when I get home from work in the evenings? 

We should probably allow ourselves to just lay down in the sofa and just enjoy the moment. That, research shows, makes us happy. Not TV, but being in the moment.

Or, is it true what Micael Dahlén claims: that we become tha happies by dreaming about the vacation we have ahead of us?

The cover of the pre-previous issue of Harvard Business Review was a giant smiley. The theme was "happiness". Harvard Business Review is always a popular magazine at Netsurvey, but this time was extreme. Everyone wanted to read it.

I think this cover related to what we all want: to be happy. Most of us have stopped believing the path to happiness goes by eating  Toffifee or drinking Coca-Cola. By the way, what is the connection between brown sugary substances and happiness?

The smiley issue did not disappoint. Loads of thorough research on what makes us happy. Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilberts started the issue of with a response to the question "can happiness be measured?"

It is no stranger than when the eye doctor fits you for a new set of glasses, Gilbert said. She will ask how well you see the letters on the board. This is your subjective judgement, of course, but it is stable enough for the optician to slide another class in front of your eyes and ask the same question again. Eventually you leave with a set of perfect glasses. All based on you subjective judgement of how well you see the letters. 

In the same way, we ask people "how do you feel today" and "how satisfied are you with your life?".  Swedish philosophy and happiness scholar Bengt Brülde has used that to show that us full time workers are happier than half timers. Half timers are happier than unemployed, of course. But the people working extra time are the happiest ones of all!

Less isn't always more. More is more.

"99 percent of our customers recommend us" seminar organizer Ability Partner writes. Then why have I never had anyone suggest that I go to one of their seminars? Of course, Ability Partner means that 99 percent of their customers respond positively to the question "would you recommend a seminar by Ability Partner". That's good, but it is not the same.

Ability Partner would be a large and very successful company if it was the same thing. They are four people with a turnaorund of just over € 1 million. They are doing well, and they are not lying. 99 percent probably did respond potiviely to that question in the course evaluation form. We produce seminars ourselves, and we have 100 percent satisfied customers. Our last seminar with 50 participants scored 4,95 on a 5 point scale.

Karl Weick writes that behavior drives attitudes much better than attitudes drive behavior. Course evaluations are a good example. When I spend some of my much too limited working hours on a corse or a seminar, that is an investment that gives me cognitive dissonance. That is a kind of worry that this should turn out to be a poor investment. This is the same kind of dissonance that I feel when I buy a new car. That is also the reason people who have just bought a Volvo are extremely keen observers of Volvo advertising.

The more expensive the object you have just bought, the greater your receptiveness to advertising. Courses are sure to work the same way. The more you invest of your employer's time and money, the greater your worry that this should turn out to be a bad choice. The courses of Ability Partner are around € 1 200. That is enough to give me a bit of dissonance.

By the time the course evaluation shows up it feels great to check the box saying that this is a course I would recommend others to take. That act is soothing for my dissonance.

Pure therapy!   

Next: If the course evaluation is lying, then how do I evaluate a course?

"You will love this blog" Sylwia said and sent the link to Charlie Nordblom's blog. She is our marketing manager and someone I like and respect. The blog post was about a guy always left an open area in his mindmaps.

At first I was disappointed. Leaving a white space in a mindmap. Where's the genius in that? But since then, the wisdom has started to manifest itself in relation to different areas of my life and work.

It is small tricks such as this that can make my work smarter than me, like with the Russian composer Alfred Schnittke. He left empty "boxes" in his symphonies. These empty boxes are there for the local orchestra to fill, and do they ever! Going to a concert of Schnittke music is fun and exciting. Schubert or Mozart make beautiful music, but when it comes to "fun" and "exciting" Schnittkes symponies are in a class all of their own.

I have found that it is usually the empty, unplanned, space that make the difference between a good and a great weekend. The empty space in my work calendar makes it possible for me to take questions from my colleagues or write blog posts about the wonder of empty spaces. A day of back to back meetings is usually a day where nothing gets done. No empty space to deal with stuff to lubricate everything. A leadership trainer told me to book half an hour a day just to think. Not a bad idea!

Fredrik, the IT manager at Netsurvey, just now wrote that he is applying Charlie Nordblom's idea of leaving a space unused in the development of our new survey issue system. That increases the chance that the system ends up being flexible. We cannot know today what our customers will think of when they see this new tool, opening up a number of new possibilities.

When a Netsurvey customer wants 30 issues in a survey we usually come with 35, intending to cut the last five together with the customer. That is ambitious. But how about only bringing 28? Leaving space for new ideas to happen in the meeting with the customer. Being unprepared or leaving a Schnittke box?

Dalai Lama visited Stockholm a couple of months ago. He claimed we are in such a hurry to fill every last bit of our time and attention with artificial experiences. Sports results, TV, Facebook and music. We never let silence happen. Not in our ears, not in our eyes and definitely not in our brain. Silence is neccessary to convert all these stimuli into knowledge and wisdom.

Happiness gurus Bengt Brülde and Filip Fors have showed that daily usage of social media makes us less happy. We have filled the emtpy box. 

88% of Americans surveyed by the U.S. Department of Labor cite lack of acknowledgment as their main problem at work.

Jesper Juul, the Danish child psychologist claims that precisely this is a side effect of the American school of child rearing, dating back to the likes of Dr. Spock (the child psychologist, not the guy with the pointy ears).  American parents learned to shower their kids in praise: “Wow, that’s a spectacular painting Joe!” and “Fantastic” are indeed often heard in response to age appropriate scribbles. Jesper Juul claims that this causes two side effects: an exaggerated ego and praise dependence.

For the last 20some years, we at Netsurvey have been part of the mission to teach managers the value of positive feedback, or praise. Our research overwhelmingly support that view.  We apply the pattern discovered in the 1980’s by scholars looking at positive marriages where positive signals outweigh the negative signals by a factor of five to one. We also supporters of the cognitive behavioral school that proves over and over again that praise is the way that behavior is molded.

Lately, however, I have personally begun to doubt that this is the whole truth on the subject. A very successful customer of Netsurvey recently proposed an entirely different view. He suggests recruiting people that do not need praise; people that feel good about their work simply by knowing they are doing a good job.

Do you see the connection to Jesper Juul? Could the need to know how well I am doing be an effect of all the praise I got as a child? Is there a higher developmental level where I could produce top quality work day after day, year after year, alone in a forest cabin?

If there are self motivated people like that out there, would that allow executives to focus entirely on “hard business” issues? I think we can all agree that an organization of self motivated people would have a rather significant advantage. For one thing it would not need as many managers. It would also be well equipped for a world where a manager may have her direct reports spread over several continents.

PS:
I am intentionally simplifying Jesper Juuls message here. Jesper Juul simply wants parents to understand there are many ways besides praise to reinforce a positive behavior. Paying interest is one. Praise is just the easiest way, which is why it is possibly overused.

Cognitive Behavioral training (and OBM) has also long recognized that repeated verbal praise gradually loses its value, as does any other reinforcer that is used over and over again. Behavioral training has produced methods to avoid that inflation, methods that any manager can use as well. 

Many of our customers are in the midst of an intense phase of workshops and action planning based on survey results. Some have managed huge improvements while others hover at the same levels year after year. What is the difference between these companies, and what does it take to achieve sustainable change and improvements?

Here is our view on how to improve results and create a solid foundation from which employee engagement can be driven:

1. Plan. Clearly defining the drivers of business success and measuring those in the survey makes the employee survey a strategic tool. Results will be used not only by HR, but by every single manager in the company, as a basis for decisions and prioritization on future investments and development

2. Stay tuned. Successful organizations measure quick, short, relevant and often to keep on top of their game. Measuring every other year gives too few observations and allows too much water to pass under the bridge, giving you outdated and old information to act on.

3. Act on results. Prioritize important areas according to business impact. Identify business areas, teams and managers with poor results and offer support. We know that managers in coaching or leadership development programs, as well as leaders who get support in conflict situations are inspired and motivated to deliver on completely different levels than leaders who are left out in the cold on their own.

4. Focus on behaviour. No change happens unless we do things differently. Allow some time to define what kind of behaviours you would like to see in your management teams and among your employees. How can you reward and recognize those behaviours and make them an integral part of your culture?

Please contact us if you want more information about our view on organizational behavior modification.

The best texts dealing with Engagement right now are found in a series of blog posts describing a personal engagement journey by Charlie Nordblom, Senior Vice President of Strategic Internal Communication at Volvo Group.

Every blog post paints a picture of a level of engagement. It reads like a detective novel where Charlie Nordblom is called in to diagnose different units. He lists the clues for you to draw your own conclusions, and he invites you to share your interpretation below.  

It is fun, amazingly open and wonderful advertising for engagement surveys. 

I’ll use this to get my teenager interested in what I do at work.

My six years in the USA makes me see affirmative action, or positive discrimination, as something natural. It works. USA is an insanely heterogeneous society. Modern America has gargantuan problems that were started way back in the Wild West with the treatment of slaves, Indians and others. The alienation in suburbs such as Rinkeby, Rosengård and Biskopsgården is nothing compared to the challenge Uncle Sam has to handle to hold the nation together.  That is why the medicine is so much stronger over there. They have been busing kids between schools in richer and poorer neighborhoods for almost 50 years. No Swedish politician would even dare suggesting something like that over here.

In Wisconsin I had a roommate who dated a black girl studying toward her MBA. A black woman with the right training to join management. Drewnita was hot. For a while every other phone call was a recruiter. A swedish daughter of immigrants can get her Ph.D. without getting even close to Drewnitas hotness on the job market.

The most respected MBA program in the world is the one at Harvard. The first priority in recruiting students for this program is diversity. At Harvard, they understand that diversity is as important as knowledge and intelligence when it comes to decision making.  Racial or gender quotas are not applicable at Harvard. They passed that mile stone long ago.

My point is: Corporate USA is not exactly lagging the rest of the world. We talk about affirmative action as if it was contrary to doing business. Most American business leaders understand that diversity is an essential part of the dynamic they need.

Most female board members are against affirmative action. This may be a politivally necessary point of view. But then, women are right in that without affirmative action they would not have to “be sharper and more up to date than everyone else” as Siri Wikander writes in her excellent blog, arguing against affirmative action.  I agree. Without affirmative action that need would never have arisen.  The women would never have been invited in the first place.

Our behaviors are molded by the structures we have. Today’s structures are the result of yesterday’s behaviors.  Altering that cycle is difficult. The ghettos of Chicago are partly an effect of the slavery that once was part of the American way of life. Changing a pattern can take that long. “Men recruit men” is such a pattern. When I moved back from the states 20 years ago there was much talk about women in boards. Unfortunately, I’ll probably be retiring before seeing more than the token evenly mixed board.  

There is hard and softer quotas. The Norwegian law that publicly held companies must have at least 40 percent women in the board is rather strong medicine, but there are signs that it is working. The education level of Norwegian boards has increased.  According to the large study by Adams & Ferreira we can expect Norwegian boards to have gotten more active. This also fits with what we see when we split a company into single gender groups, unevenly mixed groups and evenly mixed groups.  Evenly mixed groups have the highest motivation, followed by unevenly mixed groups. Single gender groups the least attractive working environments.

Siri Wikander suggests that we change the way companies report as a way of promiting women in boards. That amounts to “affirmative action light”. It is not bad, but the negatives are exactly the same as for quotas.  

Women overcompensating by coming better prepared to board meetings is natural and good. That is how they create a better situation for the next generation of female board members.  

 Start by identifying how you work in the groups that have satisfied and loyal customers. Compare this to the groups that have less satisfied customers. That is step one.

 Then compare the working climate in these groups.

 When everyone works the way they work where customers are satisfied, you have arrived. That is when you have a customer focused culture.

 It is that simple.

 At Frösunda, the care company, we identified that professional training drives customer satisfaction.  Stress caps the amount of customer satisfaction that is possible with some other customer. The prescription is never the same in two different companies, but customers are seldom surprised. The reaction is rather a “yes, that figures” rather than a “really?” or even “wow!”

 The more we learn about our customers, the less surprised we are ourselves when we see the results.  The business logic varies, and the findings of the Service Profit Chain analysis vary along with it.

I spent yesterday evening with the Swedish corporate elite, but Ericsson and Volvo were not there. This was the PAR price award ceremony for Sweden’s 318 most profitable growing companies in the four past years.

First I talked to the Brottby ICA neighborhood store. They compete with giant supermarkets less than six miles away with far lower prices. These giant stores are no super companies, but the ICA neighborhood store I talked to is. People really enjoy working in this store, and that is contagious. Their customers often visit every day even if they really do not need to buy anything.

Next, I talked to BM Agri, which is Mats Ericsson and his wife Britt-Marie. They work from their house in the small village of Alingsås, trading fertilizer on the Chicago futures exchange. Last year BM Agri had a turnaround of € 25 million and a handsome profit of more than € one million.

This is where the Swedish growth is found. In the last seven years, 1500 companies have reached the title ”Super company”. This half percent of the Swedish companies has generated more than one in four new jobs in this time.  

So, what makes these companies “Super”?  Per Weidenman, the superb analyst behind the classification system, says these companies never have difficulty explaining their business idea in five seconds.  

Above all, these companies are functioning systems. Their strategy, personnel policy, and ways of communicating with customers are aligned in a way that sounds perfectly obvious. The feeling is that this really could not be done any other way. Yet, they are not the same. Far from it. They remind me of Peter Senge, author of "the Fifth Discipline" and systems thinking. One cannot take the personnel policies of one company and apply them to the other. That would be about as successful as an elephant’s trunk on a giraffe.