Happiness@Work Podcast

For the next interview, I invited Ralph van Roosmalen - CEO of Management 3.0. Management 3.0 is an international movement started in 2010 by Jurgen Appelo. Their mission is very similar to ours - to change the world of work (and to make the management everyone's job). And as we discussed with Ralph, it is about a mindset change supported by a collection of tools, practices, and games they provide...

A new season and a new episode of Happiness@Work Podcast!

This episode was recorded as an interview during our annual international Happiness@Work conference at the end of 2020. It was my great pleasure to talk to Jason Fried, co-founder, and CEO of the world-famous company Basecamp.

Besides products used by millions of people worldwide and bestselling books like "It doesn't have to be crazy at work", Jason and his team are also known for the great company culture they have. In this episode, you will find out how to build a "calm company" where people can thrive while working fully remotely. And you will be surprised how differently Basecamp works compared to what most of us know about remote work from the past year...

I recorded this episode of the podcast during the International Conference on Happiness at Work in Copenhagen, where both me and Rich led a workshop. Rich Sheridan is the author of a famous book Joy Inc and also founder of Menlo Innovations - company which has the mission to "end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology.".

The unique thing about Menlo Innovations and also the main topic of our interview was pairing. It's the way of work, where two people cooperate on one task. They sit together behind one computer, with one keyboard (or even one pen & paper) and discuss and share their ideas. In the first view, a very unusual idea. But one that brings many advantages to company culture.

We discussed how pairing helps to build feedback culture or how it improves learning within the organization. At Menlo Innovations, pairing is, of course, also an integral part of the interview process and it greatly helps to test for culture fit before looking at the technical topics.

If you'd like to dive deeper into happiness at work, don't miss our international conference coming to Prague (Czech Republic) on October 10th, 2019. For more details about the event, visit happinessatwork.cz.

Mikael Kamber is a journalist and a news anchor on the biggest Danish TV Channel, he has been CEO of Denmark's biggest regional newspaper and much more. And he is also very focused on positive psychology which he studied in the USA. He wrote two books on the topic - "The Yes Culture" (published 2015 and available in English) and "Stronger" (which will be available in English at the beginning of 2019), he is involved in the International Conference on Happiness at Work in Copenhagen, and he has even managed to introduce "the positive segment" on prime time news on Danish TV.

TINYpulse is on-line tool for pulse surveys. It helps you get almost real-time data about the mood in your team. I've been using it for a long time and I'm very happy we could connect with David Niu, it's founder and CEO. But we didn't talk only about the app. Few years ago, David took his "careercation" and travelled the world while interviewing entrepreneurs and CEOs in various countries and cultures. We have much more in common than I expected :)

Our last stop during the trip around the world was Canada. And I was very lucky to meet Calvin there. His company Lykki is in business for 27 and you can see they are doing happiness at work right at the moment you enter the office. We've talked about their values and how they actually live them, about their flat structure and hiring for culture fit but also about their charity projects in Nicaragua. Very inspiring company!

Everyone knows Hawaii as one of the happiest places on Earth. The place where you go for a dream vacation. But many people also live and work there, dealing with similar issues we have anywhere else. Heather is Chief Happiness Officer living in Hawaii. It was a great pleasure to talk with her about her story, Hawaii and also local happy companies...

Strava is not only my favorite mobile app, but also a great company. With Tracy Lorenz who takes care of company culture we discussed many things that define Strava as a company. We went through company core values, talked about regular hackathons (called Strava Jams) and also discussed their focus on diversity and openness.

Zappos is probably world's most famous company when speaking about company values and culture. And it was a great pleasure for me to visit their Las Vegas headquarter for a short tour and a great chat with Jon. What did they go through in past few years? How do they live their values? And what about experiments with holocracy? Check it out!

While visiting Australia I couldn't miss it's most famous happy company - Atlassian, based in Sydney. With Head of R&D and Work Futurist Dom Price we've discussed their culture, values and many interesting tools and practices they use. http://www.happinesspodcast.net/