Managing to Have Fun

Ken Blanchard coauthor of The One Minute Manager Managing to Have Fun is a fun read, but don't let its playful tone fool you. This is an important book about a serious subject, a must-read of any manager.

Autorentext
Matt Weinstein is a psychologist, management consultant, and nationally acclaimed expert on play. One of the most widely requested speakers on the corporate lecture circuit, Weinstein is the founder and Emperor of Playfair, Inc., an international management consulting firm that presents innovative team-building programs to more than 400 clients each year. He lives in Berkeley, California.

Klappentext

Based on his success with some of America's best-known companies, Weinstein presents a step-by-step plan for building an enthusiastic, high-performance team and offers hundreds of suggestions for enhancing employe satisfaction and personal pride.

Zusammenfassung
What's the best way to revolutionize the workplace? Forget restructuring and reengineering. Have a little fun!
Imaging sendig a pizza to your assistant's home after keeping her late at the office...or writing a "thank you" note to her spouse for being so understanding! It's not business as usual, but as management consultant Matt Weinstein makes clear, recognition and appreciation can play a vital role in boosting morale and productivity among stressed-out, overworked employees. Based on his success with some of America's best-known and most profitable companies, Weinstein presents a step-by-step plan for building an enthusiastic, high-performance team and offers hundreds of tried-and-true techniques for enhancing employee satisfaction and personal pride.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

The Four Principles of Fun at Work

Why a Company That Plays Builds a Business That Works

Work is not supposed to be fun. That's why it's called work.

Work and Play are supposed to be opposites, like Love and War.

*"Make love, not war."

"Quit playing around and get back to work!"*

Just as love is sweet and war is hell, play is fun, and work is...hard.

Traditional business wisdom says that if you see someone having fun on the job, then that person is probably slacking off.

This time, traditional business wisdom is dead wrong.

By having fun on the job, perhaps an employee is expressing the joy of working in a job that is satisfying to her. Or perhaps she has found a healthy way to deal with the stress and pressure of a difficult assignment. Or maybe she is taking a momentary "fun break" from a difficult task, to which she will be able to return more alert and energized.

But if taking a fun break and wasting company time both look pretty much the same, how can you tell which is which? How do you know if you are looking at someone relieving stress, or if you are looking at someone who is just goofing off?.

It's all a matter of perception. When you see your employees or coworkers having fun, you get an opportunity to encourage an atmosphere of excitement, support, and celebration on the job. Once you realize that "goofing off" is in the eye of the beholder, you can look at fun at work a little differently. Instead of suppressing fun at work, you can begin to nourish and cultivate it, because the expression of fun at work can be extraordinarily beneficial for the morale and productivity of your entire organization.

I am always amazed when people proudly proclaim, "I never mix business with pleasure." I want to reply, "What is wrong with you?" If you want to build a successful team at work, your management philosophy should be exactly the opposite -- you should always mix business with pleasure. You should be constantly finding new ways to bring pleasure in business to yourself, your employees, and your customers!

For too many companies, building a team means creating a high-powered, smoothly functioning organization that has plenty of muscle, but not much heart. It is the absence of the human side of business that depletes employee morale, and contributes to job dissatisfaction and burnout. By adding an element of fun and celebration to a team-building program, you can take an important step toward humanizing your workplace, and creating a sense of heart and soul in your organization.

The Four Principles of Fun at Work

How do you establish a corporate culture that values celebration, appreciation, and the human side of business? There is no right or wrong way -- every business is different. There are thousands of ways you can approach the transformation of your own particular workplace. How, then, do you begin? There are four basic principles that can help you begin to incorporate fun and play into your business life.

Principle 1: Think About the Specific People Involved

Bringing fun to the workplace does not happen in a void -- it happens as a natural outgrowth of what is already occurring on the job. And not everyone likes to receive acknowledgment and praise in the same way. You have to ask yourself, Who are the people on your staff? What do they like to do for fun? How can you match their style of fun when they're not at work with the way you reward them on the job? The better you get to know the individuals in the organization, the more appropriate and the more effective you can be in using fun and play for reward, recognition, and revitalization.

Principle 2: Lead by Example

The people in your company look to management for clues about how they should act. If the managers don't loosen up, the employees are not going to loosen up either. There is a famous business axiom that says the three best ways to lead are by example, by example, and by example. There won't be any fun in your organization if you don't set an example by your own behavior. Every manager's leadership style is unique. Take some time to determine how comfortable you are with the idea of fun at work, and then lead based on what you have learned.

Principle 3: If You're Not Getting Personal Satisfaction from What You're Doing, It's Not Worth Doing

Don't kid yourself. You're not just doing this for your employees' benefit or to build a sense of team. You need this for yourself as well. When you give on the material level you receive on the emotional level. When you take time to celebrate your employees' successes, you reap the reward of feeling connected to the members of your team. We have all known successful managers who have built a thriving business, but who wake up each morning with a feeling of isolation, the feeling that it's lonely at the top. Bringing fun to work is not a one-way street: this is for your benefit, too. Developing a sense of connectedness to your employees is essential to your long-term emotional well-being.

Principle 4: Change Takes Time

Be patient. If change is going to be effective, it takes planning. And it takes time to sink in. A corporate culture doesn't change overnight from one in which seriousness and "professionalism" are rewarded to one in which fun and play are encouraged. Change is like a dimmer switch: darkness gradually turns to light in almost imperceptible increments, and a corporate culture that has devalued laughter and play metamorphoses into an organization in which fun and play are an everyday occurrence. Start by planning a number of small events that give the clear message that the company is learning to celebrate itself and to publicly appreciate its employees.

The Four Principles in Action

These four principles have been instrumental to my work with executives who want to use fun and play to build a team. In the following case studies you will see these principles at work in a wide variety of industries. Once you understand the way these principles function in the everyday work world, you will be better able to visualize the best way to proceed in your own organization.
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