Chapter Six
The Happiness Table.
This is the sixth chapter of the story “The Happiness Table: on fueling growth by understanding happiness in creative companies.” It is my Advanced Work-Based Project and my final deliverable for my MA in Digital Media at Hyper Island.
This post is a synthesis of the previous chapters. I’ve challenged myself to come up with one framework that gives a simple and concise overview of the knowledge I’ve gathered. Moreover, I wanted to make it very practical as well. I’ve tried to boil it down to what’s most important: easy and hands-on exercises that add value by and to people whom I consider as my peers.
This is for people who believe that having a strong purpose is necessary to make people happy. For those who understand that the way they work affects their state of mind. For makers like you and me, who get real joy out of both thinking and doing.
You can print it, hang it on a wall, draw on it, change it or simply use it as an inspiration to both grow your business and make people happy at the same time.
The table is divided into three parts. The first box describes three business domains that are absolutely necessary for growth — purpose, process and culture. These three domains are defined according to contemporary best practices. In other words, it is possible that this model will evolve.
There is a connection between the contemporary best practices of these three domains and the second box, which describes the drivers behind happiness in creative companies. And this is how I read the table:
“Creative companies who get it have the right purpose by aligning human centricity with business needs which leads to a larger purpose that transcends the employee’s purpose; which could lead to happiness.”
“Creative companies who get it follow antifragile processes that help them to adapt faster. Processes like lean, agile, holocracy and open allocation give autonomy, status and freedom; that could lead to happiness.”
“Creative companies who get it establish the right culture of people who make things. Making things gives the feeling of mastery, flow and a sense of purpose; which could lead to happiness.”
I used the word could, because I understand that there are so many external variables that could influence happiness too. A lot of them are hard to isolate.
E.g. You have a strong purpose, but you don’t like or are able to change the way people work in the agency.
E.g. You work in an agile way, but your chapter lead is a total wack job.
E.g. People are “making” things, but without a purpose.
These are problems that often happen outside the domain, which makes them sometimes hard to control. Also, they make it less interesting to look at. There are basically so many ways to bring a person’s happiness level down.
What I’m interested in, are problems inside the domain itself. Problems ask for solutions. And solutions take the shape of ideas.
While I was writing the previous chapters, I came up with a few ideas that could inspire you and help you on the work floor. I encourage you to try them and to let me know how they’ve turned out. It would also be of great value to know how you’ve managed to implement them.
The Seligman Exercise
Category
Purpose
Problem
Unawareness of meaning of happiness on the work floor.
Exercise
Gather your group of colleagues or team members and let them sit in a circle.
Ask the question “What does it mean for you to be happy on the work floor?”
Let them reflect first.
Then, ask them to sit together in small groups and give each member the opportunity to answer.
Time to go back to the cirle. Play the Seligman Ted Talk.
When finished, ask the following two questions to the whole group: “How can we create more moments of flow during our projects?” & “How can we have a better purpose?”
Let them go back to smaller groups and ask them to come up with ideas.
Let each group present their ideas and ask other groups to give feedback.
Put the presented ideas on a wall and ask everyone to vote — each team member gets three stickers.
Prototype the most popular ones.
Implement.
Co-create your Purpose
Category
Purpose
Problem
In most cases, a creative company’s purpose is driven from top to bottom. Fresh people who are coming in often don’t “feel” the purpose. Established people have forgotten about it or have created their own interpretation.
Exercise 1
Gather your group of colleagues or team members and let them sit in a circle.
You can choose between a couple of questions: “What does our purpose mean?” or “How do you see our purpose nowadays?” or “Is our purpose still relevant in this world?”
Let them reflect first.
Then, ask them to sit together in small groups and give each member the opportunity to answer.
Time to go back to the cirle. Each member gives his or her interpretation of the question.
Hang every member’s contribution somewhere visible.
Understand and empathise.
Exercise 2
Do the same, but on a team or project level.
Ask everyone what for them the purpose of the project is. What do they want to achieve? And more importantly, why?
The SCARF Game
Category
Process
Problem
Unawareness of each other’s motivations. There are so many people who think their motivation is a perfect representation of their fellow employees.
Exercise
Sit together with your project team.
Take a couple of Post-Its and let them use one for each member.
Ask everyone to be blatantly honest.
Write down the most important motivation that belongs to each member. Who is driven by status? Certainty? Autonomy? Relatedness? Fairness? Or something else.
Write one for yourself too.
Let them present their Post-Its to each other. Ask them to also give the reason why they’ve chosen for that particular motivation.
Give them a moment to try to understand the meaning of the feedback and the session in general.
Reality Micro Agency
(I’ve stolen this idea from Mikhail Goldgaber, who is the new UX Director at POSSIBLE)
Category
Process
Problem
Unawareness of the many available process methodologies to improve speed and better work.
Exercise
Create your own little ecosystem by starting super small with only one team that you can trust, is talented and is willing to make a change.
Find a brief to which you can apply a new process methodology (think holacracy).
Convince Human Resources (could be hard sometimes, I know).
Work on the brief in a separate room.
Film everything that happens.
Edit and highlight the most important things depending on which point you are trying to make.
Present your findings to the whole company.
The Maker’s Cabin
Category
Culture
Problem
There’s no maker’s mentality and certainly no visible manifestation of that value.
Exercise
Find the handy people. Build a Maker’s Cabin with the right tools. Think Raspberry Pie, Arduino, Makey Makey, paper, pens, scissors, cardboard, LEGO, etc.
Present the purpose of the cabin: to unleash the right type of creativity in every employee and to establish a culture of makers.
Introduce “cabin dates”: one person who is comfortable “making things” (e.g. knows how to code) sits together with someone who is less comfortable.
Ask them to work on a real brief for a couple of hours that they are currently working on (without any obligation of success).
Gamify the experience. Give “maker points” to the ones who use the cabin frequently. Tell them they can exchange these points for a certain reward depending on the individual’s needs (think about The SCARF Game).
Give the makers the freedom to choose whether they want to present their prototype or not.
If they choose yes, let them present it during a big meeting or a “Thirsty Thursday”.
Friday Coder Dojo
Category
Culture
Problem
There’s no maker’s mentality and certainly no visible manifestation of that value.
Idea
Apply the concept of a Coder Dojo to a professional creative environment.
Try to find the people in the company who are willing to make a change and who have the right knowledge to facilitate the Dojo.
Start small. Organise a session with “the bright spots”. Find the people who are already showing the right behavior. This could simply be “showing interest”.
Walk to their desk and make them warm.
Organise a Coder Dojo. Bring along someone who is good at filming and editing.
Spread the movie throughout the company.
Scale.
(On another note: this could also be of PR value if applied in the right way. Something like “The first agency organising a Coder Dojo. For itself.”)
Most of these six ideas are not yet proven to work and the success rate of each will highly depend on how you implement them.
Nevertheless, these six ideas excite me a lot. I’m going to do everything in my power to implement them. And I hope you are going to do the same.
I also encourage you to come up with your own happiness ideas. I’ve now given myself some time to brainstorm, but I have the feeling that we could uncover so much more through passion, collective intelligence and cognitive surplus.
It’s about the hunger we share. We have the restlessness to constantly question ideas and make them better. We feel the need to change things not because it’s cool, but because it’s cool ánd necessary.
I’ve made the first move by creating this basic prototype. Please drop me a line at thomas.waegemans@hyperisland.se, and I will give you the login details. The prototype is a simple app idea with a database of the previous “happiness ideas”. There’s also a possibility to upload your own ideas into the categories Purpose, Process and Culture.
Happy clicking!
P.S. You can read some final thoughts about this project over here. It’s a reflection and a small note of appreciation for the rockstars who have helped me throughout the past couple of months.
— Thomas
