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12
Work Smarter
Business Trend Magazine
What makes a
thriving business
By Shelley Prevost, Access America Transport
As a happiness researcher and
resident Director of Happiness
for Access America Transport,
I am charged with building a thriving
organization where employees are happy
and healthy. Intuitively, I have known
what is meant by “thriving organization,”
but I was recently given the opportunity
to operationalize the definition in
concrete terms. Although my definition
is still a work in progress, I’ve identified
three principles thriving organizations
seem to share.
First, they have clearly defined
values, and everything they do
spirals around these values.
A vision is a statement of what is
possible, the picture of the future you
want to create. It isn’t a strategic plan. It
isn’t your goals or methodology. The
thriving companies I study collectively
know who they are, what they’re doing,
and most importantly, why they’re
doing it. If employees in a company
don’t share this vision, or, in the case
of many companies, even have this
vision, then they will likely experience
internal entropy. Further, thriving
companies translate their vision
statements into operating values. Then
they inculcate those core values into
policies, procedures, strategies and
recruitment. These values touch every
aspect of the organization in an authentic
and animated way.
A few weeks ago I visited Zappos,
a company known for its high-energy,
quirky and positive company culture.
Every company should have a workforce
like Zappos—engaged, happy, fun and
flourishing. Zappos representatives shared
their secret sauce to becoming inspiring
and legendary in their industry. They
have spent a great deal of time identifying
their core values. Everything, and I mean
everything, they do revolves around these
values. During an initial interview, Zappos
asks potential hires “On a scale of 1-10,
how weird are you” This inquiry assesses
the candidate’s “culture fit” with Value
#3: Create Fun and a Little Weirdness.
Second, these companies
are fortunate to have humble,
democratic and demanding
leadership. I’ve had the opportunity
to meet and work with some stellar
executives. Thriving companies share
a common principle in the type of
leaders they enlist and in the way they
are led. Jim Collins explores the idea
of Level 5 Leadership in his seminal
book Good to Great, and I have found
his assessment to be true – with an
addition. Great leaders are both humble
and a bit ruthless, as Collins suggests,
but the leaders I’m meeting along the
way also ignite curiosity. They promote
curiosity and subsequently innovation
by getting out of the way of their team’s
strengths. They position themselves at the
helm of the moving ship, not to steer or
enact change, but to set the vision and
preempt disaster. Anything but laissezfaire,
these leaders put exceptional people
around them, judiciously mobilize moving
parts, empower their people to dig deep
creatively and inspirationally, and then
they get out of the way!
Finally, thriving organizations
embrace PERMA. I’m cheating
a bit here. This helpful mnemonic
actually stands for five principles (and
I would argue that all of them are
necessary for a company to thrive). They
are Positive Emotions, Engagement,
Relationships, Meaningfulness and
Achievement. PERMA is a concept
originated by Martin Seligman, the father
of Positive Psychology, and serves to
push our rather myopic understanding
of happiness into something a bit
meatier.
Happiness researchers delineate
happiness into two categories: feeling good
(pleasure à la sunsets and good wine)
and meaning (purpose à la engagement
and flow). The attributes of PERMA
provide the empirical building blocks for
happiness studies and can single-handedly
change how an entire organization
functions.
If you want to ramp up genuine
happiness in your organization, start
here—with PERMA. It takes almost
nothing to start your weekly team meeting
with a couple “thank-yous” to your
employees (positive emotion). Recognize
their accomplishments, both professional
and personal (achievement). Measure
their strengths with any number of
assessments available and then empower
them to spend at least 70 percent of
their time playing to those strengths
(engagement). You get the picture.
If your organization is thriving, we’d
love to hear what you’re doing. Tell us
what’s working. Share your ideas.
Dr. Shelley
Prevost works
and consults
with Access
America
Transport,
a company
affiliated
with Lamp
Post Group,
where she serves as a cultural engineer and
resident Director of Happiness. With 15 years
of experience in the field of psychology, she
provides a necessary counterbalance to the
more logic-based business practices. At Lamp
Post, she advises employees on establishing
effective interpersonal relations in the
workplace, communicating openly and directly,
identifying guiding values and mediating
conflict efficiently. Contact her at sprevost@
lamppostgroup.com