It is not innovation that matters, it is agreement. And we might need innovation to reach agreement.
The essence of the self-help movement is that we should decide to be happy. Follow this link to the references that 40% of our happiness is what we intend. We set out to have a good or bad time? I haven’t read this yet, so I need to log on to Amazon and put this on my wish list.
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to attend Tal Ben-Shahar’s presentations in Scotland earlier this month, so I was delighted to find this link on the Happiness Institute to his appearance on a US talkshow.
UPDATE: I believe Tal Ben-Shahar has moved to Penn Uni and is running an online course on happiness from there.
A link trail on designing organizations around possibilities rather than constraints from Wayne Hall at Idea Festival.
The words sound so similar yet have almost the opposite meanings. This is the difference.
I’ll believe it when I see it or I will see it when I believe it.
I’ve been familiar with the Desiderata since I was a child (it was popularised by a pop singer in the sixties, wasn’t it?) and I have just re-read it.
Now I read the poetry of David Whyte, Otto Scharmer’s work on presencing, ideas of emergence behind The Legend of Bagger Vance, I see and hear a lot more in this well-quoted poem.
A link to Martin Seligman’s paper summarizing progress in positive psychology – now a few years old, but a good place to start for the classically trained psychologist.
UPDATE: Primer in positive psychology
So many people believe that management and leadership are separate, even antagonistic, activities. But I still believe that the two go hand-in-hand. Leadership requires good management. It is important to understand how work is organized and to shape institutions so we can make work easier, more fun and more productive.
I’ve just tracked back to Martin Seligman’s original plans to develop critical mass for positive psychology. It is an excellent case study of organizational leadership. This paper was published at the outset. It describes the inputs, outputs and processes needed to create a successful institution. We can see the results for ourselves.
I couldn’t help thinking of the parallels in the Executive Summary and Barack Obama’s speeches.
“Entering a new millennium, we face a historical choice. Left alone on the pinnacle of economic and political leadership, the United States can continue to increase its material wealth while ignoring the human needs of its people and that of the rest of the planet. Such a course is likely to lead to increasing selfishness, alienation between the more and the less fortunate, and eventually to chaos and despair.
At this juncture the social and behavioral sciences can play an enormously important role. They can articulate a vision of the good life that is empirically sound while being understandable and attractive. They can show what actions lead to well being, to positive individuals, and to flourishing community. Psychology should be able to help document what kind of families result in the healthiest children, what work environments support the greatest satisfaction among workers, what policies result in the strongest civic commitment.
Yet we have scant knowledge of what makes life worth living. Psychology has come to understand quite a bit about how people survive and endure under conditions of adversity. But we know very little about how normal people flourish under more benign conditions. . .”
Positive psychology is our zeitgeist. We want a more positive world. That doesn’t mean a “happy clappy” world. It means a competent world where we address our differences vigorously, yet with thought and compassion.
The positive psychology movement is been a masterful piece of strategic management. Study it to see the merging of leadership and management!
Thanks to Jon Ingham, I had a look at a Melcrum report on employee engagement. 29% of employers who use a formal scheme to engage employees use appreciative inquiry. Well 29% of 25% is 8% – that is a lot of employers. That is the most welcome news of 2008.
Anyone else interested in this, particularly if you are in the UK, please do contact me.
I’m hesitant to analyze it lest I detract from its impact. What is interesting is that the “deficit” is conceived as an enemy, not part of his own side. There is a lesson here for managers, I think.
Mark McGuiness has interviewed coaches for the creative industries in the UK for his Master’s thesis.
UPDATE: How is Mark McGuiness doing? I see him on LinkedIn sometimes.
The creative industries in UK account for about 8% of the GDP, I believe.