Emergent: March 2019
This month: What makes people happy at work, email habits and happiness, crossing the culture chasm, and a killer new laundry detergent.
Emergent is a monthly newsletter that features Noah’s ideas, writing, podcasts, and other things that are capturing his attention. Subscribe here.
This month’s reading suggestions come from our People Development Slack channel. Here at Palo Alto Software, we’ve been investing heavily into our company culture — trying to figure out how we maintain our culture and values as we grow. It’s a struggle and we don’t always get things right the first time.
This month’s reading looks at ideas for discovering happiness at work and maintaining a strong culture as you grow your company. Plus, I’ve got a recommendation for an amazing laundry detergent that’s made by a local startup.
If you like what you see or have some suggestions, drop me a line at noah@paloalto.com.
Thanks for reading!
Noah
1. This month’s keys to understanding happiness
What makes people happy at work?
This first article is interesting in that it’s discussing a study about what makes men happy at work. But, in reading the article, my guess is that the findings apply more broadly.
The study finds that “men derive happiness not from traditional notions of power and strength, but from the typically quieter task of doing meaningful work and contributing to the communities around them.”
This seems like a potentially universal statement and I’d love to see more research about what makes women happy in the workplace. Read the full article and let me know what you think.
Your email habits predict happiness
A research team at Microsoft recently looked into whether they could predict the answers to team satisfaction surveys by only looking at email communication. Interestingly, they didn’t look at the actual contents of emails, just who messages were sent to, how many messages were sent, and what time of day messages were sent.
The data turned out to accurately predict several things that may change your email habits. When managers responded to email quickly, teams were happier. When a manager’s email network was large, company-wide collaboration was ranked highly. The study is fascinating and worth a quick read.
2. This month’s tips on company culture
When your company is growing, you need to worry about scaling all parts of your organization. Many companies focus mostly on scaling their sales, marketing, and development teams, but they fail to think about scaling their culture.
Scaling our culture has been something we’ve been talking about here at Palo Alto Software, and we found this article that has some useful tips for maintaining your culture as you grow. It’s worth a look.
3. This month’s best purchase
Yes, we’re going to talk about laundry detergent
Don’t fall asleep on me yet. If you think all detergents are the same, you’re just wrong. A local Eugene, Oregon startup is making a killer new detergent that works amazingly well, especially at getting stubborn stains and smells out of synthetic workout gear.
I’ve seen the tests they’ve done on other detergents out there and you’d be surprised to see the results. Some detergents work worse than using just plain water — hard to believe, but true. So, if you want to try a new detergent that works great and isn’t from a mega-corporation, check out DeFunkify.
Thoughtfully curated and created in Eugene, OR.
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