Like Minds - Dr. Paddi Lund “Building The Happiness-Centered Business”

Dr. Lund’s book “Building The Happiness-Centered Business” is a masterpiece of wisdom and simplicity.  His book is a very quick, easy and enjoyable read and it makes a compelling case for re-evaluating our business practices at their very core.

There are several big thoughts in the book but my favorite is the concept that we all too often get caught up in a cycle of believing we can buy happiness with unhappiness.  His point is we spend 40 or more hours a week settling for working somewhere that does not make us happy to earn a paycheck with which we attempt to purchase happiness in the form of houses, cars, vacations, etc.

This is a foolish and futile endeavor to say the least and contributes significantly to the results mentioned in my George Carlin post earlier.  Paddi suggests turning this model upside down and striving to create happiness at work.  If you succeed in that effort, then you can leverage the results of that happiness on happiness at home and in the world itself.

Therefore, as an employee, you should seriously reconsider employment that does not fundamentally make you happy.  As an employer, you can significantly differentiate your business from all others and win the war for talent by focusing on manufacturing happiness as opposed to products and services.

There are two more big thoughts in his book.  One is that business systems are the key to simplifying business and making the consistent creation of happiness possible.  Without business systems, you are left with chaos.

This reminds me of one of my favorite quotes:

Procedure is what separates us from the evil forces of chaos.

                                                            Buzz Lightyear 

Secondly, he discovered that most of the unhappiness in his business was not related to the amount of money that they made or the pace of the work, but it was largely determined by the way they treated each other.

He put all of these concepts together to create a “Courtesy System” of 8 performance standards to create happiness at work.  For example, performance standard number 1 is to speak very politely using a person’s name and to say “please” and “thank you” at a minimum.

The remainder of the courtesy system is just as basic, simple and filled with common sense.  The reason it works is that common sense is not very common and must be indoctrinated within your business culture.

You may be wondering how something so small as a rigorously enforced courtesy system could create such a huge difference in organizational results.  The answer is contained in “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" by Malcolm Gladwell.

The answer is the criminology concept of “the broken windows theory”.   This concept was also highlighted in Rudy Giuliani’s “Leadership” book.

The metaphor of the broken window is that it is much more likely for a normally law abiding citizen or even the criminally inclined to throw a rock through a window if there is already one broken window.  It is about the power of context.

The examples given in Gladwell’s and Giuliana’s books for the proof of the theory is how New York City was able to transform itself from the most crime infested big city in America to the safest within the decade of the 90’s.  They fought their murder and other violent crime rate with prosecuting public urination and graffiti. 

How are you contributing to building happiness centered businesses?