Daniel Dzikowski: Why You Should Learn With Happy

Maureen: Alright so we have another speaker, and his name is Daniel. Daniel is a leadership and wellbeing specialist, and he’s been on our flagship Happy 4 Day Workplace Programme, and he’s going to share his experience with us. Thank you so much Daniel!

Daniel: Do you know, I was sitting over there, and I was thinking to myself, "Why have I got a chair in the middle of the room?” Now it all becomes clear when you're up here. 

So, my name's Daniel and 20 years ago, I wanted to start a business and I knew nothing about running a company, so I did my research and I researched the best run organisations in the world.

At the time there was a list called the "Sunday Times top places to work for in the UK list". And on the top of that list was Happy. Actually, they were in second place, but the year before they were in first.

I contacted Cathy, and I wrote her a letter because back in those days I didn't use email. I wrote her a letter and said, "what makes your place so special? How have you created this amazing organisation?” And she said, “come down, I'm going to show you,” so I did.

And I remember the first impression I got. 

When I walked through the office, a gentleman came up, he literally sprung up from his chair and says, "Hi, how are you doing?" And I'm like, "Oh my God, is he my long lost brother? Do I owe him money?" 

But no, he was just actually genuinely happy to meet me!

At that point he got me introduced to Cathy, and Cathy showed me around and spent the next hour sharing with me how she'd created this organisation. Then she persuaded me to take a leadership course, but to be honest with you, it wasn't her that persuaded me, it was the guy that met me. 

That leadership course and the coaching that I undertook with her formed the foundations of how I would run my business for the next 15 years. That culminated with me selling it three years ago, and through that journey, we implemented certain things that traditional businesses would be scared to do, with open salaries, transparency, freedom. 

I remember once I went to share how open we are on my website and I put a picture of some people meditating because I love my meditation. Some guy one day, he rings me up, he rings up the office, and I answered the phone, and he says, "are you Daniel?" and I said, yes. All he said was, “do you really have a picture of people meditating on your website?” I said, yeah. And he said, "that's so ridiculous" and he put the phone down. And I'm like, okay, I wasn't expecting that phone call. 

But it was the things that we created that made us unique and that the employees loved as well. Implementing or wanting to implement unlimited holidays, and I thought "this is going to be a great idea, let me push it out to the team and see what they think," but all of them voted against it, which actually surprised me. The reasoning was because basically they didn't think any work would get done.

I ended up selling the business, but about six months ago, I went to a different area of my life. I was asked to launch a London networking group for business owners. I thought, let me take a leadership course again. I'm pleased to say that nothing had changed, the fundamental principles of how to create a company are the same now as they were 20 years ago, and that, for me, is a really good thing. A few of the things changed with regards to remote working, but the leadership course that I undertook is just as good.

For me, Happy is one of the best places you can learn this because they not only talk the talk, they walk the walk. You can learn about this, but to actually do it yourself, to actually undertake the journey of creating a great culture in your workplace, that's what's key. And Happy have done that, which is why I returned again, a second time. And now I'm here speaking.

So, thank you very much. If you have any questions, please let me know.