The Wisdom (and opportunity) of Unhappiness

I found this really cool and interesting tool on the web called the Hedonometer. It’s run out of Vermont by some really powerful computers and some really smart people who use social media to determine how happy any specific group of people is over a given period of time, correlated to actual events.

So, it’s kind of wholesome geeky fun, which is fine. But it got me thinking about communications to our stakeholders—what makes them happy and what can we do to make them happier as part of our goal to build a more resilient company, as envisioned in Resilient5.

Based on 12 years of data on the Hedonometer, what makes people happiest is legalizing same-sex marriage, a royal wedding and Christmas. (Those unmarked spikes at regular intervals are Christmas Day).

I see something more important, though. Happiness is one thing, but I think we can admit that it is a general term that covers more important concepts like security, feeling loved and appreciated, hope, empowerment. (Honestly not sure where the Royal Wedding fits in any list, but that’s the data.)

Here’s the thing. As communicators, I think we focus a lot on making people happy. A lot of times we phrase things so we don’t upset people…use incident instead of accident or tragedy. You get the idea, you’ve done it, so have I.

Let’s look at the LOWEST point on the graph. It’s the race riots last year. People were unhappy…we don’t want people to be unhappy. I would take the opposite view. Unhappiness is part of life. More importantly, people are more open to change when they are unhappy. This makes total sense. Think about your company or your life. Do you change your approach after you won the big contract or after you lost the big contract?

We saw this play out last year. The race riots opened many people’s eyes to the continuing issue of race in our society in a way no positive message could have. Similarly, the January 6 riots (the second-lowest point) laid bare the divisions in our society in a way no panel discussion could have. Unhappiness was enlightening.

So, when we are creating change in our organizations, I’d submit we should restrain our impulse to avoid unhappiness. Sometimes we need it to convince people change is needed. (See #metoo).

Once we discover that truth, we need to respect its power. Any writer will tell you it is easier to make people cry than laugh. If we get lazy and use unhappiness to generate cheap reactions, we’re just going to create a population of powerless people.

Once people have seen the need for change, they need empowered optimism and leadership. “Here’s how we will fix this.” “It will be difficult but we can do it because we have done it before.” “We know we are resilient and when we identify a problem we take the steps to solve it.”

We open the mind with unhappiness and then we change it with action. This is where true strategic communication steps in. When people are unhappy, what can we do to create awareness of it and then empower them toward change?