Open Spirituality: emotion

Is there such a thing as: "A Happy Company" ?

According to Dan Baker,Cathy Greenberg and Collins Hemingway, authors of, "what happy companies know", not only are there companies out there that are happy, but also that part of this happiness creation process involves the development of positive work environments. These in turn create a compounded benefit that translates into greater levels of productivity which directly hits the bottom line.

What is very useful and actionable about this book is that it maps out the framework under which any organisation can develop a happy environment of their own. The framework is people directed and therefore focuses on the process of aligning teams (and leadership) through:

Values Analysis: understanding of leadership values and how these underscore success
Congruence Analysis: Degree to which the values of the team align with the leader and with each other
Energy Assessment: Understanding of the stress points and anticipated trouble spots for transitions
Culture Assessment: Leadership profiling and feedback of cultural awareness
Check-in Sessions: Validation of operating principles and shared definition of the team's future
Leadership Development: Creation of programs to improve capabilities of the leadership team, in conjunction with the recruitment of talent as needed.

According to the three authors, the 1st three sets of tools relate to the individual, whilst the last three looks at how the individual sits, collaborates, engages and co-creates within a team context (pp. 247).

What I didn't like about this book:

Sketchy/Executive overview: It feels like they want you to seek consultancy to fill up the gaps.
Insufficient quantitative references: Slim on the ground no follow up recommendations
No reading list: No clear link up to other references or books

The positives:

Case studies/examples: usual suspect selection of supporting case studies & examples
Framework to work on: lovely framework on pp. 247 - which is developed throughout book
Detail (framework): sufficient detail with the provided action framework, specially if you have done further reading in this area.

There are books out there to make up for failings...
Fortunately we can get further help to make this process work with more robust evidence with books such as: Firms of endearment, the levity effect (why it pays to lighten up), delivering happiness (a path to profits, passion and purpose) - zappos.com,and nowhere - which cleverly examines the journey of the individual to fulfill their passion, purpose and impact on organisation profits.There is also the flip-side: aligned organisational values based development that has resonance with employees may create the very envirnoment and opportunities to cement congruence, thus creating a common platform of shared vision, values, passion and purpose.

The books are as per the amazon carousel below:

Amazon.co.uk Widgets

For us on the coal face of delivery...
It is encouraging to read such books especially when as workers, facilitators and leaders within companies and projects are instinctively adopting this approach. It is a lonely road, but lovely when you link up with like minded individuals. Contrast in life is essential and therefore it is necessary to get to experience the light side (see the levity effect) and the dark side (toxic work environments).

Thanks to experiences you end up counting your blessings and I guess, as is in my case I have ended up neutralising toxic people and environments for the benefit of all.

Finishing project work at Campaign for Learning, and Community Learning Partnership was a very positive and rewarding experience. What a fantastic bunch of human beings, and I am continuing to work on a pet project with the Community Learning partnership and their wonderful CLP - Angels, a.k.a community learning champions (CLCs). CLP continues to reach out to their learners and involve them in positive social action to extend the trans-formative power of learning in fun and joyful environments.

I hope that you get further evidence from reading this book about a positive way to working. I shall be reviewing other inspirational books along the way. I tweet at times, so if you want to catch me on the twitter stream - see my widget. Enjoy and Merry Xmas. ;-)

Useful & Related articles...

How Room Designs Affect Your Work and Mood
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=building-around-the-mind

How Humor Makes You Friendlier, Sexier
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=laughing-matters

Generosity Might Keep Us Healthy (podcast)
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=generosity-might-keep-us-healthy-10-10-26

Adversity Is Linked to Life Satisfaction
http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode.cfm?id=adversity-is-linked-to-life-satista-10-10-16

How to Protect Your Health Against Toxic Behavior (types of people & groups)
http://drbenkim.com/toxic-people-behavior.html

Stay Away From These Four Types of Toxic People: Choose the Company You Keep
http://stason.org/articles/life/self-growth/Stay-Away-From-These-Four-Types-of-Toxic-People.html

During this credit storm we need to continue the focus on the service to our communities
The BBC news keeps on mirroring the economic storms we are facing - and this is reflecting in the third-sector (charity non-profit). This uncertainty has been echoed in press releases by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO).

During this time that pundits stir their cocktails of doom & gloom - I draw my strength on focusing on how my work and commitment can continue to deliver benefits and results to the charitable organisations i'm lucky to contribute to and collaborate with. Rick Warren, Author of the fab book, "Purpose-driven Life: What on Earth am I Here For?" - starts the book by saying, it's not about you!

Leading by example, we can energize our environments and things we do. Research and psychology has shown that emotion is contagious (wikipedia). Therefore I prefer to spread positive emotion because it energizes. It is harder to get on with doing work with heavy emotions. So why make life difficult for ourselves, when it is not about ourselves?

A mind under psychological strain is faced with reduced creative options, specially if we allow ourselves to mirror our times. We need to see our new environment in ways that enable us to create community centric solutions that involve our communities and capitalises on their skills. We may not have as much money coming in, but we do have ways of challenging our assumptions and our thinking ;-)

What could you do with one bucket? - I wash myself with one bucket (body, shampoo & rinse), I could wash the car with one bucket, I could mop the floors of a three bedroom house with one bucket, I could use that one bucket to collect shellfish when going to the sea...what else?

Together we can create solutions for our communities because it is not about us! It is about serving, it is about giving, and our collective intelligence and care can produce more value and provide greater impact than superficially throwing money at a problem. This time we can think deeper to make our money work harder. As they say, lets line up as many ducks as possible. I strongly feel taht we have a psycholgoical, emotional and spiritual contract to serve.

I'll leave you with the Rick Warren video (from TEDtalks) and an amazon carrousel displaying some of the books that inspired this post