Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team

A practical handbook for making management great again

Managing for Happiness offers a complete set of practices for more effective management that makes work fun. Work and fun are not polar opposites; they're two sides of the same coin, and making the workplace a pleasant place to be keeps employees motivated and keeps customers coming back for more. It's not about gimmicks or 'perks' that disrupt productivity; it's about finding the passion that drives your business, and making it contagious. This book provides tools, games, and practices that put joy into work, with practical, real-world guidance for empowering workers and delighting customers. These aren't break time exploits or downtime amusements―they're real solutions for common management problems. Define roles and responsibilities, create meaningful team metrics, and replace performance appraisals with something more useful. An organization's culture rests on the back of management, and this book shows you how to create change for the better.

Somewhere along the line, people collectively started thinking that work is work and fun is something you do on the weekends. This book shows you how to transform your organization into a place with enthusiastic Monday mornings.

• Redefine job titles and career paths
• Motivate workers and measure team performance
• Change your organization's culture
• Make management―and work―fun again

Modern organizations expect everyone to be servant leaders and systems thinkers, but nobody explains how. To survive in the 21^st century, companies need to dig past the obvious and find what works. What keeps top talent? What inspires customer loyalty? The answer is great management, which inspires great employees, who then provide a great customer experience. Managing for Happiness is a practical handbook for achieving organizational greatness.

As an author, speaker, and entrepreneur, Jurgen Appelo helps innovative organizations survive and thrive in the 21st century. He gladly shares stories, games, tools, and practices, so you can create your own way of working as a network organization.
Jurgen calls himself a creative networker. But sometimes he's a writer, speaker, trainer, entrepreneur, designer, manager, blogger, reader, dreamer, runner, freethinker, or ... Dutch guy.
From 2008, Jurgen wrote a popular blog with ideas on agile management and organizational change. He is the author of the best-selling book Management 3.0, which describes the role of the manager in agile organizations; How to Change the World, which describes a supermodel for change management; Managing for Happiness, which offers you practical ideas to engage workers, improve work, and delight clients; and Startup, Scaleup, Screwup, which dives into the major topics that business leaders and entrepreneurs are confronted with throughout the business lifecycle.
Jurgen can help you upgrade your organizational structure with more engagement and faster results; He can show you how to increase your business agility with faster product development; He shows you how to creatively manage your company; And he can inspire creative professionals with a purpose, helping them integrate work and more joyful living.
Jurgen is CEO of The unFIX Company and co-founder of the Agile Lean Europe network.