happy Blogs

Tom Peters: A Leadership Guru Ahead of His Time

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.

Jaipur Rugs: Art That You Can Walk On

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."

Am I Good Enough to Succeed? Imposter Syndrome in the Workplace

People with Imposter Syndrome doubt their skills and abilities — putting their accomplishments down to 'luck'. They have a persistent, internalised fear of being exposed as a 'fraud', and that others will catch them out one day. This generally manifests itself in the workplace, and can affect anyone, regardless of job role or social status. For those who struggle with it, Imposter Syndrome can be crippling. In this blog, Nicky Stone discusses how you can combat it and creating your own definition of success.

Learn About Our Brave Leadership Programme in our Free Taster Session

Join us for an inspirational look at female leadership and discover more about our one year transformational programme. Our unique blended package of events is all about uncovering, celebrating, and nurturing your power as a female leader. In this taster session we will be exploring what assertive leadership looks like and what this means from a woman's perspective. There is no charge for this 60-minute online workshop on 23rd January, delivered face-to-face online via Zoom. All welcome, with no obligation and no hard sales pitch.

Make work more fun

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.

Liberating Structures: Giving Everybody an Equal Voice

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.

Happy Workplaces are More Successful

The research has been done and the evidence is in: there is a clear link, shown in many studies, confirming that companies with great workplaces are more successful commercially. In this blog, Henry Stewart provides the evidence that happy workplaces simply perform better.

Let’s Give Everybody an Equal Voice

Imagine at your events if everybody got to speak equally. Imagine the most senior people did not get to dominate the discussion. Imagine the loudest voices weren’t the ones who carried the decisions. In this blog, Henry Stewart goes through nine Liberating Structures, which make it so everybody has an equal voice.

How to Create Truly Engaging Online Conferences

Have you, like me, been to a number of online events where you just have to sit and listen while the speakers talk? There may be people that feel they learn well from this approach, but I honestly doubt it. You would probably be better off listening to some TED Talks. In this blog, Happy’s CHO Henry Stewart provides a step-by-step account of how to create a truly engaging online conference.

Let's Get Rid of Annual Appraisals, and Replace Them With Regular Snapshots

Around three years ago, Happy organised a vote of all our employees on whether they wanted to keep the annual appraisal. As we expected, they didn’t – with 83% voting to scrap them. Of course it still makes sense to carry out a regular review, so we replaced it with a four monthly happy@happy snapshot. Find out more in this blog.