List
Print This Post Print This Post

The pursue of happiness as a business goal and/or cultural goal, encounters all spectrum of emotions. For some, a naïve goal. For others, a legitimate one. For some, a fluffy and fuzzy semi ‘New Age thing’ that no serious business would have in its mission statement. For others, a true goal, and the glue for the entire company.

On the latter space, and amongst the ‘new companies’ that make headlines for their innovation or their uniqueness, is, of course Zappos, now part of Amazon, and in particular his 41 year old CEO, Tony Hsieh, who in 2010 wrote a book entitled ‘Delivering Happiness’.  Happiness is a serous business in Zappos, as much as its business as online retailer of shoes and apparel. For some, worth a pilgrimage to visit them in their downtown Las Vegas HQ. For others, simple nonsense.

There is also a particular approach to ‘happiness’ in organizations which is part of the Employee Engagement equation: happy people will deliver better results. This is the ‘Happy Cow’ model, one of the six models of employee engagement that I have described.

That is the trouble with happiness. It’s only a word which has very different significance depending on the organization that uses it. The Zappos’ happiness (intrinsic value, clear focus goal of the type that prompts people to ask the question: ‘are they really serious?’; yes, that kind of question) and the average Employee Engagement happiness, that sees it as a lever, a mechanism, a vehicle, the oil for a productive business (run by happy cows), are not the same happiness.

People tend to forget that happiness as a fundamental goal has not been invented by the Zappos of this world, but has been on and off in the business arena before. The primary example is the UK based John Lewis Partnership, today a £10 billion conglomerate of upmarket department stores  and supermarkets, where employees are ‘partners’ ( and they are called like that even in the signs at their entrance to their facilities) and every employee is an owner of the firm. For their 38000 ‘partners’, their salaries are not particularly above the market, but their annual bonuses of profit distribution clearly distinguishes them well.

This is how John Spedan Lewis (1885-1963) described the firm:

The Partnership’s ultimate purpose is the happiness off all its members, through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in a successful business. Because tithe Partnership is owned in trust for its members, they share the responsibilities of ownership as well as its rewards – profit, knowledge and power.

John Lewis was certainly not a kind of Tony Hsieh of his time, but he had his own version of social responsibility, and a view to the answer to the question that Charles Handy would pose many years later: what is a company for?

‘Happiness’ is worth revisiting with serious critical thinking. I really think that the new generations (of employees and customers) don’t see this question as naïve or business-irrelevant. To dismiss it today with the old ‘you must be joking, we are here to make money’ would be very unwise, to say the least.

 

We need a (happy) meeting point for both sceptical and converted, to exchange ideas on what happiness as a goal or culture may mean for a business in 2015. Both sides should leave preconceived ideological positions at the door and be prepared to exchange ideas and experiences. That would be a very, very happy meeting I would be very happy to attend.

Keep up with the Daily Thoughts

Twitter Email

Would you like to comment?

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

To search my website, please use the form below.

  Daily Thoughts

May 19th, 2023

Value is an overused term in business and, as such, it’s becoming meaningless

Value, as usually used, means transactional monetary value. Usually it doesn’t mean intrinsic value, or value per se. For example, […]

May 4th, 2023

The importance of ‘critical thinking.’ Your own critical thinking is more effective at making your workplace better than any generic employee survey.

Build your own Employee Engagement argument for free. You can’t go wrong. Here are three baskets full of concepts: Basket […]

April 21st, 2023

´Busy-Ness’ Is A Trap

I went to a big conference where I was introduced by the chairman like this: “Welcome everybody. Lovely to have […]

April 14th, 2023

Training and culture change. The love affair that ends in tears.

It seems to be very hard for people to get away from the idea that if we just put individuals […]

April 11th, 2023

Teamocracies and Networkracies have different citizens: in-Habitants in team-work, riders in net-work

The old view of the organization is something close to the old concept of a medieval city, where citizenship was […]

April 5th, 2023

3 Ways To Get Approval From Your CEO Or Your Leadership Team

Way number 1: My team has developed these three options, A, B and C. Which one do you want us […]

March 29th, 2023

A Cheat Sheet To Create A Social Movement Tip = to shape organizational culture since both are the same.

Mobilizing people. This is another of the Holy Grails (how many have I said we have?) in management. Whether you […]

March 16th, 2023

Critical Thinking Self-Test: A 10 Point Health Check For Your Organization And Yourself. If any of these are a good picture of your organization, you need to put ‘critical thinking’ in the water supply.

Test yourself, and your organization. Do any of these apply? Doing lots, too fast without thinking. High adrenaline, not sure […]

March 9th, 2023

A culture of safety or a culture of training in safety?

Cultures are created by behaviours becoming the norm. Safety is at the core of many industries. Significant budgets are allocated […]

March 2nd, 2023

Empowerment is an output. If you can visualize it, you can craft it.

The real question is, what do you want to see happening so that you can say ‘people are empowered’? Employee […]

February 24th, 2023

A simple question will jumpstart your organization into change. It will also save you from months of pain spent reorganizing your people and teams.

The following line will short-cut months of (building) ‘alignment’, integration, reorganization, team building, coalition building, and any situation in which Peter, […]

February 20th, 2023

Lead Via Peer-To-Peer Networks – If you don’t lead via peer-to-peer networks, you’re only driving your car in first gear.

Peer-to-peer work, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is the […]

February 7th, 2023

Write a script, not a strategic plan

If you care about the journey and the place, you need a story. If you have a good, compelling one, […]

January 26th, 2023

3 self-sabotaging mechanisms in organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

January 10th, 2023

Who should be involved in culture change? All inclusive versus going where the energy is.

Many times, in my consulting work, I find myself facing a dilemma: Do I involve many people on the client’s […]

December 23rd, 2022

Tell what won’t change – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

In any change programme that any organization wants to start, they will start by thinking of the things that they […]

December 16th, 2022

Scale It – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

When creating effective change in any organization, there are 40 rules that, in my experience, are the key between success […]

December 5th, 2022

Assets & Strengths Base – Introducing 1 of my 40 rules of change

For more than 30 years I have been involved in ‘change’ in organizations. Again and again, some fundamental principles, and often […]

November 25th, 2022

Campaign It… is 1 of my 40 rules of change

When you filter out the noise, when you try to extract the core, the fundamentals, those ‘universal rules’ of change […]

October 31st, 2022

Hybrid or not hybrid? That’s not the question…

Culture is the new workplace If you want to have a conversation about the future of work, the nature of […]

October 24th, 2022

‘Powered by Viral Change™’: A Social Transformation Platform for the organization of the 21st Century

When we started to work on Viral Change™, as a way to create large scale behavioural and cultural change, and […]

October 14th, 2022

Corporate tribes, intellectual ghettos and open window policies

We talk a lot about silos in organizations usually in the context of Business Units or divisions. But these are not […]

October 7th, 2022

Peer Networks are the strongest force of action inside the organization

Peer-to-peer works, transversal, spontaneous or not, collaboration, peer-to-peer influence, peer-to-peer activities of Viral Change™ champions or activists, all of this is […]

September 30th, 2022

Change that doesn’t deliver change-ability is a waste

The traditional model of change is the one I call ‘destination’ type, that is, how to go from A to […]

September 23rd, 2022

Company structures: aggregate and disaggregate

New organizations, and old ones in the business of transforming themselves, would be better off learning by heart these two […]

September 15th, 2022

3 Self-Sabotaging Mechanisms in Organizations

Organizations, like organisms, have embedded mechanisms of survival, of growth and also of self-sabotage. These are 3 self-sabotage systems to […]

September 2nd, 2022

The best organizational model is to have more than one under the same roof

Command and control management has fewer friends, and it’s quite terminally ill as well. The heirs are fighting for a piece […]

August 26th, 2022

Unprecedented Times? Sure. Let’s Move On Please.

Somewhere in the post-Covid peak, I promised myself that I wasn’t going to pay attention anymore to anything that starts with […]

August 19th, 2022

Engagement, Empowerment and Ownership Culture Meet at One Single Point. Obvious, Simple and Incredibly Forgotten

Employee engagement efforts, ownership values and empowerment behaviours must meet at one point. It’s simple, not terribly controversial, based upon […]

August 12th, 2022

Employee Engagement and the Productivity Magnet

For me, the most damaging use of the employee engagement framework is the widespread one that states that ‘engagement’ predicts […]