Author: Markus Peschl
In our previous post, we have talked about the importance and nature of joy. We also said that to make work joyful, it’s necessary to bring purpose back to work. As we have seen, joy (eudaimonia) is not just about feeling well, having fun, or satisfying superficial needs. Rather, joy is about engaging in meaningful activities that contribute both to self-actualization and to bringing new meaning and purpose to the world and our organizations.
It has become clear that in general, material or financial rewards don’t necessarily lead to more joy beyond hygienic levels, and they don’t ensure lasting and sustainable satisfaction or employees’ loyalty. What has turned out to be more important is that a job provides purpose and meaning to the employees.
Such a working environment makes employees give the best of their efforts, as well as lets them grow beyond their possibilities and limits of their official duties and job descriptions. It also empowers them to become highly creative and innovative because they know how their work contributes to the bigger picture and that they are part of fulfilling a larger purpose.
As leaders, we have the responsibility to not only care about the financial performance of an organization but also to make it a joyful place to work for everybody, by focusing on purpose and self-actualization. Based on our more theoretical considerations, the following points are the most important principles and guidelines for putting them into practice:
1. Be alive and enable agency.
Being alive is one of the most fundamental experiences of every human person. It implies a sense of agency. People feel they can change something within them and around them. They experience themselves as the authors of their actions and see their actual impact.
Leaders need to provide an environment in which employees are not limited to pseudo-agency, but where they must both take responsibility and earn recognition for their successful actions. This is a part of what we call creating Enabling Spaces1 – work environments and an organizational design that support people’s agency and which are alive themselves.2
2. Create a sense of ownership and autonomy.
Related to the previous point, it’s important to give employees a sense of ownership and autonomy in their tasks and daily work. Both contribute to an experience of being in control, leading not only to employees’ self-actualization but also to a higher level of identification and engagement with their company.
While giving up control can sometimes be difficult for leaders, many studies3 show that replacing a controlling attitude with an enabling mindset has positive effects on performance, creativity, and innovation in an organization.4
3. Design meaningful workplaces based on purpose.
As we have seen above, creating a meaningful workplace is closely linked to the human longing for eudaimonia. This means that leaders have to organize work in such a way that the employees can fulfill their potentials and capacities.
In the best case, employees will find a connection between their own highest purpose and the purpose of the company they are working for. It’s the leader’s task to support their employees in this process and make this connection. Ideally, each employee should have an understanding of what is their particular added value for the user in the overall value creation process5.
To achieve that, a leader has to offer orientation and direction. For instance, by clearly and transparently communicating and exemplifying the company’s purpose and objectives as well as by demonstrating an integrative, holistic, and ecosystems perspective covering every point in the value chain.
Personal coaching, well-designed onboarding processes, or stakeholder-specific workshops are additional means to achieve this kind of engagement and alignment leading to employees’ more joyful work experiences and higher levels of job satisfaction.
4. Spur healthy social interactions and a sense of belonging.
Humans are not only cognitive beings but first and foremost social beings. Hence, apart from purposeful work, social interaction and a healthy social environment are critical for a joyful workplace.
In this context, trust and strong social ties are key drivers leading to a sense of belonging, as well as to an experience of being accepted, welcomed, and valued. That, in turn, increases the level of employee well-being and engagement.
Trust and strong social ties are key drivers leading to a sense of belonging, as well as to an experience of being accepted, welcomed, and valued.
Participatory sense-making is one of the key activities of humans6, and it is also one of the key activities of every organization. It has both a cognitive part (“sense-making”) and a social aspect (“participatory”). Leaders are in charge of creating an environment in which the combination of these aspects can lead to joyful and inspiring forms of collaboration, creativity, innovation, and decision-making processes.
It’s the harmonious and thoughtful integration of these aspects, as well as a leader’s open mindset, which leads to deep insights and interesting results both on an individual and on an organizational level.7
5. Allow being confronted with the unexpected in a safe space and nourish creativity.
One of the reasons why we fear uncertainty is that we don’t expect it, and we lack understanding of the unexpected situation. As a consequence, we cannot predict the future and the implications of our actions. The experience of uncertainty can lead to a sense of anxiety or loss of control.
However, it can be transformed through direct confrontation with this uncertain reality in a safe environment by closely engaging with it. In such an environment, we can react to these uncertain situations with a mindset of observation.
Trying to make sense of what is really happening around us on a deeper level and reflecting on our patterns of perception are all instruments leading to a more profound level of understanding.
In most cases, this understanding will reduce the level of uncertainty and anxiety. It will bring forth alternative and creative perspectives opening new ways of dealing with uncertain phenomena or situations. Uncertainty then becomes a source of creativity.
If this happens in a safe organizational environment, employees will not only regain their sense of agency, but also experience self-actualization. They will feel alive and fulfilled with eudaimonia, as being creative is both a highly challenging and at the same time satisfying activity.
Again, it’s the leader’s job to create such a safe and enabling environment where mistakes, failures, or sometimes risky decisions are seen as learning experiences, rather than something to be sanctioned.
6. Develop a proactive and future-oriented mindset
In most companies, we find a mindset, which is driven by highly standardized processes. While standardization itself is not a bad thing (it provides stability, security, and efficiency), we have to keep in mind that these processes are mainly determined by past experiences, are mostly reactive, and do not contribute a lot to employees´ self-fulfillment.
They are not only the result of reacting to changes in the company’s environment but also the way they have been designed was mostly driven by the past – they are extrapolations from the past into the future.8
Eudaimonia, similarly to innovation-driven companies, is about future-making. It’s about engaging in a future-oriented mindset of both an organization and its employees who proactively “learn from the future as it emerges”.
In most cases, this leads to alienation from purpose, because activities are highly automatized and standardized. They can be executed without knowing why and there is little motivation to truly tackle the challenges of the future.
Such a mindset is not in line with what eudaimonia is about and doesn’t promote a fulfilling and joyful work environment. In a sense, eudaimonia is always oriented and pointing towards the future. It has a lot to do with actively co-shaping the future by realizing its potentials.
Eudaimonia, similarly to innovation-driven companies, is about future-making.9 It’s about engaging in a future-oriented mindset of both an organization and its employees who proactively “learn from the future as it emerges”.10 The role of the leader is to develop in themselves, and later help others develop a future-oriented mindset and skills.
7. Allow for recreation and slack time
Being efficient might boost the performance of a company in the short term. But as we have seen, an activity that is performed for the sake of itself might lead to a contemplative and restful state of mind, in which the employees are in resonance with themselves.
Results from neuroscience and cognitive science have shown that such a state is a powerful source of creativity and contributes to bringing forth novelty and innovation. Even more so, if it’s not explicitly directed towards a product or an outcome.
As an implication, leaders should provide their employees some slack time and space for re:creation. It will not only boost their creativity but also establish an atmosphere in which they don’t feel that their creative activities are forced to happen.
If you’d like us to help you put the Enjoyable Company principles outlined in this post into practice, we invite you to schedule an introductory call with us below!
We are a multidisciplinary team with over 20 years of experience enabling meaningful change in organizations. Our clients value the authentic, purpose-driven, and co-creative approach we bring to their transformation projects.
With a background in cognitive science, we will help you to deeply understand your employees’ needs and motivations. Then, we will partner with them in realizing your organization’s enjoyable future.
References
Image: Stefan Steinbauer
[1] Peschl, M.F. and T. Fundneider (2012). Spaces enabling game-changing and sustaining innovations: Why space matters for knowledge creation and innovation. Journal of Organisational Transformation and Social Change (OTSC) 9(1), 41–61.
[2] Peschl, M.F. and T. Fundneider (2014). Designing and enabling interfaces for collaborative knowledge creation and innovation. From managing to enabling innovation as socio-epistemological technology. Computers and Human Behavior 37, 346–359.
[3] Cable, D. and F. Vermeulen (2018). Making work meaningful: A leader’s guide. McKinsey Quarterly 2018 (October), 1–9.
[4] Peschl, M.F. and T. Fundneider (2017). Uncertainty and opportunity as drivers for re-thinking management: Future-oriented organizations by going beyond a mechanistic culture in organizations. In W. Küpers, S. Sonnenburg, and M. Zierold (Eds.), ReThinking Management: Perspectives and impacts of cultural turns and beyond, pp. 79–96. Wiesbaden: Springer.
[5] Shattering the status quo: A conversation with Haier’s Zhang Ruimin. (2021, July 27). McKinsey & Company. Retrieved January 19, 2022, from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/shattering-the-status-quo-a-conversation-with-haiers-zhang-ruimin
[6] De Jaegher, H. and E. Di Paolo (2007). Participatory sense-making. An enactive approach to social cognition. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 6(4), 485–507.
[7] De Jaegher, H. (2019). Loving and knowing: reflections for an engaged epistemology. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 2019.
[8] Peschl, M.F., T. Fundneider, and A. Kulick (2015). On the limitations of classical approaches to innovation. From predicting the future to enabling “thinking from the future as it emerges”. In Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development (Ed.), Designing the Future: Economic, Societal and Political Dimensions of Innovation, pp. 454–475. Wien: Echomedia.
[9] Wenzel, M., H. Krämer, J. Koch, and A. Reckwitz (2020). Future and Organization Studies: On the rediscovery of a problematic temporal category in organizations. Organization Studies 41(10), 1441–1455.
[10] Scharmer, C.O. (2016). Theory U. Leading from the future as it emerges. The social technology of presencing (second ed.). San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
