Organizational Happiness: Can it be the Key to Long Term Success?

Dr. Harvi H. Millar

Management Technologies

Happiness is a widely cherished human desire.  R&B artist Pharrell’s hit song “Happy”, with close to 700 million views, is a testament to our preoccupation with happiness.  There are many who believe that our true purpose on earth ought to be the “pursuit of happiness”, both individually and collectively.   Yet despite the existence of years of study of the concept of happiness, there exist no universally accepted definition.  Happiness has been defined and approached from many perspectives including emotional, psychological, philosophical, spiritual, and economic perspectives.  Researchers have even attempted to measure happiness and identify its correlates.  By understanding its correlates, it is believed that we might be able to influence our state of happiness.

Happiness has been defined as “a mental or emotional state of well-being defined by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.” Philosophers and religious thinkers often relate happiness to quality of life – living a good life.  No doubt the notion of “good” can be interrogated.  One researcher by the name of Sonja Lyubomirsky asserted that happiness is 50% genetic, 10% life experiences, and 40% self-control.  Clearly this is arguable.  Psychologists attempting to identify the correlates of happiness suggest that people are happiest when they have pleasure, engagement, relationships, a sense of purpose, and accomplishments (of their goals).  I believe the existence of the term “true happiness” suggests that concept of happiness and what drives it is commonly misunderstood.  There are those that believe that happiness can be achieved by being rich; achieving personal goals; finding the right partner; wining an argument; etc.  While these might produce a sense of contentment, there is the reality that the contentment dissipates after a while – as we say, the novelty wears off.  Sister Shivani of the Brahma Kumaris asserts that we’ve been conditioned to think that happiness has an inherent dependency such as, if we achieve wealth we will be happy. If we believe that happiness has a stimulus, then we must be prepared to accept the dialectic that there are stimuli that create unhappiness.  That is, we are unhappy if we fail.  This raises the question “is there such a thing as sustained happiness?” Or should we expect ourselves to go through a constant cycle of alternating states of happiness and unhappiness given the prevalence of stimuli that can make one happy and unhappy?

It is not my intent to get us to reach a consensus on happiness and it’s meaning, but rather to briefly illuminate the importance of happiness, yet the challenge of grappling with the concept. For the purpose of my article, I will assume the following which I am sure can be argued: 1) all human beings have an intrinsic sense of happiness and indeed value their happiness and hopefully that of others; 2) human beings all desire to be happy; 3) happiness promotes inner and outer peace and requires love; 4) success and happiness are inseparable – success requires happiness and happiness requires success; 5) happiness is a state of existence (a distinct consciousness) and as such it is an outcome that requires a confluence of positive forces; 6) one’s the state of happiness is constantly is constantly at risk – by that I mean that there are forces within and outside one’s locus of control that will attempt to “steal your joy”; and 7) happiness has multiple dimensions and multiple levels of intensity. We can talk about being quietly happy or euphorically happy.

Up to this point, I have focused initially on personal happiness and its importance to humans.  We can, no doubt, extend the concept of happiness to organizations.  An organization is a collection of people, and if people can be happy, then the notion of a “happy organization” makes sense.  Organizations have a culture, ethos, rituals, and character.  An organization can be happy or it can be sad.  Organizations with high employee attrition rates can often cite an unhappy organizational climate as a prime causal factor.  People want to work for organizations that have a happy spirit, one that helps to fulfil their own personal desire for happiness.  This is a reality that is often lost on many organizational leaders.  The problem lies in the fact that many define success in terms of financial accomplishments and not in terms of organizational happiness.  It is very possible for an organization to be financially profitable, but unhappy. Should be refer to that organization as being successful?  I prepared to conjecture that the level of profitability and its long-term sustainability is linked to the level of organizational happiness.  I therefore hold the view that in as much as “the pursuit of happiness” is ought to be our ultimate purpose as humans, so should it be that “the pursuit of organizational happiness” is the purpose of leaders.

Recognizing the fact that organizations are alive, much like the humans that inhabit them, and that the human anatomy is an apt metaphor for organizational anatomy, it is clear that many of the lessons we learn about how to pursue human happiness can be applied to organizational happiness.  Recently I was watching a program on happiness by one Sister Shivani of the Brahma Kumaris.  While I do not necessarily agree with all she says, she made a very important point with respect to happiness.  She asserts that human happiness is linked to our state of wellbeing: specifically our physical wellbeing, our intellectual wellbeing, our emotional wellbeing, and our spiritual wellbeing.  Aclose examination of each of those dimensions show that they are equally important to organizations, and for those organizational leaders who wish to expand their definition of success as creating a state of organizational happiness, there lies a guide.

Physical Wellbeing speaks to the need for the organization to have a healthy physical structure.  The facilities, organizational chart, policies and procedures, processes, systems, IT infrastructure, benefits and remuneration are all part of the physical dimension of the organization.  If the physical structure is not carefully designed, nurtured, renewed, an aligned to a shared strategic vision of the organization, organizational happiness will be difficult to achieve.  In much the same way that we must care of for our physical bodies with proper nutrition, exercise, rest, renewal, organizations need to do the same.

Intellectual Wellbeing speaks to the need for organizations to constantly grow and to learn.  Knowledge can be blissful and knowledge empowers the mind body and soul of individuals as well as organizations.  It is difficult to conceive of a “successful” organization that does not invest in its collective intellect through training, leadership development, and constant questioning of its methods and approaches; or one that does not seek enlightenment in and beyond its business environment. In as much as personal growth is linked to our intellectual development, so is the growth of an organization.  The failure to care for the intellectual wellbeing of an organization will likely result in its eventual demise.

Emotional Well-being speaks to the need to recognize that organizations at the “molecular level” are made up of relationships, and that the DNA of an organization can be characterised by the labyrinth of these relationships and how the various relationships interact and work with each other.  We can think of faulty DNA strands as faulty relationships that can have catastrophic consequences for organizations.  Many organizations have failed on account of toxic relationships between departments or divisions, between management and staff, between Board and management, between supervisors and employees, and between employees themselves. Modern management theory emphasizes the importance of emotional intelligence of leaders – their ability to recognize the emotions their emotions and that of employees in order to guide decisions and behaviour.  But it is equally important to understand and forge the collective emotional wellbeing of the organization.  Given the fact that the organization is made up of complex emotional beings, the motional wellbeing of the organization must begin with an understanding and a focus on the wellbeing of the individuals within it.

Spiritual Wellbeing speaks to values, norms, rituals, practices, and belief system of the organization.  Much has been written about the link between religiosity, spirituality and happiness.  People who are religious and believe in prayer share common values and belief in a higher power.  Prayer is meditative and meditation is linked to mental wellbeing. Religion for some provides inner peace, a sense of hope, a sense belonging to a community and family, and it gives their lives meaning.   Spirituality, different from religion, encourages individuals to aspire to a higher level of consciousness, to understand their relationship to nature and each other, and to better appreciate their role in our ecosystem.  There is an emphasis on preventing harm to everything that gives life.  A spiritual ethos requires meditation to achieve the kind of consciousness that promotes health, healing and wellbeing.  Organizations are living entities that are part of a larger ecosystem.  They have the potential to do good but also to do harm.  Because an organization is made up of a labyrinth of relationships, from time to time, relationships will become faulty and organizations will get “sick”.  A spiritual ethos in organization is therefore crucial to create the kind of collective organizational consciousness needed to promote harmony, healing, a sense of community, a sense of purpose, and a connectedness

to the ecosystem to which it belongs.  Organizations that fail to recognize their role in the ecosystem of life will be hard-pressed to achieve success.

With our growing concerns about the survival of the human species, the need for sustainability and the need for a peaceful world, organizational leaders need to move away from traditional western concepts of success based on“bottom line” metrics.  The more recent emphasis on servant leadership is a step in the right direction.  However, to be truly successful, leaders must adopt organizational happiness at the ultimate goal.  It is often said, “love conquers all”. I believe it is not possible to be happy without love.  Hence by extension, “happiness conquers all”.  In the pursuit of organizational happiness, leaders must be reminded that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  As such, the interconnectedness of physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual wellbeing must acknowledged in any programmatic agenda towards organizational happiness.  In part II, I will discuss each of the four types of wellbeing with examples on how we approach them.  In particular I will introduce the African philosophy of Ubuntu as a power spiritual model for Caribbean organizations.

Dr. Millar is a full-professor in the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary’s University, in Canada.  He is the President of Management Technologies a management consulting firm dedicated to the art and science of organizational betterment.  He can be reached at harvey.h.millar@gmail.com.