49% of the UK working population would take a pay cut to have a different manager

That was the damning statistic from an extensive survey of British employees found. I can also show you research that shows that the time of day when people are least happy is when they are with their managers. Most of us can relate to that and can remember when we were left frustrated or even had our health ruined by toxic relationships with managers.

I am going to propose a solution which, if implemented in every workplace, could reduce that % – who would take a pay cut to have a different manager – to zero.

I have had people come to me and say “I love my job. I love the people I work with. I’m even happy with what I’m being paid. But I can’t stand my manager.” You may have known that situation. You may even have been that person. We can try to mediate, to work it out but the normal outcome is straightforward: one of those people ends up leaving the company.

Hands up? How many people here have left a job to get away from their manager?

Research indicates this may be the most common reason people leave a company. They don’t leave for career reasons. They don’t leave because of their salary. They leave their manager.

At my company we have a simple solution, and it takes about 5 minutes to solve. We ask “Who would you like instead?”.

That’s right – we let people choose their managers.

Yes, the idea I’m proposing is that you should be able to choose who is your boss.

My personal journey to this point started 26 years ago. I was involved in setting up a new national tabloid newspaper. It was a serious venture and we raised no less than 6.5 million pounds. And then we lost the lot within 6 weeks of launch. The book about what happened is called, appropriately enough, Disaster.

I learnt a lot about how not to run a company. And especially about the importance of good management. Indeed one of the key reasons I set up my own company was to find out what made a company both effective and a great place to work in. I hoped to create a good example.

Over those years I’ve learnt a lot. My company has been rated the best in the UK for customer service (by Management Today) and one of the top 20 workplaces in the country for five successive years (by the Financial Times / Best Place to Work institute). At the core of that is our approach to management. [This bit was too self-promotional for Radio 4!]

I often say our most radical belief is that you should choose who manages people on the basis of … how good that are at managing people – or their potential for that.

What normally happens? People are promoted on the basis of core skill and length of service. Say Jo is a great computer programmer and they’ve been programming for ten years, whats going to happen to them? Jo will be promoted to Programming Manager. Because the fact that they are great at coding is sure to mean they are great at supporting and coaching people.  !?

That wouldn’t happen at Microsoft or Google. If somebody was a brilliant programmer they will reward them, give them lots of benefits and involve them in key decisions, but they won’t put them in charge of managing people unless its something they are good at.

And its not just coders. It is true of engineers, lawyers, finance workers, salespeople or indeed any job. Just because they are good at the core job does not mean they will be any use at all at managing other people to do that job.

Let’s start with recruitment. At a delivery company we worked with, they would regularly recruit managers for the teams of van drivers. The managers would be chosen by the two founders, who would then have some months of stress and uncertainty – always unsure whether this one would work out.

So we involved the van drivers in the decision, all of those who would have this manager. They looked for people they could work with and who would motivate them and the stress disappeared as everybody was bought into making it work. Everybody gained from involving staff in choosing which manager was recruited.

But I am talking of going beyond this and letting people change their manager at any point. One of the questions on our six monthly appraisal form is simply “would you like a different manager?”

At my company let me give the example of Natalie, who works in credit control at my company. Two years ago she was bored and looking around for alternative work. Now she is enthusiastic and motivated.

The key difference, she told me, is that she chose a new manager. Natalie explained that she knew this manager would be good at challenging here, keeping her on target and moving forward. “I used to do little more than answer the phones. Now I walk out the door feeling I’ve achieved something.”

She knew who could take her up a notch. It makes sense.

So let’s look at what objections there might be to the idea of letting people choose their manager?

Objection 1: People will choose a manager who will give them an easy time

Let’s go back to Douglas MacGregor who in 1960 published The Human Side of Enterprise and suggested two alternative approaches to management. Theory X poses that workers are lazy, dislike work and need to be closely supervised. Theory Y, on the other hand, proposes that people can enjoy work, are self-motivated and – in the right environment – will seek out opportunities and challenges.

If your company is still run on the basis of Theory X, a lack of trust of your people, then it makes sense to impose managers. However if you believe your people are always trying to do their best, then why not let them choose their managers.

Later research at Harvard by Shawn Achor found what he called the Pygmalian effect. You get what you expect, If you assume people need to be micromanaged, they respond by avoiding responsibility. If you treat them in a Theory Y way, with high levels of trust, they are likely to act in a way which deserves that trust.

Let me give the example of the company W L Gore. You probably won’t have heard of them, but you are likely to know one of their products – especially if you are a runner or a cyclist. They make Gore-tex.  Now it is said that when Bill Gore set up his company over 50 years ago, he set out to test whether you could build a company based on Theory Y, trusting your people.

At Gore you choose your manager. In fact they are more radical than we are. At my company you have to choose somebody who is a manager. At Gore, you can choose anybody to play that role. They have a saying “if you want to be a leader, you’d better find some followers” because nobody is going to allocate you any. WL Gore is now a hugely successful multinational, regularly tops the best workplace lists and was once rated the most innovative company in the US.

There are of course some individuals that are not engaged and not working at their best and might go for an easy ride. But I like to quote an approach I believe was laid down by Richard Branson, that you should set your rules according to the 97% trying to do their best every day, not the 2% who are alienated.

Objection 2: Managers will focus on making their people happy

Well, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing. Some years ago Nandos, the chicken restaurant chain, set out to work out what made some of their branches more successful than others. After extensive research they found one element that correlated most closely with sales growth and profits. That was simply how happy staff said they were in their annual staff survey. They even changed the bonus system for a while to get managers to make that their key target.

We have a simple belief, that “people work best when they feel good about themselves”. Put your hands up if you agree with that statement. That is (just about everybody). If you do believe that, then what is the most important role of management? If that statement is true, it is making your people feel good. Put up your hands here if the focus of management in your organisation is making your people feel good. That’s xxxx.

Yet three months ago I was sitting next to the Chairman of a British company employing 80,000 people who raised his hand to that question. That man was Charlie Mayfield and the company was John Lewis. At John Lewis it is bound into the constitution that the mission of the organisation is to maximise the happiness of the associates – as staff there are known. That approach has created one of the most successful and respected organisations in the country.

So I have no problem with an approach that gets managers to focus on making their people happy. A few more companies could do with focusing on that. Though we’ve found people are only really happy if they are productive and achieving.

Objection 3: What about the managers that don’t get chosen

It is always curious that people are more concerned about the feelings of a manager who isn’t chosen than those who have to work for years under managers that frustrate them and sometimes make their life hell.

But, yes, some managers don’t get chosen. They get to do something else.

One company we worked with had a Marketing Director who was brilliant at marketing but, even after lots of training and development, not so good at managing people. Each year half her team left. Most people can see the solution: We helped the company move her into a role where she spent all her time doing marketing. We got the team to choose who would be the best manager. The result was a much more motivated department but the person who was happiest of all was the Marketing Director. She got to spend all her time doing what she was best at.

I know managers who love managing people. Its what gets them out of bed in the morning and a huge part of their job satisfaction comes from knowing the way they have helped others to develop. But I also know some, like that Marketing Director, would dearly love to be able to drop that part of the job. In fact the survey I quoted at the beginning also found that two in five of managers don’t want the responsibility of managing people

At many companies you can only get promoted by getting to manage people. Which means people are often put in management positions despite managing people not being one of their strengths. It doesn’t have to be that way.

At companies like IBM, Microsoft and even BT it has long been possible to get promoted for your technical ability without having to manage anybody. A colleague at a traditional insurance business told me how they had introduced two tracks, one for People Managers and one for Technical Managers, who wanted to stay focused on their core skills. The one thing they insisted on was that they still be called managers, even though they would never manage anybody, because that was important to their self-esteem.

The result is that the people who become managers are those who actually want to manage people.

Objection 4: People won’t know what makes a good manager

What does make a good manager? Normally managers must first be good at strategy and decision-making. At the same time they must be good at coaching, challenging and supporting their people. Why? Why do they have to be good at both? One thing that makes it fairly easy for us to allow people to stay in the same job and choose their manager is that we have split those roles.

Some people get to do the strategy/decision-making stuff and others get to do the people stuff. So we have a Training Manager who gets involved in any strategic decisions around training (and we are a training business, so there are a few of those) but has no line management connection to most of the trainers.

If that sounds odd, think of any company which is project based. People will have a Project Manager, responsible for their day-to-day work but who is not their line manager. And it works. In fact such companies sometimes do enable people to choose their managers. One woman from a top 5 consultancy came up to me after a recent speech and said “I chose my manager”. They have a manager on each project they work on, but separately they have a manager responsible for their personal development and they can choose who that is.

But what makes a great manager? Google carried out one of the most thorough investigations of this question and, being Google, based it on the data. They analysed performance data, feedback surveys and interviews across thousands of their people and identified and ranked the 8 behaviours of great managers.

Now ask people what makes a great manager and the most common responses are “communication, vision and being good at the job”. Being technically capable did make the list, but at number 8. Vision was 7^th and communication came 5^th – with a strong emphasis on listening skills. 3^rd was showing interest in your people, and second was empowerment and trust. No 1, the single most important behaviour of management, was one that many managers don’t even see as their role. It was to be a good coach.

So will people know how to choose a manager? Well, if it was about judging strategic awareness, it might be tough. But if its about whether a manager shows interest, trusts and empowers you and is a good coach for you – then I’d say most people will be able to judge that, and that’s what we find in practice.

Conclusion

This is one of the best kept secrets out there. It is not common practice yet but there are some companies that let do people choose their managers. I would argue it is one of the cheapest ways out there to improve the motivation and productivity of your people. Imagine how your working life would have been different if, at key moments, you could have chosen your manager.

Let’s say you get into work and find a note saying your manager wants to see you at 2pm. Does that leave you in eager anticipation, looking forward to the one-to-one attention you are about to get? Because it should do.

So hands up those who would like to be able to choose their manager? Well, that is xxxx [was about two thirds]

We can change the way things are. We can create workplaces where people are happy and fulfilled and are able to choose the manager best able to support and challenge them. Please join me in working to change the way we work. [Check out the Happy Manifesto site and sign up to the commitment to be a happy workplace.]

The Easy Way

You’d think that there would be an AGE function that worked out how many years since the anniversary by passing in a date.

However, life is not that easy… Fortunately there is a function called DATEDIF that does something similar. The bad news is that for some reason Microsoft no longer supports this function in Excel. You can still use it, but you don’t get any help with it. For example, you have to remember the order of the arguments that go into the function, there’s no handy pop-up box to give you a hint. So, if you’re like me, you will probably end up typing it in multiple times with the arguments in different orders until it works!

Here’s the structure of the function:

=DATEDIF (Earliest Date, Later Date, Time Interval)

The Earliest Date will be the date you are working with, for example the Date of Birth. The Later Date will be today’s date, which you can get with the TODAY function. The Time Interval is how you want to express the difference between the two dates. If you are working out age, then you will need to specify the interval as years by using the code “y”. If your Date of Birth is in cell A1, then the completed formula will look like this:

=DATEDIF(A1,TODAY(),”y”)

The DATEDIF function automatically takes into account if the person’s birthday has already occurred this year. If not, it will subtract one from the resulting age.

The Hard Way

If you don’t want to use the unsupported DATEDIF function, then you can still work out an age from a Date of Birth, but it requires a little fancier Excel Kung Fu. There is a useful function called YEAR that will take a date and return the year bit of that date. For example, if you have the date 01/Dec/1970 in cell A1 then =YEAR(A1) will return 1970. (This date is very important as it’s my birthday!)

You can combine two YEAR functions to work out the difference in years between two dates:

=YEAR(TODAY())-YEAR(A1)

At the time of writing the date is April 2013, so the above formula would give 2013-1970, which equals 43. Sounds good so far, yes? Except, of course, I haven’t had my birthday yet, so I am actually only 42. (The extra year is increasingly important when you get to my age…)

So, to make this work, we need to somehow decide whether or not the anniversary of the date has passed. If it hasn’t, then we need to subtract one from the resulting age. This is the fancy bit!

In fact there are several ways to do this; what follows is, I think, a relatively straightforward method. We are going to work out the day of the year for each date. By this I mean: which day, out of 365, have we reached within the year in question? We can then compare the two numbers, and if the day-of-the-year number for our date of birth is less than the day-of-the-year number for today’s date, then we haven’t had our birthday yet.

Let’s break this down into parts. The first part will be to work out the day-of-the-year-number for our date of birth. We can do this by taking the date of birth and subtracting the 1^st of January of that year from it. When you subtract one date from another, you get the difference between those dates in days. To create the 1^st of January for year X we use the YEAR function, which we have already seen, and the DATE function. The DATE function creates a date from the three parts we supply: the year, month and day. If the original date is 01/Dec/1970, which is in cell A1, then the formula is:

=A1-DATE(YEAR(A1)),1,1)

This gives us the difference is days between the date in A1 and the 1^st of January 1970. (Don’t worry; it takes leap years into account!)

If we do the same for today’s date, using the TODAY function, then we get something like this:

The next step is to compare these two values using an IF function and return either 1, if the birthday hasn’t happened, or 0, if it has.

=IF(A1-DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)>TODAY()-DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),1,1),1,0)

If the day-of the-year-number for the date of birth is bigger than today’s day-of-the-year number, then this means we haven’t had our birthday yet.

The final step is to put all this together into one long formula. It looks pretty scary, but if you break it down into parts, then it’s not so bad.

=YEAR(TODAY())-YEAR(A1)-IF(A1-DATE(YEAR(A1),1,1)>TODAY()-DATE(YEAR(TODAY()),1,1),1,0)

Don’t forget to format the result of this formula as a number; otherwise you will get some strange results.

Ian Balboa, Happy Trainer.

If you have any Excel questions or hints and tips you would like shared get in touch, use this link!

If you would like any further information on the Excel course we train, go to our dedicated Excel page on our website. If you are unsure of your Excel level, take our handy Excel survey.

Remember – If you’ve been on a Happy Computers course you get 2 years free helpline access.  Call the helpline on 020 7375 7373.

I was recently facilitating day two of a Leadership and Management programme for a group of managers and one of the things that struck me was how much they had learnt and remembered from day one!

What was also impressive was just how much they had actioned back in the workplace before coming back for day two.

Their recap posters summed up some of their key learning’s but my top 3 favourites are as follows:

• You can’t motivate anyone if you aren’t motivated yourself – remember to demonstrate positive energy.

• If you want your people to enjoy their 1 to 1′s with you and feel a real benefit for having them as a result – let them set the agenda and decide the frequency.  It’s their meeting after all!

• Give your people trust and ownership of their work through clear targets, then celebrate their successes and review their learning opportunities from what can be improved.

What could you be doing more of around these three steps to become a best practice manager?

If your staff were to score you out of 10 on these steps, which would be your lowest score and why?  What could you do about this?

Cathy Busani, Managing Director and Happy People Facilitator

To find out more about how we can help you develop a leadership and management programme for your managers, please contact Cathy Busani, Managing Director and Happy People Facilitator by emailing cathy@happy.co.uk or calling our office on 0207 3375 7300.

The Perspectives Group is an independent planning, environmental and strategic consultancy.

What we did

Happy held a very positive half day workshop in Effective Networking Skills.  Setting up a range of practical networking scenarios, the facilitator enabled the group beyond the workshop to initiate and nurture successful and beneficial networking relationships that will grow into future business opportunities.

The benefits as measured by the client

Since our teams have completed the training with Happy, the skills they have gained has enabled them to:

• Understand that networking isn’t about artificial “performance criteria”, for example collect ‘x’ amount of business cards, but about making a connection and building relationships
• Confidently approach new people and introduce them self; leave someone with a positive lasting impression; be aware of the effect of non-verbal cues
• Learn techniques like starting a conversation, using listening skills to keep it flowing and how to make a strategic exit
• Capture the essence of what our business is about and to ‘hook’ the interest of the person they are talking to
• Understand the importance of taking the time to prepare before attending a networking event, as well as build in  time to reflect and follow-up afterwards

Comments from feedback forms

Well timed, not rushed, honest opinions – Katy Davis

Good speed and excellent tips – Jess McSweeney

Relevant to company – Hilary Jones

Insightful perspective on networking – Alister Henderson

Positivity – Polly Canning

Introduced a new way of thinking about and approaching networking – Elizabeth Milimuka

Understanding that everyone else had the same concerns – Rob Batterby

Very informative, made me think! – Charis Yabbacome

Informal, friendly, interesting, flows well – Cristina Naulls

Informal nature & informative facilitator – Holly Needham

Comfortable & informal – Stephanie Week

About Happy People 

Happy People are the Soft Skills, Leadership and Organisational Development division of Happy Computers.  We facilitate events and courses here at Happy HQ in London, at your chosen venue and even in the virtual classroom as a Live On-line Learning session.  For a copy of our latest open course programme please click here.

Working with organisations across all sectors, Happy People create bespoke events tailored to an organisations specific requirements.  We also facilitate a full programme of scheduled public events including the very popular ‘Course of the Month’, featuring a different topic every month at a very special price.  Join the mailing list here.

Happy People also offer Executive Coaching, Belbin team profiling and Cultural Surveys.  Read about our values and how we facilitate here.

If you would like to know more about Happy People or the courses and events we facilitate please contact us either through this website or by emailing happy@happy.co.uk or call the office on 0207 375 7300.

Publishing the Happy Manifesto has led to a lot of organisations contacting Happy. Some call us in to help them improve their workplace and we love doing this. But there is an even bigger thrill when I get a letter from somebody we’ve not been involved with, who has taken the Manifesto and put the ideas into practice. So I’m delighted to copy the blog below, originally published on the Spiral Health site, about the work they are doing at an NHS site in Lancashire: 

For videos check out Annotag and the Happy Manifesto site.

Henry Stewart, author of Happy Manifesto

Henry opened the conference by asking people how their organisation would be different if the main focus on management was on making people feel good. All agreed it would be not just a better place to work, but more efficient and more productive.

This was backed up with research from Alex Edmans at Wharton Business School. He compared the results of investing each year (over 25 years) in the companies listed in the Best Workplace list with investing in the standard stock market. The best workplace investment would have earn 3.5% more per year. That means that if your pension had grown to £100,000 in the stock market, it would have reached £237,000 if invested only in the best workplaces.

Alex Kjerulf, Chief Happiness Officer

Alex is an international happiness guru, based in Denmark. His vision: “a world where happiness at work is the rule and not the exception”. He generated a lot of energy, encouraging people to engage with their colleagues, give high fives to celebrate success and take time to get to know people at work. “What really makes us happy is when we can make a difference for somebody else”

Danish toy maker Lego has set itself the target of being one of the top 3 workplaces in Europe by 2015. All meetings there now begin with Item 0, celebrating what is going well – to start in a positive mood.

The first step to making your people happy? “Stop doing the things that make them unhappy.”

Clive Hutchinson, Chief Executive, Cougar Software

Clive explained how “play to your strengths” (Manifesto principle 10) had transformed his software company. He gave the example of a poorly performing Project Manager. After working out what he was best at, he went back to being a programmer. He was happier and more productive and Cougar found somebody to manage projects for whom that was a strength.

“Don’t change people to fit the job. Change the jobs to fit the people

Marion Janner, Director, Star Wards

Marion has built a movement to transform mental health inpatient care in England and Wales. Despite her only experience being as a service user, over 80% of wards have signed up. Marion used her support dog Buddy in place of PowerPoint and we witnessed Buddy going through a series of rapid costume changes to emphasise her points.  A unique presentation.

Her key learning point from the manifesto: Don’t try to impose change from above. Instead give people the ideas and support and trust them to do the right thing. Check out the fabulous Wardipedia site.

Nigel Paine, Learning & Development Expert

Nigel gave a rapid fire summary of how to implement the ten points of the Manifesto. Key again is working to strengths: “Don’t focus on being better at what you’re not good at. Instead get better at what you are good at”

One key is not to wait for perfection. If you play darts you don’t give up if you don’t score 180. You have only to be good enough

“The difference between an ok organisation and an exceptional one is ‘discretionary effort’ (the extra that people do). You can only get that by really motivating your people.”

Mark Williamson, Director, Action for Happiness

Action for Happiness has almost 30,000 supporters across 142 countries, who have all pledged to try to increase the happiness of those around them. He opened with the intriguing fact that happy nuns live longer. A research study found that 80% were alive at 85 against 34% of unhappy nuns”.

Mark showed a very entertaining clip of comedian Bill Bailey. The point? Research found that, after watching a Bill Bailey clip, people become 12% more productive. “Making people happy works!”

The unhappiest time of the day, according to research, is the time people spend with their managers.

Vanessa King, Positive Psychologist, Action for Happiness

Vanessa explained how negative emotions were needed to survive danger. But positive emotions enable personal development. She quoted Matthew Ricard: “happiness is a skill that can be learnt”

“Our best ideas come in the spaces”. Great ideas don’t come when we are working hard but in the breaks, so you have to make sure you get good breaks.

Emma Rapoport, Google

Emma treated us as new Google managers and gave us the manager induction. This is based around Project Oxygen, which identified the 8 behaviours of great managers. What is the single most important behaviour of great managers? Click here to find out. Or the full list of the 8.

The other emphasis was on thinking big: “At Google we are always encouraged to go for the moon shot, but supported if we fall. We celebrate mistakes. Have stretch targets.” If you achieve 100% of your targets, they weren’t tough enough. 70% is seen as great.

Stretch people and trust them to get there: “My manager gives me big stretch goals and, even though they’ve done it before, they let me work it out”

Key philosophy at Google: “Don’t ask for permission. Ask for forgiveness later.”

Lunchtime Workshops

Other lunchtime workshops:

• Laughter Yoga: Sandar Saint & Simon Richardson, Golden Tree
• Randomly Joyful: Surprising & Delighting at Work, Cheryl Joy Adamson, Make Me Joyful @makemejoyful
• Create a harmonious passion for your job, Susanna Halonen, Happyologist

Dom Monkhouse, Chief Executive, Peer 1 Hosting

Dom has built two £30 million companies on the basis of creating great workplaces. “To create a profitable business, you don’t start there. You start with creating a happy workplace. Its simple. Happy staff lead to happy customers, which leads to more profit.”

“Get rid of stupid rules”. Dom regularly offers £10 for each stupid rule people can fine, so they can get rid of them. “You have to trust people. Nobody has a rule that says don’t come to work naked and yet nobody does.”

The core values at Peer 1: “Sense of fun and purpose”, “Anything is possible”, “Enable others to succeed”

Key to Dom’s philosophy is serving the customers. He asked “We celebrate employee anniversaries all the time. Do you celebrate a client’s 10th anniversary?”

Yvonne Agyei, Vice President (Benefits), Google

What makes a great workplace? “Its not about the free food and funkiness. The key is results and relationships”

The key is 1) Hire great people – are they googly?   2) Give them autonomy

Key tests of googlyness: Do you have passion? Do you have wide interests? Do your travel? Help in community?

As the filing statement for Google shares stated: “Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one”

Key elements: “Think/act like owners. Have a healthy disregard for the impossible. Great is not good enough”

“Within Google we seek to create a sense of community, we want them to see Google as a family. The free food is to build community. People talk over food. We want people to sit down and talk together.”

“It starts at the top. You need to get your most senior people to act out the culture you want.”

Building a Movement for Happy Workplaces

The conference closed with discussions about how to build a movement for happy workplaces. A range of commitments were made and all those present wanted to help build the movement.

Stay in touch. Check out the Facebook page, join the LinkedIn group, come to the next happy workplace Meetup and visit and contribute to the Happy Manifesto web site.

Feedback

The feedback at the end of the day was uniformly positive. For example:

“A truly inspirational day, with real life people doing amazing things to implement happy change/movement. Hopefully I will be one of them now, too!” Emma MacKenzie, Leeds University

“My sales and profit have all increased since acting on the happy manifesto”, Simon Perriton, Just IT

“This idea is such common sense, it can’t help but be a success!” Sarah Metcalfe, Sureflap

“Brilliant interactive sessions, very uplifting!”, Gaye Andrews, Peer 1 Hosting

Overall verdict: Net Promoter Score: 76% (76% giving 9 or 10, 24% giving 7 or 8, no detractors) – or average of 9.1 out of 10.

Venue: Net Promoter Score: 92% (92% giving 9 or 10, 8% giving 8, no detractors) – or average of 9.2 out of 10.

Visual Minutes

Check out the artists’ view.

In his blog on Pivot Perfection, Darren showed us how to easily produce a series of Pivot Tables for each category we want to filter on. Slicers make it easy to have one Pivot Table that can switch between different categories.

Let’s start with the same data that Darren used:

The next step is to add a Slicer:

1. Go to the Options tab of the PivotTable Tools on the ribbon
2. Click on Insert Slicer

3. Choose the field you want to filter on, in this case Department

4.  Click OK

5.  A Slicer box will appear on your worksheet:

6.  Click on the category you are interested in, for example, the Design department

7.  The Pivot Table will update to show the values for that category:

8.  To change to a different category, just click on the appropriate value in the slicer box

9.  To select multiple values, do a normal click on the first value, then control-click on the other values:

10.  To clear the filter, click on the icon in the top-right corner of the Slicer box

11.  You can move and re-size the Slicer box by clicking and dragging on the border of the box

This blog was written by Happy Trainer, Ian Balboa.

If you have any Excel questions or hints and tips you would like shared get in touch, use this link!

If you would like any further information on the Excel course we train, go to our dedicated Excel page on our website. If you are unsure of your Excel level, take our handy Excel survey.

Remember – If you’ve been on a Happy Computers course you get 2 years free helpline access.  Call the helpline on 020 7375 7373.

Pfizer                          

Founded in 1849, Pfizer is the world’s largest research based pharmaceutical company.  Pfizer discovers, develops, manufactures, and markets leading prescription medicines and vaccines.  Pfizer employs 1000’s of staff globally.

Pfizer chose Happy Computers to develop and deliver training to support the roll-out of a Siebel-based CRM system to 13,000 salespeople across 22 countries. The core of the approach was to understand the needs of the sales staff and focusing the training on improving the way they worked.

What we did

We did not start with the software. Instead two of our trainers went on the road with Pfizer salespeople, spending a day visiting doctors and hospitals in London and Copenhagen. All the learners would be salespeople and this ensured we understood their job, their need and their point of view.

The project was effectively about culture change (switching from informal record keeping to formal records, accessible to all).  Understanding the needs of the employees was crucial for this.

Our training developers co-ordinated a large scale project to create and deliver comprehensive materials for 16 different systems in 13 languages. Happy continue to work with Pfizer across a range of projects.

Client comments

“Your training service has been extraordinarily good. Everything you have promised has been delivered. I couldn’t be happier.”  Tim Johnson, Project Director Pfizer

“Based on understanding the business processes, the approach was miles ahead of the rest.”  Nick Allcock, Training Manager Pfizer

About Happy Computer Software Roll-outs

Whether in upgrades or conversions, SAP, Siebel, Peoplesoft, Oracle or your own bespoke software, Happy Computers provides a full service to create the course and deliver the training for your people. Our focus is on understanding the learner’s needs and fitting the course to those needs.  We create courses that help them in their job, rather than simply training how the software works.

For more information on our major software roll-out offerings, please visit our roll-out page here.

If you would like to know more about Happy Computers or the courses and events we facilitate please contact us either through this website or by emailing happy@happy.co.uk or call the office on 0207 375 7300.

Training goals

Positive East were looking to enable and empower all of their staff to successfully deliver a significant proportion of their services through their volunteers. Additionally we took the opportunity to help them review and reflect on what in their culture was working and what needed to change in order for them to become a truly great place to work.

What we did

Happy’s approach was threefold.  Firstly we created a bespoke online survey to benchmark the organisation at the start of the process.  We then held a series of half day workshops for all staff.  The sessions we facilitated covered Building trust, Creating a great place to work, Active listening, Effective coaching skills, Giving positive constructive feedback & Management by objectives.  The bespoke sessions we created were facilitated by Cathy Busani, MD at Happy and Lead Happy People Facilitator.

The benefits – as measured by the client

The 6 week schedule of workshops which was our programme was fantastic as we were able to mix and match with colleagues who we don’t usually work with and it gave a new insight into the work that they do and their passions. This combined with the unique facilitation skill of Cathy has meant that we have returned to the office with new vigor and increased resolve to succeed. Alastair Thomson, Finance Director

Feedback comments from Positive East delegates

Today has really made me reflective about my practice, more solutions focused and feeling less stuck about some issues – Carmel Young

A great session that helped me to improve relationships with others in the work place … Brave and positive approach to dealing with difficulties and politics with an organisation … Excellent course and well facilitated. Thank you so much Cathy - Matthew Walters

The world would be a better place if there were more Cathy’s and Happy’s in … Training at Happy is an inspirational experience - Alastair Thomson

Overall, very revelatory and very relevant … This course has been something I want to tell everyone to do. It’s been enjoyable, constructive, useful and I hope effective. Brilliant trainer. Thanks Cathy - Lynn Johnson

I think Cathy is an excellent facilitator and brings such a fantastic energy to the work she does – an inspiration. – Stewart Turnbull

Excellent facilitation, thank you and well done – Rebecca Byekwaso

About Happy People 

Happy People are the Soft Skills, Leadership and Organisational Development division of Happy Computers.  We facilitate events and courses here at Happy HQ in London, at your chosen venue and even in the virtual classroom as a Live On-line Learning session.

Working with organisations across all sectors, Happy People create bespoke events tailored to an organisations specific requirements.  We also facilitate a full programme of scheduled public events including the very popular ‘Course of the Month’, featuring a different topic every month at a very special price.  Join the mailing list here.

Happy People also offer Executive Coaching, Belbin team profiling and Cultural Surveys.  Read about our values and how we facilitate here.

If you would like to know more about Happy People or the courses and events we facilitate please contact us either through this website or by emailing happy@happy.co.uk or call the office on 0207 375 7300.

Your own development and behaviour is crucial to your role and your organisation.   To be the best at work all the time and be the leader you want to be, sometimes you have to stop , take stock and perhaps work on some areas.  Taking coaching from an expert outside of your organisation means you have the time, space and confidentiality to address any issues, build on your strengths and confidently take the steps you need to be the leader you want to be.  To find out more about our Executive Coaching please contact cathy@happy.co.uk.

Executive Coaching Testimonial from one of our clients

Cathy Busani from Happy coached me when I took my first Chief Executive role. Cathy was incredibly helpful at helping me to work out what sort of Chief Executive I wanted to be, how to have the courage of my convictions and how to deliver what I was best at to my charity.  At no time did Cathy tell me what I should be doing, she very nicely forced me to work that out for myself, which is a much more effective way of learning.  

As a new Chief Executive it can be lonely, and Cathy provided me with someone I could moan to when things were challenging, but she always helped me to turn around and tackle those challenges and deal with them in a way that helped me to build the sort of organisation that I wanted my charity to be.  

I would thoroughly recommend Cathy as a coach to anyone in a new role at senior level; she certainly enabled me to become a more effective and determined Chief Executive and both I and my charity benefited as a result of her coaching work.

About Happy People 

Happy People are the Soft Skills, Leadership and Organisational Development division of Happy Computers.  We facilitate events and courses here at Happy HQ in London, at your chosen venue and even in the virtual classroom as a Live On-line Learning session.

Working with organisations across all sectors, Happy People create bespoke events tailored to an organisations specific requirements.  We also facilitate a full programme of scheduled public events including the very popular ‘Course of the Month’, featuring a different topic every month at a very special price.  Join the mailing list here.

Happy People also offer Belbin team profiling and Cultural Surveys.  Read about our values and how we facilitate here.

If you would like to know more about Happy People or the courses and events we facilitate please contact us either through this website or by emailinghappy@happy.co.uk or call the office on 0207 375 7300.