Yellow Goldfish blog series

There should one ultimate driving metric in business (and life) and that’s Happiness. A Yellow Goldfish is anytime a business does a little extra to contribute to the happiness of its customers, employees, or society. Based on nearly 300 case studies, Yellow Goldfish, a book published by Stan Phelps and Rosaria Cirillo in September 2018, covers nine ways increasing happiness in business can drive growth, productivity and prosperity for everyone and it’s available for sales on Amazon & Kindle. Broken into three main sections, Yellow Goldfish will help you and your company understand WHY happiness in business matters, WHAT you can do to contribute to happiness (of customers, employees and society), and HOW to do so.

This post is part of a wider series with key insights from Yellow Goldfish. Find here the complete list of all this series’ posts that will be published every Monday and Wednesday from September 4th to September 18th (which marks Yellow Goldfish 1-year birthday).

Yellow Goldfish book

Summarizing The Previous Posts In This Series

In the first post of this series, we reflected on why companies are in business and we dived into the five schools of thought or different management approaches that companies have adopted over the past few decades: profit, customers, employees or purpose first. We shared why we believe that “Happiness is a new way forward, it should be what comes first and it’s the ultimate business metric.”

Analyzing nearly 300 cases, we have identified nine ways in which business can increase happiness to drive growth, productivity and prosperity for everyone, and we call “Yellow Goldfish” the little extra that a business does to contribute to the happiness of its customers, employees, or society.

In the second post of this series, we shared why a Goldfish and why Yellow.

In the third post, we shared how happiness as a feeling made its way across Rosaria work on customer experience and what influences our perception of reality; we also revealed the nine areas we identified in which business can contribute to happiness for customers, employees and society overall: Health, Autonomy, Purpose, Play, Integrity, Nature, Empathy, Simplicity, Smile.

And we shared the path to Happiness Driven Growth.

 

In the fourth post, we shared: a brief description of each area, the needs it fulfills and the chemicals that it triggers; some of the ways companies can incorporate each of these elements in their practices; the list of companies mentioned as example in Yellow Goldfish, because of the little extra they regularly do in one of the areas; additional brands contributing to each area in ways we collected in our List.ly project and analyzed but didn’t include in the book.

In this post, we look at how you can drive growth and we share the process behind creating your Yellow Goldfish for Happiness Driven Growth in six stages: Grounding, Reaching-up, Operationalizing, Wow Blossoming, Taking Time, and Harvesting. This is a very brief summary of Yellow Goldfish section HOW.

Drive G.R.O.W.T.H. (and Change) In Six Stages

Inspired by the energy and warmth of yellow (the sun), the flourishing of happiness (like a flower), and the process of growth required, we have represented the HOW of Yellow Goldfish (GROWTH) as a sunflower from seeding to blossoming. In the third post and in the fourth post – and in the WHAT section of Yellow Goldfish – we have seen the nine petals of H.A.P.P.I.N.E.S.S. Here – and in the HOW section of the book – we cover how to nurture this HAPPINESS flower THROUGH GROWTH.

Based on the examples we have collected and companies we analyzed, we have identified six steps to drive the change of Happiness Driven Growth. They also represent the maturity stages of your company along this journey.

  1. Grounding is about:
    • a) Seeding: Identify or choose your seed and ground its growth in neuroscience, data, and insights
    • b) Germinating: create deep roots and stay grounded during your growth
  2. Reaching-up is about:
    • a) Reframing: challenge existing paradigms and ways of doing things
    • b) Adopting new ways of thinking, working and leading: be open, attentive, and receptive; dare to want and contribute to a better more humane world
    • c) Empowering your team with knowledge, skills and frameworks: build your customer archetypes, formulate your customer needs pyramid; design your customer journey
  3. Operationalizing is about developing and mastering six happiness competencies:
    1. Shared understanding: understand customer and employee needs, know who they are, how they perceive the interactions with your company, and how you can serve them in a way they can appreciate
    2. Experience design, improvement, and innovation: design and innovate existing experiences using Human Centered Design approaches and methodologies
    3. Empowerment: provide employees and partners with the space, budget, freedom, and the authority they need to deliver the right experiences
    4. Enablement: provide employees and partners with the resources and tools they need to deliver the right experiences
    5. Measurement and ROI: set metrics consistent with the desired change to quantify the quality of experiences and their link to the organization’s overall metrics
    6. Culture: create a system of shared values and behaviors that focus employees on contributing to happiness (internally and externally)

    Happiness Growth Competencies
  4. Wow blossoming is about:
    • a) Wowing your employees and customers with experiences that actually contribute to their Happiness
    • b) Connecting authentically, through empathy, and flourishing as human beings
    • c) Acknowledging and celebrating new behaviors
  5. Taking Time to drive this change and make a difference is about:
    • a) Taking time ON to do what you love and to review, to observe, and to correct
    • b) Taking time IN to feel and reflect
    • c) Taking Time OUT together as teams and across teams
    • d) Taking time OFF to enjoy life
    • e) Taking DOWN-time for regular recharging so creativity can happen
    • f) Taking Time UP to celebrate
  6. Harvesting your results is about:
    • a) Acknowledging and celebrating results of new behaviors
    • b) Giving back: fostering growth expansion within your organization and outside by collecting your work’s fruits, sharing your seeds, learnings, and best practices and letting others pollinate from them
In Yellow Goldfish we have dedicated six chapters to explore each stage, sharing case studies about the process key brands followed to create their Yellow Goldfish to Drive G.R.O.W.T.H.

In the next post we will share the top five takeaways from Yellow Goldfish. Stay tuned!

This post is part of a wider series with key insights from Yellow Goldfish. Find here the complete list of all this series’ posts that will be published every Monday and Wednesday from September 4th to September 18th (which marks Yellow Goldfish 1-year birthday).

  1. Why Happiness in business? – From Yellow Goldfish Overview Section
  2. Why Yellow Goldfish? – From Yellow Goldfish Overview Section.
  3. Uncovering H.A.P.P.I.N.E.S.S. in business – From Yellow Goldfish What Section – The Types
  4. Brief Overview of companies and examples covered in Yellow Goldfish – From Yellow Goldfish What & How Section
  5. Drive Happiness G.R.O.W.T.H. in Six Stages – From Yellow Goldfish How Section 
  6. Yellow Goldfish Top Five Takeaways 

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* Sharing is happiness. If our message resonates with you, please help us share it and let’s start building together the world we wish to live in. Thank you! #YellowGoldfish #HappinessDrivenGrowth

** If you would like to know more about how to pursue Happiness Driven Growth in your company or would like us to deliver an engaging talk about it at your event, get in touch or simply follow Rosaria Cirillo on LinkedIn & Instagram to receive her inspirational DOSE of Happiness.

*** Did you already enjoy reading Yellow Goldfish and want to help us inspire more persons? Helps us spread the word by sharing the quote that most resonated with you and by posting a picture of you with our book on Twitter, Instagram and/or LinkedIn using hashtags:
#YellowGoldfish
#YGBITW (Yellow Goldfish Book In The World)
#YellowGoldfishBook
#YellowGoldfishQuote

 

Yellow Goldfish book has been published on September 2018 and is the result of collecting and analyzing nearly 300 cases and identifying the common threads. It covers nine ways increasing happiness in business can drive growth, productivity and prosperity for everyone and it’s available for sales on Amazon. We hope it can help more companies understand WHY happiness in business matters, WHAT they can do to contribute to happiness of customers, employees and society, and HOW to do so.

 

Yellow Goldfish cover

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