These are some of the posts a stumbled into the other day. I picked them because they gave me a lot of food for thought. I hope they make you think too.

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Tony Hsieh, the CEO who had led Zappos from a small start-up to a 1 billion dollar company sold to Amazon last year, recently wrote a Delivering Happiness book. In it he tells us about his entrepreneurial ventures, but mostly about Zappos, its world famous company culture and first class customer service.

One thing he mentions are what he thinks of as four pillars of happiness on a workplace, but also in life in general. For a person to be happy he or she must have:

1. Perceived control – A person has to have a certain level of autonomy and a right to make a decision, even a small one.
2. Perceived progress – A person should be able to see progress of its skills, positions, levels of autonomy, etc. The workplace should be arranged in a way to provide a regular feedback.
3. Connectedness – It is much easier to work with people who are treated as peers and friends, not as company’s resources.
4. Vision/Meaning – Nobody likes to work on something and than never to see it come to life or just watch it getting discarded without an explanation. A goal or at least a direction is something that can be a much stronger motivator than a paycheck.

Of course! Sure. Probably … Maybe?

There are many questionnaires that can help you answer this question. They all test your skills, some of them ask you if you’re ready for low and unstable paycheck and long working hours. But many of them fail to show you what will you be really working on. And it’s probably not what you expect :)

I have created two pie charts to show you some common misconceptions people have when starting a business and the things you’ll be juggling a few months into the venture. For this example I have taken a very small IT company that is totally unrelated maybe a bit similar to our own, but the core business can be from any other industry. Have fun and leave a comment at the end telling us if you’ve found a way to run a business as the first pie chart shows.[Of course! Sure. Probably … Maybe?

There are many questionnaires that can help you answer this question. They all test your skills, some of them ask you if you’re ready for low and unstable paycheck and long working hours. But many of them fail to show you what will you be really working on. And it’s probably not what you expect :)

I have created two pie charts to show you some common misconceptions people have when starting a business and the things you’ll be juggling a few months into the venture. For this example I have taken a very small IT company that is totally unrelated maybe a bit similar to our own, but the core business can be from any other industry. Have fun and leave a comment at the end telling us if you’ve found a way to run a business as the first pie chart shows.]1 At the end … is it worth it? Oh yeah!

If not, maybe you should. In this day when everything is visible and privacy is lacking, everyone tries to look as successful as possible. Failure and mistakes are viewed as negative things that should be avoided at all times. But is that the right approach?There are two ways you can look successful: you can really be good at something or you can avoid mistakes. And here lies the problem. You can’t be good at something without a learning period in which you WILL make mistakes.

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