Managing for Happiness

NOTE: This book is a re-release of the book #Workout

Also available in: German, Thai

A practical handbook for making management great.

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 breaktime 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.

Modern organizations expect everyone to be servant leaders and systems thinkers, but nobody explains how. To survive in the 21st 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.

Managing for
Happiness

Games, Tools & Practices to Motivate Any Team

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Released: 2016
Size: 300 pages
ISBN: 978-1119268680 (Paper)
ASIN: B01GQWKHXK (Kindle)

Managing for Happiness Book Reviews

“Jurgen Appelo’s useful and fun-to-read book Managing for Happiness: Games, Tools, and Practices to Motivate Any Team gives you concrete tools to identify ways to help your team be happier and to create environments where people can thrive and be more productive. Despite the word managing being in the title, the book is a beneficial read for anyone.”

Steve Berczuk
StickyMinds

“Managing for Happiness is a clever and visually engaging book. And it is a great resource for managers or business owners who feel that the traditional approaches to employee engagement or motivation aren’t sufficient. This book provides that “something else”, especially if you are in the creative fields or deal with remote workers.”

Charles Franklin
Small Business Trends

“His book is a tour de force on all the current, relevant issues for work and motivation. I’m as impressed with the way Jurgen distributes information from the book to the reader through graphics, micro case studies and sharing real client feedback in a structure that provides many perspectives. Jurgen gets past the how you think it might work, to what really happens and how do people feel about it.”

James O’Brien
Be Human Project

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, counter-intuitive, and creative approach to management. Very insightful and humanistic. Highly recommended!

DEREK SIVERS
Founder of CD Baby, TED speaker, author of Anything You Want

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

Top 50 Leadership and
Management Experts

Who makes the list? More important, whom
should you be listening to?

By Jeff Haden @jeff_haden

  • 36. Daniel H. Pink
  • 37. Dan Rockwell
  • 38. Marcus Buckingham
  • 39. Chris Brady
  • 40. Jurgen Appelo
  • 41. Robert B. Cialdini
  • 42. John Baldoni
  • 43. Jeffrey Gitomer
  • 44. Gretchen Rubin
  • 45. Malcolm Gladwell