On Thursday, February 20th, I had an inspiring start to the day. I attended a HBR webinar by Jennifer Moss who spoke about her new book, Why are We Here?: Creating a Work Culture Everyone Wants. In an engaging manner that combined rich thoughtfulness and pithy, very memorable statements such as that of the title, Moss took us on a journey of the global workplace, albeit with an American tinge, examining a seemingly shared situation of disengagement and unhappiness. Intriguingly, Moss reported that, in Canada, where I live, 8/10 are disengaged, and in the UK, it’s 9/10. She mentioned research from Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, that states the “Unhappiness Problem” costs 9% of global GDP!! Moss captured this unhappiness and sense of malaise with the catchy, yet deeply resonating statement: “Work feels like going to school without art, gym or recess!”
So, how can we create more workplace happiness?
Moss offers a litany of suggestions, anchored with “operationalizing hope” and responding to the “massive purpose gap.” Indeed, Moss suggests that hope is the dominant need that workers are looking for from their leaders, followed by trust. Moss locates this in this unfolding state of “polycrisis,” that we are living in, and suggests leaders celebrate milestones more frequently, end the ‘above and beyond’ trap and tell more stories.
In addressing the issue of purpose, Moss was especially insightful. She showed a graph that showed that while 85% executives feel a sense of purpose, only 15% of frontline managers do.
In addition, she suggested we move away from mission statements to personal values, a nod to a values-based leadership approach. To do this, Moss suggested the following:
Learn what lights people up
Make the mundane meaningful
Save space for exploration
Initiate stay interviews
Develop ‘multiplex’ relationships
Indeed, Moss seems to be sketching an approach to leadership and improving workplace culture that shows care, compassion, curiosity and creativity, re-igniting human(e) relationships precisely when we seem to be “all going through a collective mid-life crisis.”
Part of cultivating this re-enchantment with our workplace and its culture, involves thinking about intentional rituals to reanimate what we do at work, how we do it, and with whom we do it. Moss talked about research that illustrated that employees who ate lunch once per week with colleagues were more cooperative and exhibited improved performance as a unit.
It reminded me of a small workplace that I used to “intern” at more than a decade ago, while exploring the contours of another career. I used to go on a non-teaching day, which happened to be Friday. And every Friday, a band of workers would take lunch together and eat around the boardroom. Perhaps that was the secret of the workplace’s relative success?
Eating lunch with your colleagues opened up to what Moss and others have called “intentional serendipity.” Intentional serendipity refers to the act of purposely putting yourselves into situations where you can open yourself to exchanges with new people, increasing your exposure to new ideas. For me, it seemed that pursuing moments of intentional serendipity might be an antidote to being disengaged and detached at work. Indeed, it may be the first step that we can all take to reattaching ourselves to a shared, collective, purpose, where trust is built and hope is ignited, and where we collaborate on “creating a work culture everyone wants.”
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