The most fun you can have with your clothes on!!!

I don’t know about you but I spend an inordinate amount of my time either at work or getting to work or even thinking about work. I know, I’m sad, very sad. But I don’t think I am unique and I would challenge you to tot up the amount of time in any given week you spend on work related matters. The answer might surprise you.

And so I have come to the conclusion that if I am going to spend that amount of time gainfully employed I am damn well going to enjoy it and I am going to try my hardest to make sure that those around me enjoy work as well.

For me work ought to be the most fun you can have with your clothes. I will leave it to your imagination to determine what is the most fun you can have with your clothes off. That is not my responsibility.

It might run counter to our Calvinist work ethic, and believe me, given my Pictish and Caledonian background, there are few more Calvinist than me, but I firmly believe that the more fun you can create at work the more motivated and engaged our people are. After all we manage people with hopes, fears and emotions not robots or machines. And if laughter is what distinguishes us from animals then why not utilise this unique gift in the workplace. Surely we all want to do our best work in an environment which is human and humane, don’t we?

Now I am not suggesting that our offices should be a laugh a minute environment with a clown in one corner and a stand up comic in the other. But as leaders, no matter the environment or management structures or culture we find ourselves in, it is our job to create a human and relaxed environment for our people that they might give their best and produce great work.

So as a leader in title or by popular acclaim do you do any of the following?
Celebrate birthdays and other significant events in someone’s life
Celebrate success
Wander around the office and speak to your team, even the most junior
Show an interest in their work and ask questions about it
Find a way to share a joke, a laugh, a smile
Be self deprecating about yourself

And if you do all of these things then your place must be a great place to work and I want to come and work for you. It could be fun.

You might be a leader, the manager, the boss, but you are still a member of the human race so be human, be humane.

And there’s another reason why I think it is important that we learn to have fun.

When we were children, and even I was a child once though these days I can barely recall those carefree days of endless summers and absence of health and safety rules, we learnt and developed through play. The sandpit was our classroom, paints and glue our personal development programme, and Play School and its geometric windows our MBA. So what happened? At what age were we when we decided that, or it was decided for us, that play was now a waste of time and energy and not relevant to us anymore.

Balderdash.

Play and channelled fun can be a source of great creativity. The suspension of disbelief that goes along with play techniques allows us to explore new opportunities and allows us to break free from the surplus society that produces a surfeit of similar ideas.

Actors use play techniques to create; visit an ad agency and you will find rooms devoted to encouraging people to play; and some of the biggest brands in the world built on creativity and imagination, brands like Sony, Apple and Hewlett Packard, constantly challenge their people to do the normal and mundane and the similar in new interesting and innovative ways designed to encourage creativity and innovation.

I heard of one company who held a meeting on the London Eye to crack an issue and the solution had to be found in one full revolution. And they did.

So tomorrow, make a vow right here and now, to do what you can to make your workplace or workspace, the most fun you and those around you are going to have with your clothes on. Don’t ask for or seek permission. Don’t wait for someone else to go first. Don’t put off because it’s not the culture of your place. As someone far greater than me once said ‘you can become the change you want to see in the world’. Go for it and let me know how you get on. I await your stories and feedback.

Now is it just me?

I have to let you know that I am getting more than a little fed up with the constant preaching and hectoring of the eco and enviro-mentalists. It now seems that they are even telling me what kind of light bulbs I must buy. It is alright for me to strain and damage my eyes to read in the dim glow of the new eco friendly light bulbs just as long as the polar bears have an ice floe on which to perch.

Is it only me who thinks a nice dose of global warming might be good for us? Heating bills would reduce, a considerable help to hard pressed families and those on fixed incomes. And if we need less power to heat our homes there will be less need for the coal fired and nuclear power stations which the eco mentalists see as the Devil’s work. Am I the only one who sees things like this?

Have a great week. And, if I don’t speak to you beforehand, have a great Easter.

Sit felix. Et sit fortunatus.