Happy Hour is 9 to 5 (20 page)

To find your why, ask yourself the following questions and write down your answers (you can download the worksheet Exercise 3: Know your why on
www.pinetribe.com/alexander/exercises
):

If I was totally happy at work, what would be different about:

1. My working day
   
2. My relations with co-workers
   
3. My relations with customers
   
4. My productivity
   
5. My motivation
   
6. My relations with my manager
   
7. My relations with my employees (if you have any)
   
8. My career
   
9. My financial situation
   
10. My life outside of work
    
11. Stress and pressure
    
12. My health and wellness
    
13. My relations with family and friends
    

Take a look at your answers. How is life different when you’re totally happy at work? A little better? A lot better?

Knowing your goal, and why that goal is worth reaching, leaves you with one very basic choice to consider.

Decide on happiness

“Until one is committed there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

The moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too.

All sorts of things occur to help one that would otherwise never have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manners of unforeseen incidents and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way.”

William Murray, member of a Scottish expedition to Mount Everest

Previously I claimed that happiness at work starts with a choice: before you can make any significant progress you must decide to be happy.

Don’t get me wrong — deciding to be happy won’t magically make you happy. That decision is the first step.

And also remember that you’re not choosing to be satisfied. You’re not going for an OK work life. You’re going for happiness. You’re not necessarily going for irrational, exuberant, wild-eyed, magnificent levels of happiness at work, but you’re definitely choosing Yay, not Meh.

That is the choice before you now. Now that you know how happy you already are at work, what it takes to make you happy, and what your life will be like when you’re at Yay — will you decide to be happy at work?

Before you make that choice, remember that every decision has consequences. Choosing to be happy also means doing what it takes to get there.

If your current work situation is not good, you face the most difficult decision…

Should I stay or should I go?

Michael felt stuck in a job he hated. Being the sales manager of an IT company may sound nice, but the reality for this father of two was stress, conflict, backstabbing, internal competition and tons of overwork.

Michael really wanted to get out but couldn’t see how. His salary was great and his economic situation was just too tight. Even with his wife also working, they still only barely managed to make the payments on their house and cars. Saving up for an annual family holiday was a struggle every year and they lived in constant fear of large, unforeseen expenses.

Finally, one office power struggle became too much and Michael quit his job in disgust. He found a new job at a much nicer company, but at only half the salary and only after a few months of making no money. The family took stock of their new situation, and a depressing fact became clear: they could not afford to keep the house. After some deliberation they sold it and moved into a much smaller apartment.

A year later, Michael looked back and had this to say: “Quitting that job is the best thing I’ve ever done for my family and myself, and my only regret is that I didn’t do it much sooner. It’s true that I used to come home to a nice, big house in the suburbs. But it’s also true that I usually came home too tired to play with my sons and too stressed and angry to talk to my wife.

“Now I come home at a reasonable hour, happy, relaxed and ready to enjoy family life. The kids may not love having to share a room where before they each had their own, but let me tell you this: no one in this family would trade our current situation for what we had a year ago.”

Once you’ve decided to be happy at work, here’s the most basic choice you must make: Should you try to become happy in your current job, or is it better to switch to a new job? Can you make things better where you are? Have you tried? How did it go?

There are two possible options:

1. Change is realistic. It may not be easy or fast, but things can get better at my current job.
   
2. Change is not realistic. The culture is too fixed or change will simply be too hard.
   

I’m not trying to convince you to switch jobs, and I’m not trying to convince you to stay. What I am trying to do is convince you to choose. Choose to stay where you are and make that work situation happy. Or, choose to leave and do something about it. As the philosophers say, the greatest pain is not in making one choice over another, but in not choosing at all.

Can you make changes to your current job? Remember that:

• You may not need to change the whole company. Improving the mood in your own team or department may be all that’s needed.
  
• Often we think change is impossible, but we’re simply underestimating our own ability to make a difference. Remember the story of the nurses at H4 from Chapter 8.
  
• There is no such thing as “A Dream Job” — any job is only as good as you make it.
  

Only you can know the truth of your situation, and the important thing is to give your current job a chance to make you happy, but not to break yourself trying to change the unchangeable.

Switching jobs can be a scary proposition, but for many people it’s the only way they will ever be happy at work. If you decide that there is only a small chance that your current job will ever make you happy, I urge you to move on as quickly as possible. This is a decision with serious consequences, including loss of identity, prestige and financial security. Again, only you can make that choice.

If you decide to switch jobs, the other exercises in this chapter have given you a list of things to look for in your next job and a list of reasons why switching is a good thing for you. Use these results to give yourself the momentum towards a new work situation with much more happiness.

It is frighteningly easy to stay in an unhappy work situation simply for the salary and the stability. Many people do this year after year. The worst part is that the longer you put up with an unhappy job, the harder it gets to remember how much fun work can be and the harder it gets to move on and do something about it.

If you decide that you probably can’t be happy in your current job, do something about it as soon as possible. In Chapter 4 there were some tips on how you can reduce the fear associated with losing your job.

Make a happy plan

It’s time to make a plan. But not your typical plan — let’s make a plan that actually works. We’ll do this in Chapter 11. 

10. what can managers do?

Complete this sentence: Our company puts the _______ first.

Hal Rosenbluth made a provocative decision: As CEO and owner of Rosenbluth International, a corporate travel agency employing 6,000 people, he decided that his company would put the employees first. Where other companies aim to satisfy customers and investors first, Rosenbluth made it their first priority to make their employees happy.

The results were spectacular: record growth, record profits and, most importantly, customers loved the exceptional service they got from Rosenbluth’s happy employees. Hal Rosenbluth explained the company’s approach in a book whose title elegantly sums up his philosophy: Put The Customer Second - Put Your People First And Watch ‘em Kick Butt.

A company’s commitment to its values is most thoroughly tested in adversity, and Rosenbluth got its share of adversity right after 9/11. Overnight, corporate travel was reduced to a fraction of its former level, and it recovered more slowly than anyone predicted.

Rosenbluth tried everything in their power to avoid layoffs. They cut expenses. Staff took pay cuts and so did managers and executives. But in the end they had to face facts: layoffs were inevitable, and they decided to fire 1,000 of their 6,000 employees. How do you handle this situation in a company that puts its people first?

In his book’s most moving chapter, an epilogue written after 9/11, Hal Rosenbluth explains that though layoffs certainly don’t make employees happy, not laying people off and then going bankrupt at a later date would have made even more people even more unhappy.

Hal Rosenbluth recounts how he wrote a letter to the organisation explaining the decision and the thinking behind it in detail. The result was amazing: people who’d been fired streamed into Hal’s office to tell him they understood and to thank him for their time at the company.

Rosenbluth’s letter also contained a pledge: that those remaining at the company would do everything they could to bring the company back on track so they could rehire those who’d been fired. Six months later, they’d hired back 500 out of the 1,000, and the company was well on its way to recovery.

This chapter is for leaders at all levels who want to spread some happiness in their team, department, division, or even across the entire business.

I hope the book so far has convinced you that happiness at work is a good thing in itself, that it will get your organisation better results, and that it will make your job as a leader easier and more fun. This chapter has a roadmap to happiness at work for your organisation:

1. Get yourself happy.
   
2. Make time for your people.
   
3. How happy are your people?
   
4. Visualise your happy organisation.
   
5. Create the business case for happiness at work.
   
6. Put happiness first.
   
7. Make a happy plan.
   

You can find worksheets for each of the exercises at the book’s website
www.pinetribe.com/alexander/exercises

Get yourself happy

A 2005 study of health care workers by researchers from the University of Minnesota found that:

Managers who were enthusiastic positively affected their employees’ emotions.

Employees of unhappy managers experienced less happiness, enthusiasm and optimism, and experienced a slight increase in irritation, anger and anxiety.

A manager’s leadership behaviours affect employees’ emotions throughout the workday, even when the employees are not interacting with the managers
³¹
.

When everything a manager does signals “Man, I hate my job,” this attitude infects the employees. Why? Because managers have their people’s attention. Whatever a manager does or says is sure to be seen and heard, and sets the tone in the organisation.

As a manager you must start by making yourself happy at work. Not at the cost of others’ happiness, which is bound to fail, but in concert with others. All the tips in the previous chapters apply equally to employees and managers. Start there.

While you’re working to become happy at work yourself, you can also begin to spread a good mood inside your organisation and make other people happy.

Make time for your people