Jurgen's book is practical and fun, but most of all, it's subversive. If you care enough to get started, you'll discover that these tools will transform everything about your organization.
Seth Godin
Author of The Icarus Deception
Brilliant, counterintuitive, and creative approach to management. Very insightful and humanistic. Highly recommended!
Derek Sivers
Founder of CD Baby, TED speaker, author of Anything You Want
Managing for Happiness is the best walkabout in a constantly evolving landscape of management.
Tomas Rybing
Director Project Management at Aptilo Networks
In our always-on, real-time world, the nature of work has changed, potentially for the better. While people can be more autonomous and more productive, they can also self-destruct easier. Jurgen tackles these important changes in his fun and interesting book.
David Meerman Scott
Bestselling author of The New Rules of Marketing and PR
Don't wait for managers to fix management problems around you. Be the manager of your own fate and take action instead! This insightful book will not only help you get on the right track, but will also teach you how to enable people around you so that you can create a better working environment for yourself.
Kamil PosiadaƗa
Agile Software Developer
Engage people, improve work, and delight clients: These are the tenets of this amazing book, which will show you how to transform the entire layer of management in your organization into a wellspring of creativity, productivity, and engagement. Excellent!
Marshall Goldsmith
A Thinkers Top 50 Expert, Top Ten Global Business Thinker, and top-ranked Executive Coach
Today, all managers are marketers. You need to sell your ideas, your plans, and your solutions. Managing for Happiness sets you on a path to success in a world where we are each responsible for managing our own career and our own contribution to the world.
Penelope Trunk
Author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success
How do you become one of the best managers in the world? Sports professionals would hire a good coach and exercise daily. Managing for Happiness from Jurgen Appelo is your personal coach who gives you tons of exercises and practical advice for the modern manager. The only thing you need to add is the daily exercising.
Tobias Leisgang
Systems Engineering Manager at Texas Instruments
In a rapidly changing world where predictable Newtonian doctrine is no longer up to the challenges being placed on managers, Jurgen Appelo's timely book provides an incredibly accessible leap into the thinking that is likely to define the manager of tomorrow.
Deane Sloan
Chief Technology Officer at Equinox IT
Want to know what the next stage of management may look like? Do yourself a favor and take a look at Managing for Happiness by Jurgen Appelo. Chock full of management nuggets as well as exercises and activities, Managing for Happiness provides insights into how to engage the next-generation workforce.
John Baldoni
Author of MOXIE: The Secret to Bold and Gutsy Leadership, Chair of Leadership Development at N2Growth
Do you want a feel-good book about management? Enjoy reading Managing for Happiness. Every chapter is full of aha! moments. I read it in public transport, and I reached the office with a smile and great ideas to improve the workplace.
Jeanne Estelle Thebault
President of Montreal IIBA Chapter
Steering a software factory team of 700 people, I'm confronted every day with the challenge to unleash the best out of our people and our teams in order for happy customers to receive high-quality software every two weeks. This book provides our teams with insights, tools, stories, games . . . to keep our people doing the right thing right, with passion.
Johan Lybaert
Director of Applications Europe at Cegeka
Do you dream of a management more adapted to the complexity of our world? Great news, this is a reality! Managing for Happiness by Jurgen Appelo is the toolbox of the agile gardener who promotes collaboration, builds the team around common values, grows skills, and motivates his coworkers. You now have the keys to change the world. Like me, read this inspiring book and cultivate happiness in your organization.
Loïc Leofold
AGILE and Management Consultant at Astrakhan
Leadership is hard to get right, but with a decent set of tools and exercises, the job is immeasurably easier. This book offers those tools, exercises, and above all, insight into how a twenty-first century manager behaves. Work and the workforce are fundamentally different compared to how they were even a decade ago, and Jurgen's book helps engage and enthuse the reader to become a better manager and lead their team to success.
Mike Pearce
Development Manager at MOO.com
If management is too important to leave it to managers only, then the agile management practices described by Jurgen Appelo in this book are way too valuable to apply them only to the IT environment. Motivated, nimble, and versatile teams are a pillar of success in today's world of financial services. You will find out how to build them from this book!
Tomasz Sitkowski
Acting CRO at mBank CZ/SK
As the current generation enjoys work-life integration, people will look and respond to “lean forward” management. Managing for Happiness will provide a complete guide to step out of the office and contribute to a culture of success as a goal while having fun as your journey.
Sebastián Diéguez
Agile Coach and Evangelist
Many authors make claims, but Jurgen Appelo delivers on them. He offers a combination of crisp, articulate thoughts in an easy, engaging read. If you're looking for actionable advice that will help you build a better, stronger, and more productive relationship with those you lead, then I'd highly recommend you read Jurgen's book.
Mike Myatt
Author of Hacking Leadership, a Forbes leadership columnist, and founder at N2Growth
There's another way to envision management. In this book, Jurgen Appelo is offering practices and exercises you can easily try, to change your own environment. While developing your management talent, you will say, like me: Thank you, Jurgen!
Alexis Monville
Chief Agility Officer at eNovance, Cofounder of Ayeba
Cover design: Linda Hirzmann
Copyright © 2016 by Jurgen Appelo. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
Published simultaneously in Canada.
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ISBN 978-1-119-26868-0 (cloth); ISBN 978-1-119-26900-7 (ePDF); ISBN 978-1-119-26901-4 (ePub)
I once tried to motivate an employee to improve his performance and productivity by giving him a smaller raise than his peers on the team. It didn't work. The situation actually got worse, and in a typical example of the-universe-hates-all-my-best-intentions, ultimately the whole team was affected by demotivation and resentment.
In my defense, the work this employee had produced was terrible. As his manager, I had to deal with the complaints, threats, and abuse by customers over the quality of our services—or lack thereof—and I was feeling quite desperate. I had to do something! So I did, but it was the wrong approach. And because nothing ever worked, I hated being a manager.
That was 20 years ago.
As a manager, you have to make choices. You cannot just let demotivation among your team members run its course. You have to do something! This book will help you to do things. It contains a number of great practices and exercises for teams and managers in the twenty-first century. Most are borrowed from other people who often did a much better job at motivating their colleagues than I ever could, and they became great managers of teams. Fortunately, I dared to run some experiments of my own and had a couple of small successes too. Therefore, some of the ideas presented here are my own simple inventions.
I started loving management when I decided to stop inflicting bad management practices upon my coworkers. I manage the worldwide Happy Melly business network, the global Management 3.0 licensing program, my speaking engagements, and everyone who is somehow involved with my articles, books, and courseware. I don't pay any of these people an annual bonus in order to get things done; I don't have vacation policies, flextime policies, or open-door policies; and none of my contacts need to fear that I will require an annual performance appraisal. Interestingly enough, the Management 3.0 facilitators, Happy Melly members, and many others I work with are highly engaged, love improving their work, and are eager to learn how to delight their clients. How is that possible without organizing regular one-on-ones in my private office with each and every one of them?
Last year, one of the members of my current team said to me, “You are the first manager I've had who doesn't suck.” She meant that as a compliment. This was 20 years after I made a complete mess of team motivation. Now I am proud to say that my current team members are happy, motivated, and quite productive. And as their manager, I don't suck. That's a relief.
This is a management book for everyone: developers, artists, writers, team leaders, middle managers, designers, project managers, product managers, human resource managers, marketers, testers, coaches, mentors, consultants, trainers, facilitators, entrepreneurs, and freelancers. Everyone is, to some degree, responsible for management activities. This book tells you how you can implement better management, possibly with fewer managers, by looking at what other companies in the world have been doing. They have paved the way for the rest of us!
Read this book and squeeze 20 years of struggle for me into a few days of learning for you. I will show you how you can get a happier organization thanks to great practices and plenty of management activities that, in many cases, don't even require managers.
And maybe it will take me another 20 years of running management experiments to actually become really, really good. I hope you will join me on that journey.
Jurgen Appelo, December 2015
jurgen@noop.nl
No managers were harmed while writing this book.