The Happyforce Way
We often look at companies like Google, Apple or Facebook as inspiration for our own company goals. But what often happens is that we view them as far away realities, as these companies now have unlimited resources and access to the best talent in the world.
We are a humble startup with a top notch innovative financial model in the industry: We spend less than we make
This is a very interesting exercise that allows us to focus on what is a priority and essential. It is the application of the proverb “Hunger sharpens the wit.”
We have been able to prove that we can all benefit from a managing model centered around people and their motivation. In this post, I am going to share with you how we do this in Happyforce, from our way of working, interacting, our ways of doing things, our culture. This we have all named “The Happyforce Way.” :)
The new model for living life
Remember when you were told “study lots, find a good company to work hard for so that then you’ll be able to enjoy a good retired life?”
This model is officially expired; and this is not only applicable for “millennials”, but more often, it’s a greater number of us who experience this new reality, doesn’t matter when we were born.
We leave behind this “timeline” model, to embrace a new model style “sandwich”, which in all points of our lives we are: learning, contributing, and enjoying.
Not only does the order change, but we also adapt the concepts to new meanings:
- Instead of studying (which is more related to obtaining a degree) now we talk about learning
- Instead of working, we talk about contributing, from applying what we learn
- Enjoying is more centered around what we do at every moment, related to how we are learning and contributing
This new model makes us re evaluate our expectations of companies. Much more frequently, people are looking for companies that are aligned with this new scheme of life.
What are you looking for in a company?
This question leads us to analyze what the majority of companies have to offer.
On one hand, we have the “old school” companies, who offer some sense of security at work through bonuses, variable pay, incentives, a car, company phone, professional career…
On the other hand, we have those companies who apply a new trending model inspired by Californian Startups where they alter those things for ping pong tables, free food, massages, gyms, fresh fruit, foosball table. This is known as #TheStartupHype
This doesn’t mean that we are against pingpong tables or masseurs in companies. What we question is the motivation behind direction to do these things, and the negative impact it may have on people, in the case that these initiatives are ruled as as perks, benefits or rewards.
How does a pingpong table help motivation?
Understanding what motivates us
… or better yet, what demotivates us. Quoting our friend/mentor/spiritual agile advisor Ángel Medinilla:
“The key to motivating people is not to demotivate them.”
Seems like that typical Spanish phrase: “you come here motivated from home”, is true. No matter how small the task, or role is, every single person in their first day of work is motivated. The company will then take care of company policies, procedures, lack of information and bad practices to demotivate their most motivated employee.
From all pieces of writing about motivation that has come our way, it is Daniel’s Pink, «Drive» that best describes our way of viewing things.
If you don’t know Daniel Pink, I recommend you watch this 1o minute TED Talk of his, where I practically just saved you from reading the entire book. You’re welcome ;)
In his book, Mr. Pink shares some very powerful messages:
Money is not a motivator
Well, in reality, motivating someone with money only works if the job is considered mechanical. This is what’s known extrinsic motivation: when the motivating element (in this case extra money) is external to the activity you have to complete.
When a job requires the most minimum use of creativity, empathy, communication, problem solving etc. science shows that using extra money as a motivator to complete these task doesn’t improve results, but they worsen.
Daniel Pink identifies three factors that influence intrinsic motivation in people. This occurs when motivation derives directly from the activity we are doing.
- Autonomy: The desire of directing our own lives
- Mastery: learning, continuously improving, and feeling like we are benefiting from our potential
- Purpose: purpose as the desire to do things in service of something larger than ourselves.
In Happyforce, we work on our culture with these three factors in mind. Here I will share some examples with you:
1. Autonomy: the desire to decide and direct our lives
Enhancing autonomy is one of the things that generates a positive response in motivation from the start.
One of the main mistakes you can make as a manager is to assume you know what is best for your team (and company). So you end up choosing their work schedule, their holidays, the computers they have to use, where they have to sit, where the office is located, what methodologies to use, etc.
Our Happyforce culture constantly seeks to decentralize decisions, giving more autonomy to each team. To carry this forth, we have implemented some initiatives:
- Each person decides the basic work tools they would like to us (in our case: laptop and mobile, tablet etc.). Not only do they choose them, but they are theirs, and not owned by the company
- Our expenses policy consists of every employee having access to the company credit card and making use of it as if it were theirs. There is no need for petition and approval processes
- From the beginning, we launched Happyforce as a distributed company, without physical offices. To work for Happyforce, all you need is internet connection which allows you to initiate video conferences
- From the hand of offshoring comes the free choice of working hours
- Every person decides with their team, what days they wish to vacation and how many days, without any set limit
- As a last autonomy initiative, every person is free to choose what they get paid monthly (being able to vary month by month)
- I’m aware that some of these points may surprise or even sound like science fiction (especially the wages initiative). I understand that they cannot be applied directly in any organization, but we must bear in mind that the important aspect to grasp from this is that these are all actions aimed at transferring more capacity to decide teams, to enhance autonomy. Have you thought about what small steps you can take to move your company in this direction?
2. Mastery: learning and taking advantage of our own potential
Pink gives the example of those who like to play a musical instrument during their free time. Why do we do it? They do not pay us for it, and usually nobody is listening.
Change your job, or activity when you stop learning
It is for this reason that in Happyforce we always seek for ways to keep us learning and improving.
To do this, in addition to the usual training plans we promote mastery by encouraging people to exchange roles or tasks: a programmer making customer support, a designer programming, someone selling finance, etc.
These exchanges not only make us learn new things, but also helps us understand the difficulty of the work that other fellow colleagues do. This helps us empathize with them and respect them even more.
We have also proven that teaching is a great motivator. We have seen that all of us have things to teach or share for others to learn. For this, we organize internal courses, where our own colleagues are the ones who now become our teachers too.
Lastly, we have seen that learning, in all forms, motivates, no matter what you learn. That is why when we talk about financing a potential training for team members, we don’t care if it is directly related to the work. These can be sales courses, cooking courses, agile methodologies or yoga.
Any learning that benefits the person also ends up contributing and benefiting the team and the company.
3. Purpose
Sharing purpose is what allows us to make sense of autonomy and liberty.
Purpose makes us feel that our work and our contributions matter, and that it they have a positive impact
The key here is to define why we do what we do and to make sure we all know how we contribute to this purpose on a daily basis.
To achieve this, in Happyforce we use an alignment mechanism based on transparency. All the information in the company is accessible to everyone, but what is most important: the strategy and direction of the company is shared with everyone.
In order to make this work, we have changed the format of the steering committee. Firstly, we placed our strategy and tactics into a single page layout, using the Hoshin technique (from the Japanese “strategy”).
The Hoshin Plan is our agenda, and our canvas which helps us to have conversations about what is important for us, what steps we have to take to achieve these goals and how we measure our journey into reaching these. The Hoshin helps us to maintain focus on what we have agreed is important.
But the key to this is that this Hoshin is shared with the entire company, and why we use the wonderful Hoshinplan tool, which adapts perfectly to our distributed business model.
To involve and make everyone active participants of this common purpose, meetings of the steering committee are open to the entire company. We have a videoconference room to which all employees and collaborators are invited so that anyone can participate. We also record all the sessions and publish them on the intranet with a brief summary of the most important points so that anyone can consult it later.
What is relevant here is that the directors have committed themselves to deal with ANY TOPIC in that meeting. This initially generated discomfort and anxiety in the management team when dealing with sensitive issues, but we have found that it forces us to treat them in a much more constructive manner, and we have seen that our decisions have a better impact on the company.
To know if we are communicating the purpose and strategy of the company eloquently, we just ask our employees “How is Hoshin contributing to what you are doing now?”
Change starts with you
When we share our model with others, we usually experience following reaction: “I love it, but in my company this would be impossible.”
The Happyforce team shares a common characteristic: when there is something we do not like, we change it
And this is what I propose for you to do: change things.
I remember the case of a person who told me that they had been asking for a blind for their windows for 9 months because the afternoon sun bothered his eyes and could not work well. He had already sent several requests through a ticket system, but for some reason his window blinds never arrived.
What stops you from going down to the hardware store and spending € 20 on some new blinds and two screws?
The company is not an entity with a life of its own that prevents things from changing; Each and everyone of us form part of the company too, therefore it is in our hands to act for change too. There’s no need to wait for the president of the company to change everything. Change starts with you.
