Let’s Get Rid of FUN at work!
Don’t get me wrong, I love fun at work I just resent when someone says we must have FUN at work. This is when I feel like one of Michael Scott’s (NBC television show The Office) employees who are coerced into engaging in FUNtivities.
My Master’s thesis was on humor in counseling. Humor and playfulness are my top signature strengths according to both the VIA Signature Strength Survey and my children. I am not dour and sour - I love to play, but don’t tell me to play. Most imposed FUN reminds me of the analogy of the dead frog to explain a joke — explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog, it is interesting what you find but it is not longer full of life.
Have you read The Fish based on the Seattle Pike’s fish market where they have fun at work? I think there are wonderful principles in the book yet when it turns into a workplace program with employees throwing plush fish around a training room it will lose a lot of the impact. I talked with one manager after taking the fish workshop and he called it the “f” workshop and told me to take the plush fish reminder on his desk and give it to my daughter. I also took my children to the fish market in Seattle four years ago. I told them to watch the workers having FUN - the fish workers were having a bad day - there were no “holy mackerels” or flying fish. We must be careful of the models we follow or bring to our workplace.
Matt Labash has written a brilliant, insightful, informative, and dare I say, fun, critique of FUN at work for The Weekly Standard: Are We Having Fun Yet: The infantilization of corporate America (makes me glad I am Canadian, just kidding).
Mr. Labash has some terrific anecdotes and examples. He make fun of FUN or “coercive joviality” espoused by FUNsulatants and FUNcilitators who unleash a FUNaticism of FUNon the workplace. Labash goes on the attack, “like a diseased appendix bursting and spreading infectious bacteria throughout the abdomen, fun is insinuating itself everywhere, into even the un-hippest workplaces.” Click here to read this thoughtful and entertaining article.
Let’s get rid of FUN at work and keep fun at work. Don’t turn fun into a program, policy or procedure - transforming you into Michael Scott before your employees’ eyes. I believe imposed programs, policies and procedures miss the whole point of fun.
Children learn so much from play but if you go up to children who are playing and ask what they are learning they will respond, “we are just having fun” as they look at you like you are from another planet.
Here are 5 tentative guidelines to ensure fun does not turn into FUN:
- Be genuine in expressing or creating fun
- Be authentic and real when you engage in fun
- Avoid making fun impositional or coercive, invite people to have fun
- Be sensitive to the experiences of others around fun
- Strive for spontaneity in fun.
One person said that the mark of sanity is to blur the lines between work and play. Let’s keep those lines blurry. What do you think, are we having FUN yet?
David Zinger embraces humor and fun but don’t tell him to go out and play!
Picture Credit: Clown Trailer killed again and laughed by http://flickr.com/photos/what_i_see/237176823/
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POSTED IN: business ideas, creativity, leadership, management, satire, what the..., work life
5 opinions for Let’s Get Rid of FUN at work!
Frederic Jean
Sep 19, 2007 at 8:46 am
I was dragged to one of those training sessions a few years ago. I did keep the fish. I am working with a new team and we are using this fish as the “you broke the build” token. I guess I must have missed the whole point of the class ;)
Fred
Nancy
Sep 19, 2007 at 10:45 am
Reminds me of mandatory “pep assemblies” from Junior High School days. If your class yelled louder than the other classes that meant you were better. What were we yelling about? Yelling.
David Zinger
Sep 19, 2007 at 11:33 am
I HEAR YOU NANCY IF I COULD JUST FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU SAID. I liked your point Nancy.
Frederic, that seems to be a key word…dragged and then we experience it as a drag.
Kimberly
Sep 23, 2007 at 3:05 pm
I couldn’t have said it better myself. At my last company, which strived mightly to be a “fun” place, my career went into a virtual standstill. Having “fun” was always more important for upper management than ensuring that research was completed. My current company is about as stuffy, corporate, conservative, and “un-fun” as you can imagine, and I love it. Not only has my productivity soared, but it’s also much easier to develop true friendships with colleagues when you’re all allowed to create your own fun (while keeping up with insane deadlines).
David Zinger
Sep 23, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Kimberly,
Fun is not fun for everyone. I much prefer it when it happens rather than someone making it happen. Keep creating your own fun even with those deadlines.
David