Monthly Archives: November 2012

Formula for happiness

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Future of Talent
I spent Monday and Tuesday getting inspired at the Future of Talent Retreat. This is my eighth year in row. Every returning alumnus said they inevitably depart with new ways of looking at the world.

Kevin Wheeler pulls insights out of the group that we didn’t know were there. Yes, I am biased but it’s not because I’m on the faculty. I don’t make any money from our Retreat; neither does Kevin.

My topic this year was bringing emotion into the workplace. Giving a presentation forced me to Continue reading →

The Yield of Happiness

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The Yield of Happiness

Research to be unveiled at ONLINE EDUCA BERLIN

Productivity and hard work have long been integral pieces of a successful workplace. Now human emotion is joining them. Organisations have discovered that treating people like robots leads to hostility, dissatisfaction and resentment towards management.

Businesses are changing and at the forefront of this push for change is Jay Cross, chair of the Internet Time Alliance and informal expert. Cross has been striving to educate Continue reading →

The terminology of happiness and positive psychology

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Happiness. The English language lacks words for describing two entirely different states of happiness. FPsychologists call the transient, short-term happiness that brings a smile to your face “Hedonic happiness.” Long-term contentment and satisfaction with life is another thing entirely; Aristotle called it Eudaimonic happiness. Ironically, these two happinesses are not directly related; lots of smiles does not guarantee long-term wel-being. To thrive, you need both. This is sometimes called Flourishing.

Your social wishlist

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How will you take advantage of your in-house social network?

Use networks to create services and share collective intelligence

Your company will install an in-house social network. The only question is how soon. Wise Chief Learning Officers are thinking about how social networks will augment learning & development.

Imagine that a Senior Executive in your company returns from Thanksgiving weekend having read white papers from IBM that say social business is the next step in the overall Continue reading →

The Coherent Organization

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Co·her·ent (k-hîrnt, -hr-) means

1. Sticking together; cohering.
2. Marked by an orderly, logical, and aesthetically consistent relation of parts: a coherent essay.
3. Physics Of, relating to, or having waves with similar direction, amplitude, and phase that are capable of exhibiting interference.

(The American Heritage Dictionary)

This post continues an ongoing conversation about The Coherent Organization. While I’ll focus on interchanges among Harold Jarche, Clark Quinn, and myself, Continue reading →

Positive emotions

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This afternoon I finished reading Barbara Frederickson’s delightful and utilitarian book, Positivism. I am glad I did. Here’s a glimpse of what she (and I) believe in:

Frederickson is rare among psychologists for sharing what to do about downers while dispensing great advice on what to do for uppers. She was forced to look at both sides because balancing uppers and downers in at least a 3:1 ratio is her success formula. It is so, so simple. It is elegant. I plan to spend a lot of time Continue reading →

Nothing personal

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What does the phrase Don’t take this personally bring to mind?

Being fired?

Not being selected for the new project team?

Being assigned a task you don’t want to do?

Who’s kidding whom? These things are very personal.

I’ll never forget the time I had to lay off half my team. The personnel manager and I went through our routine. We put a large size box of Kleenex on the desk. One-by-one we called in half a dozen people, all close friends, and told them they were great, this was not about Continue reading →

What happens is not as important as how you feel about what happens

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This afternoon I bought an iPhone5. I was forced into it. Our new iPhone app goes into testing this evening, and it won’t play on my aging iPhone2.

Parting with my money was not as easy as expected. Over and over, I heard the Apple Store greeter tell people that four or five others were ahead of them and that they would have to wait 20 or 30 minutes to talk with a sales person. I scored a coupon at the Genius Bar and went to the head of the line.

Isaac had my new phone in hand and looked up Continue reading →

Crowdsourcing a design from 99designs

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Internet Time Lab needed a logo for its iPhone app to measure emotion. At my partner’s suggestion, I turned to 99designs.com, “the fastest growing design marketplace in the world.” Their site says they’ve conducted 174,000 design contests and paid out $1.4 million to designers last month. I’d never heard of them.

Nine days ago, I posted a spec for what I wanted, put $149 on my credit card, and began receiving design options. 23 designers submitted a total of 62 entries. 3 withdrew their Continue reading →