happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a myriad of health and quality-of-life improvements (Shawn Achor - CEO of Good Think Inc, goodthinkinc.com Author of "The Happiness Advantage")
Similarly to all other trends and fashions of US Corporate microcosm, this one is going to hit Europe in a while, with a big difference versus the past: while other trends (such as engagement or "have a friend at work" stuff) were innovative for employment standards of Europe, where such debates are less frequent, this time there will be a clash. European, Asian and Middle East philosophers have been debating happiness for ages and they never stopped; more, many of them - for example Alain De Botton recently - proposed models and solutions basically requiring to step out from standardization of social rules and norms... the lesson of De Botton held at TED is a jewel of the topic. And what's more "standard" than Corporate culture with its esplicit and tacit norms?
Think about debates in European society (especially coming from feminist or anti-catholic experiences): being happy requires to forget "social status" norms such as being rich, being successful, being married, as all these things promise to make us happy but rarely they really do, if you ever reach them.
More, because of cultural roots, well deep in ages of philosophical thinking (ataraxia of Greeks thinkers) and catholic religion (after life reward comes many times from deprivation in life, especially before Saint Francesco) in many European cultures (French and Italian for example) the idea of being happy at work is simply unacceptable... because of superstition of Ancient Romans, for example, celebrating too much work success is not the right thing as it could generate jealousy in gods (the deus irae, which usually was leading directly to horrible death).
This could be the reason why even the greates liberal entrepreneur of entire Europe, Adriano Olivetti, who was so highly innovative in the search of employee satisfaction and engagement, was not thinking to generate happiness. This is less true in German culture, for example, but still, also there, I personally found hard for German friends to declare they were "happy".
How much does this approach to happiness match with Anglosaxon Corporate Culture? Zero: Corporations are organisms based on reapplicable standard models: "serializing" successful leaders. The role model can change (Henry Ford is different from Steve Jobs), but still people will have (or will try) to comply with the model hoping to reach the same success. And since happiness will be the trending keyword, Anglosaxon companies will start to measure it and try to reapply th role-models game to serialize it.
Could it work? Who knows... but in my mind is clear it cannot: situation reminds me the show business where every fan wants to be like his/her idol... but are the idols happy? And does cloning them can make a fan happy? We know it does not, especially when self-awareness is high: even when you clone your model success, there's no ensurance this will make you happy. Making it simple: in Corporations many want to be an Executive, but very few get there and rarely you see these people happy just because of that. Even if Obama seems an happy person (not all times), does trying to be like him and reach his level of success ensures you will be happy?
Will it be possible to apply US based processes and role-models to European cultures trying to rise employees happiness? Hard to tell: some basic principles could work (have a meaningful work, sleep enough, be healthy, have a rich social life...) but in general the risk of rejection when trying to implement corporate happyness programs will be huge.
Can we use Alain de Botton to explain it to Corporate America friends?
[my 5cents suggested reading: "The happiness project"]
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento