Here you can find all of Happy’s blog posts, covering our Excel hints and tips, ideas for creating happy workplaces, and ways to be more productive at work — and more.
Last year, Happy held our first recruitment for online facilitators. As we always do in our interviews, we avoid asking questions and get people to do what they would do in the role. After a disastrous first round of interviews, find out how Henry and the team set up their interviewees to succeed in this blog.
For me the best business books include stories and No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer is packed with them. By the end you will understand all about the remarkable Netflix culture. And you will be challenged. Reed Hastings, founder of Netflix, has teamed up with Erin Meyer, a Professor at INSEAD business school and author of The Culture Map. She interviewed 200 Netflix staff and so produces an interesting balance to the normal totally gung-ho approach of a book like this.
Donna Hall, the ex-Chief Executive of Wigan Council, will be speaking at the Happy Workplaces Conference on 12th May. Hers is an inspirational story. According to the Financial Times, Wigan Council faced the third worst austerity cuts in the country as the Coalition government slashed local government spending. Yet, over Donna’s time in charge, they managed to improve resident satisfaction by 59% and saw healthy life expectancy rise by 7 years in the most deprived wards.
Five years ago staff at Teach For All came together and proposed dismantling the senior team, changing the role of managers and exploring new ways of working. "The senior team was abolished on the spot!" explains Marwa Farouq, Global Head of Operations. Marwa will be speaking at the Happy Workplace conference on May 12th about Teach for All's journey towards self-management. It is a remarkable story with a lot to learn from.
Here are some ideas for creating a great culture from Sarah Pugh, now Chief Executive of Whizz Kidz, about her time as CEO at Heart of Kent Hospice.
Helen Sanderson originally set up Wellbeing Teams in 2016 with the aim of radically changing the way health and social care is delivered. Inspired by the Dutch care company Buurtzorg, Wellbeing Teams are small, neighbourhood self-managed care teams. They have coaches, but no managers. Find out how Helen created Wellbeing Teams as a self-managing organisation that is focused on letting team members be human with each other in Henry's blog.
Tom Peters is the ultimate management guru. Thinkers50, the list of the top 50 management thinkers, has rated him in the top 10 in multiple years and awarded him the Lifetime Achievement Award, one of only six people to achieve the honour, in 2017. "Charismatic, passionate, and insightful, Tom virtually invented the modern thought leadership industry," explained Thinkers50 co-founder Des Dearlove. "He co-authored In Search of Excellence, which helped create the business book industry." Find out more about Tom Peters in this blog by Henry Stewart.
Nand Kishore Chaudhary (known as NKC) has been called 'the Gandhi of the rug industry.' Jaipur Rugs, which he founded, has 700 employees and works with 40,000 artisans from among the poorest of the poor. He set it up in 1978 with just 2 looms and 9 artisans. The weavers come from the Untouchable class. "All my family tried to stop me," explained NKC. "But I can’t see the difference, how these people are untouchable."
Make Work More Fun. That’s the title of the inspirational book from Corporate Rebels, published in 2020. The rebels, Joost Minnaar and Pim De Morree, gave up their jobs five years ago to tour the world visiting the most exciting organisations on the planet. The book tells the story of what they found. In this blog, Henry Stewart unpacks a number of the book's key arguments, which can help you discover a different way of organising companies, one that is more fulfilling for its people and more productive for the organisation.
Imagine if every meeting or event that you attended gave every participant the chance to speak and to express their views. That is what is made possible by Liberating Structures, 33 methods that avoid one person dominating and instead give everybody a voice. If you want your online events to be truly interactive, this could be the place to start. In this blog, Henry Stewart offers a summary of 8 different Liberating Structures.