Happiness

Happiness is a Key Performance Indicator (KPI).

On every team I’ve worked with over the past several years happiness has been a key indicator of whether or not that team will be successful in what they are working towards. In other words happy teams do good work.

I’m not the only one to notice this connection and there is a lot of psychological and sociological research that supports these first hand observations. This reverse causality – success being the result of happiness rather than it’s cause – shakes up our ideas of why we do what our jobs as managers, leaders, entrepreneurs actually are.

This page is a collection of resources I find important on the topic. I hope you find them helpful.

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Drive
Daniel Pink has collected 40 years of social science and psychological research into what makes people perform the best. He explains with clarity and humor why money is a particularly problematic motivator and why trust is perhaps your most valuable asset. Find the book and the author’s blog here.

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The How of Happiness
This is a great book containing practical tools for increasing individual happiness.There’s a short article that covers the main points from the article here.

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The Happiness Hypothesis
One of the most important books I’ve read in a decade this book altered the way I look at culture, teams, and my life. Equal parts psychology, comparative religion and cultural anthropology it provides a sweeping overview of how our minds work, what makes us happy and explains why some people find happiness so easy and others find is so challenging. It’s well written, engaging and potentially life-changing.

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Flow
This book by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi was an instant classic when it came out in the early ’90s. It’s a clear description of the most enjoyable and productive mental states (e.g. flow) and how to set up conditions so we can get there regularly. One of the reasons I think paired programming and other development methodologies can be so powerful is they optimize for flow states. His more recent books Good Work and Good Business apply these concepts to the business world.

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The Progress Principle
Written by a Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile and independent researcher Steven Kramer the book examines hard data on what people do with their time and how they feel about it. They say “…of all the events that engage people at work, the single most important — by far — is simply making progress in meaningful work.” The subtitle “Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work” should resonate with Agilists. For a quick hit read their article in the NYT.

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Brené Brown on Vulnerability
About a year ago a good friend sent me this remarkable talk by social-scientist and qualitative researcher Brené Brown. She explains in clear, human terms what makes us lead happy, whole-hearted lives and what stands in the way. It’s provocative and yes, changed my life.