Chapter Three
Quality of people.
This is the third chapter of the story “The Happiness Table: on fueling growth by understanding happiness in creative companies.” It’s my Advanced Work-Based Project and my final deliverable for my MA in Digital Media at Hyper Island. This post in particular describes the results after measuring quality of people.
Meet the players.
Challenges.
As an aspiring strategist and inspired by the Undercurrent Skills Maturity Matrix (SMM), I thought it would be necessary to sharpen my research skills. I decided to stretch myself to reach level five in their skills matrix and design my own original method for primary research.
As I mentioned in chapter two, I thought it would be a good idea to design this LEGO board.
- it instigated people to think and do at the same time.
- it made people touch, feel and play. It stimulated people to go away from their screens for a few minutes — which doesn’t happen enough in work environments.
- it captured and visualised data simultaneously, which gave me a nice overview and a sense of clarity.
During seven consecutive days, I asked Lucy, Elina, Chris and Hayley (my control group) at the end of the day to answer four questions by giving a score from one to ten. Right before the four decided to go home, I sent them a reminder to reflect about their day, to come to my desk and place the right buttons on the bricks.
It was difficult in three ways:
- I didn’t know everyone that well. I only had a meaningful relationship with Hayley, so it was way easier for her to understand how important this project was to me.
- It was sometimes hard to reach people. Some were ill, were working from home or simply forgot that they had to come to my desk. It was challenging for me to come up with ways to motivate people. Sticks, carrots and a lot of whiny emails. Sometimes, I went even that far that I was walking with my LEGO board throughout the office to find my respondents. I must have been really annoying.
- The way these numbers differed between people was quite interesting. It gave me a first glance of people’s emotions. However, they lacked meaning.
Greg Mastrianni, my smartest and wisest fellow student wrote a comment on my primary research methodology. And I can’t find better words to make his point:
Asking the right questions is always key. I almost think you have to test the questions to see if they are going to yield fertile information that you can ultimatly derive some insights from. To me the answers to these questions will give a thumbs up or down on a scale of ‘happiness.’…
… But I’m not sure they will uncover more as to the triggers of those responses. 4 questions is a nice easy package to deal with, maybe a good starting point, but I think all it may tell you in the end is that the investigation needs to go deeper into uncovering people’s happiness triggers and expectations.
He was absolutely right. This was only the tip of the iceberg. I had to dive deep into the water and see what was really going on.
When Greg takes the time to comment on your post, I listen and react.
I asked Hayley for an interview, because she was the one who was most interested and involved. Her numbers were good thought starters because they fluctuated quite a lot. I wanted to know more. I wanted to have a conversation about the meaning of being happy in a work environment, motivations behind happiness and things that could be related to happiness.
I took a jump and stayed under for about an hour.
An interview with Hayley Mills.
Here’s the transcript with the most important highlights:
Could you tell me a bit more about your role during the project?
I was an assistant strategist to Ian on the Forevermark pitch. I was mainly doing a competitor analysis to understand cultural nuances and to discover where Forevermark was lacking.
Could you describe your relationship to other team members?
The first time you start to work with someone, you build assumptions. You know each other’s relationships to other people, and based on that you make assumptions. It happens the other way around as well. I was not only making assumptions about other people, they were definitely doing the same. I started here doing an internship, and recently I got promoted to a junior strategy position. Sometimes I had to give feedback and say when things were not quite right. I am a junior and it is not always easy to talk to someone who is more your superior. To critique them can cause awkwardness. When Ian couldn’t be my voice, you feel vulnerable because they can automatically dismiss you for being a junior.
Let’s not talk about superiority, but about leadership. Could you define leadership?
In a lot of agencies, people believe that creatives are on top of the chain. It doesn’t matter what role you have, as long as you understand how to talk and how to get feedback. Leadership is perceived as being senior, but actually it is about understanding. It’s about being able to give constructive feedback, understanding the person’s emotions and be able to talk to someone at a certain level. It’s about mutual respect. Leaders don’t tell but show. They lead by example. Leaders need to have faith. Leaders need to be excellent communicators.
When you were talking about vulnerability, would you say that we live in a culture of fear?
It’s not only about fear, it’s also about failure. Sometimes you have a huge responsibility and you don’t want to screw things up. Real leaders embrace failure. Ian is a good leader. He gives you a big piece of string to play with, but he knows how to bring that string in at the same time so that the mistake wouldn’t be too intense so that you would screw the whole thing up. Ian gave me freedom and asked me what my opinion was so that I was analysing and understanding my own work. I was scared because I was new to the agency. I was overly concerned with making a positive impression for my colleagues. I was fighting to show that I am here for a reason. At the same time, from Ian’s management that wasn’t the case.
In order to learn, you need to fail. Would you say that failure is rooted in our culture?
I’m not quite sure. I think I don’t work here long enough to say. We have a very interesting company at the moment. It’s a merge of different companies. In the next six months, this agency is going to change drastically.
What could be negative behaviors of people?
What people can be really bad at, is that they become creatures of habit. There are a lot of people who work really hard and go for the idea. Then there are other people who only do the things that are necessary as long as it fits into their time schedule. Another negative behavior would be internal politics. It is interesting to see how an idea can really suffer because of politics.
Let’s go to the LEGO board. Could you tell in your own words how you see employee satisfaction? What does it mean?
You need to feel that you’ve contributed. You need to feel valued by your team members. Being managed is important. Saying thank you makes a big difference. Someone taking the time to spend with you can mean so much.
And if you had to choose two?
Feedback and time.
I want to change the way people work and feel. I want more collaboration at the right time and at the right moment. I want to create a healthy balance between ivory towers and battlefields.
It makes a huge difference. I believe it is possible to work that way. You need space. You need to involve people in different parts. There needs to be a time to diffuse and synthesise. You can run away, but you always need to come back. We could do morning catch ups and evening catch ups. You should create an atmosphere of openness. People should speak up, even if it’s a stupid idea. Someone might pick it up and build on it. You need to change the dynamic. You need to make people looser. People have a lot of anxieties. Positive energy in the room is really important.
I think those suggestions could be really powerful. It’s all about people first. Letting those people think about themselves, about how they should work as a team and then make the right work.
In the beginning you were talking about feedback. Would you find that interesting if we would structure that and pour it into some kind of framework?
I would love to do that. It’s very British to hold yourself in. People should understand that critique is a good thing and that it’s mostly not about you as a person, but more about your work. You should be careful though that feedback moments don’t become moan sessions. There are certain people who are fantastic at building up. Others walk into a room and take it down. When there’s too much negative energy, it brings the atmosphere down. If you do those things in the morning, how do you think people’s productivity is going to be throughout the entire day?
Any other suggestions to change the way people work?
We should change the way people sit. We should make small teams and experiment more. We should have more rooms. It’s very harmful to hide things for each other and only show them your work when you’re supposed to show them. There should be more feedback loops. Another thing is emails. People are not sitting that far from each other. This is a huge part of culture. Another thing is meeting time. Some people don’t value meeting time. Sometimes you need to go and search people who didn’t show up on time. If you don’t have the respect to turn up to someone’s meeting on time, then why would you have the respect to deliver something to a client on time?
Can we conclude that if we want to understand happiness, we need to look closer at more fundamental stuff such as the way we should work together, the company’s raison d’être and our employees’ values and behaviors?
That pretty much synthesises it, yes.
The best interviews don’t only give answers, but raise more questions.
Initially, I wanted to have a conversation about the meaning of being happy in a work environment, motivations behind happiness and things that could be related to happiness.
As it turned out, the interview unraveled that happiness was only the tip of the iceberg. I was missing the bigger picture. Employee happiness could be influenced by other domains (Thanks Greg!) such as purpose (the reason why you exist), process (how you work) and culture (your values and behaviors).
When I was playing the recorded video again and writing the transcript, I detected three big questions that I was constantly asking myself.
- Which companies are doing well in terms of purpose? And how are they doing it?
- Which companies are doing well in terms of process? And how are they doing it?
- Which companies are doing well in terms of culture? And how are they doing it?
I had the feeling that if I could solve these questions, I would have a solid case. These three questions could construct the blueprint of my happiness story. I would be able to add value to my peers and the industry by learning from them and by formulating creative recommendations with the help of The Happiness Table.
You are free not to, but it would be really cool if you read my post that covers these three questions. It is titled “Chapter Five: Companies who get happiness.” But before you click, I would like to ask you to read “Chapter Four: A definition of happiness on the work floor.” first.
— Thomas
