Go beyond the usual

In April, the whole world went around the news about the American entrepreneur Dan Price. He read a book by psychologist Daniel Kahneman that a lack of money makes people unhappy, but an excess of money does not make them happy. Kahneman estimates that $70 a year is an income threshold above which happiness is determined by completely different factors. A man of action, Dan Price took a very decisive step. He raised the salaries of all the employees of his company to this figure, reducing his own earnings (calculated in six figures) to the same 70 thousand, and even spending a significant part of the profits. Price expects happy employees to be the key to success and take the company to the next level.

• Work that makes us happier

Abandon standard schemes

This is perhaps a slightly extravagant example. But not at all unique. More and more entrepreneurs are making less obvious changes in their companies. In France, for example, there is the Progressive Management Association. It brings together executives who are struggling with bureaucracy in their enterprises. Eliminate managerial positions, abandon any trappings of their own power, and give workers ample opportunity to decide for themselves how and when they will perform their tasks. The main thing is the strategic goals of the company, the rest is maximum freedom and democracy. Moreover, the Association is joined not by the owners of troubled companies, but by quite successful businessmen. What makes them take risks, break habitual models?

Economist Otto Scharmer, a lecturer at the Sloan School of Business at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), argues that all leaders can be divided into three categories. Almost all of them know what they are doing, and this is the area of ​​our past experience: we do what is familiar and works. A much smaller number of leaders know exactly how they do it, and this is the zone of openness to the present: we are open to the processes that are happening right now, and change with them. This already requires a certain courage, but as a result, what we do can also change, more accurately responding to the present moment. These people are at least a step ahead of those who live in the past. And only a very small number of leaders know the source within themselves from which the vision of a successful future is born — these leaders lead their companies to the greatest success.

“Today, more and more people who make managerial decisions understand that if they want to succeed in the rapidly changing world of the global economy, they must direct their attention and the attention of their employees to finding the internal source of success,” says psychologist Anastasia Gosteva. — It looks like a big risk: complete openness, lack of strict framework and job descriptions, a radical change in the organizational structure. But in fact, this is a conscious and pragmatic step that allows you to use the colossal internal reserves of everyone.”

It should, however, be understood that such a step requires a certain maturity from all participants in the experiment. If you do not create conditions for the maturation of employees within the company, a salary of $ 70, which fell like snow on their heads, can become a curse for someone …

• Work: Emotional Intelligence Wins!

Do what you like

However, in order to show courage in work, it is not necessary to be a big leader or break the existing order. Sometimes it’s harder to dare to leave your usual place and do something that is really interesting.

Irina Kravchenko is 34 years old, of which for the last 7 years she has worked as a designer in printing companies and online media. With the onset of the current economic crisis, earnings have dropped significantly. And then Irina quit.

“Of course, they told me that I was crazy,” she says. — How can you throw a guaranteed income in a crisis? And I’m just grateful for the crisis. I realized that there is no point in clinging to work if I don’t get any real pleasure or decent money. Irina started baking cakes to order. That is, she started baking a long time ago, she inherited many recipes from her grandmother. But now not only relatives and friends can try her cakes (who, by the way, offered Irina to open their own pastry shop many years ago). Her fame has not yet spread beyond her native «sleeping» area, but here the demand is stable. Money is not always enough, and Irina admits that she still has to take design work home. But she does not intend to return to the office. What for? For the first time in many years, she gets great pleasure from what she does.

“Our growing up is always associated with breaking the boundaries set by the environment and defining our own,” explains Anastasia Gosteva. — To get closer to that inner source from which a happy and prosperous future is born, you need to move from the head — what I know and what I have been taught — to the heart. And listen: am I happy where I am now? Does my activity bring me joy? What do I feel right now when I think about work? Our heart has its own «brain» — a vast group of neurons. And the expression “I feel with my heart” is not a metaphor, but an accurate description of this process.”

• Work and life: in search of balance

Do what makes sense

And sometimes you don’t have to leave. Natalya Popova, 48, is an associate professor at the Faculty of Philology at Moscow State Pedagogical University. Working for several years at the Moscow Institute of Open Education, she came to a sad conclusion: Literature teachers do not read modern books. They just don’t have the time for it.

Natalia undertook to the best of her ability to correct the situation. For many years she has run a literary salon and a reading club for teachers of literature. Through her efforts, a new nomination for the Ivan Petrovich Belkin Literary Prize appeared: teachers of literature present their prize for the best story of the year. And in the reading club they meet with writers and poets, read and discuss new books — and for a long time they cannot go home. Of course, no one asked Natalya Popova to take on this gigantic work. Of course, for all this she does not receive a penny. She does it because it seems to her necessary; in her opinion, even Russian classics from the school curriculum are best conveyed to children through modern texts.

“Meaningfulness of life for people is more important than happiness,” notes Anastasia Gosteva, “if we understand happiness as a feeling that “everything is all right with me,” and meaning as a feeling that “there is something more significant in my life than personal interests.” And it turned out that those of us who know how to give our lives additional meaning by starting to do something for others — as Natalia did when she opened a literary salon — feel more physically alert, healthy and full of energy than those who simply happy. Because happiness often depends on external factors, and only we ourselves can give meaning to our lives.

And although this sometimes requires considerable courage, is the feeling that we live and work not in vain not worth the risk?