Can you have FUN and make MONEY at the same time?

Howard, thanks for posting this. I wouldn't have found it otherwise.

I love the notion of it and challenge Jack: can fun be part of any business? My company saves lives (watch this video).

Is "fun" an appropriate attribute for a company with a mission like ours?

Thanks for reading my article Howard. I would like to hear some examples to your question. I will use this idea when writing my next article. Always end with a question....Jack

I periodically evaluate how my services and seminars have helped other people. Sometimes it is reading emails or letters sent to me. Sometimes it's looking at gifts clients have given me. Sometimes it's just reflecting on the comments made during seminars.

Joe wrote: "Can fun be part of any business? My company saves lives. Is 'fun' an appropriate attribute for a company with a mission like ours?"

Contrast the following statements: "Our company is a lot of fun: we save lives!"

"Our company is no fun at all: we save lives."

I imagine you were stimulating conversation, Joe, I'd bet you consider your company a lot fun! When a gym chain or a cruise ship line acquires common sense and gets AEDs, how fun will that be? How many vacations are currently not being taken because of the risks?

This is fun: http://blog.news-record.com/staff/health/2008/03/chrisdalldorflivesandthe_p.shtml He's going to grow up... and his classmates won't have the memory of a kid dying on the playground.

If all fails... you can always make fun of your own mistakes. ;]

[I have fun doing what I do and I haven't never resorted to finding fun in my made mistakes!]

-Andrey

Thanks Howard for surfacing this article, it's a great one and I will be attending the event in Carnation. I was also unable to rate it. (I hope it isn't because it didn't meet the criteria for an Article in the Learn section, but I don't know.)

Brian's point is taken which is that it's all in how you look at it, but it also illustrates the principle of "one man's poison is..." A lot could be said about that:-)

DD

This topic is so important, Howard. What is work with no fun? Not worth doing.

Bob and I felt so strongly about this that we started a company in San Diego years ago called Korporate Comedy Concepts. The idea was to help managers, executives and HR people help their employees manage stress through laughter.

One activity in a retreat setting was an "Academy Awards" ceremony. The idea was to take each employee and put them up for an Oscar with two other well-known actors. We took a well-known film, slightly changing the title and using the employee's job and personality, worked it into the plot description. It's hard to describe, but you usually had a room full of people falling off chairs and laughing hysterically, which, of course, was the whole idea.

When I was a grantwriting manager at a high-stress international relief and development organization, we had a contest every year for the worst two pages of a grant proposal that was ever written: it had to be full of cliches and buzz words, overemotional, run-on sentences, the whole works. Somehow in an environment of multiple deadlines, phones ringing off the hook, 6,000 projects in 125 countries and never knowing what you will be asked to do in how short a time, it helped to step back and just have a good laugh every once in a while.

Once a writer of mine had been beaten down and was thoroughly depressed because a proposal he had written had been sent back by the national accounts rep for more revisions something like two dozen times. One day, he walked into the staff room for a department meeting and I had drawn a sheet of paper on the white board with a face and stick arms and legs. It was marching, face all angry, hands in fists. A thought bubble above his head said, "I WON'T be fixed!" That was enough to break the tension and we spent the next five minutes laughing our heads off.

It's just those little things to inject humor that makes work fun and, in stressful moments, more bearable. I can't work if I'm not having fun.

My sister and I started our company because we love working together and felt that we had a better chance of being happy working if we were together than if we were apart.

As professional organizers we meet a lot of people that are in distress and we see a lot of mess. While bringing order to the chaos we try like Judy suggests injecting some humor into the situation. Not at the expense of the client, they are so happy to be free of the disorder they are smiling as well.

Joe, is your question that in a serious field of work, where lives are being saved or world peace being reached, perhaps it is unacceptable to have fun? OR just that it is unacceptable to appear to be having fun?

Laughter is good. It makes the muscles in your body work (bladder included).

One of our corporate values is to be a great place to work. While fun may be a part of that, it's a far cry from Jack's examples, where fun is the primary benefit.

Fun = good. That's fine for me. My point is that fun may not be an appropriate primary benefit for all businesses.

Jack, what say you?

It's fun to grey these issues because it brings context.

It wasn't fun to come in to see a new patient on my day out of the office, Friday. It wasn't fun to see her again on Saturday (another day out of the office). She had neck pain and a headache that would hospitalize most people.

What I do is "a great place to work" because it makes a difference in people's lives. It is also a lot of fun... most of the time. And when people ask why I don't do chiropractic the way most chiropractic doctors do it, my response is that I tried that, it wasn't fun.

I noticed that the article shows '0' has read the post. Considering how many posted here has read it, I wonder what's going on with the site?

for heather and i, the fun is in participating in the pivotal moments of people's lives. i live for the smiles, looks of surprise, and yes even the tears. what we do makes us feel so alive. i cant think of anything more fun than that.

just

Thanks for the 'on-going discussion' regarding FUN in your business. It reminds me to integrate many of these thoughts into my articles/seminars. A general observation is to encourage a broader meaning of the word "FUN".

I have met medics who save lives daily, and they have told me they wouldn't trade what they do for anything. After further conversation, they confide that what they enjoy (broader use of FUN) are various things ...the level of intensity...a deep sense of connection with their fellow workers...a sense of gratitude knowing that they have in fact made a difference in someone's life.

And even in fields such as policemen, firemen..and others, who on a daily basis are in life/death scenarios, many confide that integrating laughter, humor, FUN, into their work is one of the ways they are able to balance the intensity.

We see this in movies...some true-life stories...playing jokes on fellow employees...after-work comraderies, humorous rites of passage for new recruits...all of it FUN.

When all is said and done, it really is not an "either/or" scenario, but rather "and". And this is what many businesses miss; that it is possible, necessary, to integrate the seriousness of a mission statement with creating an environment where "play" is given its due place of honor.

Perhaps Pat Kane, author of THE PLAY ETHIC, says it best: (quoted in Daniel Pink's book, A WHOLE NEW MIND: WHY RIGHT-BRAINERS WILL RULE THE FUTURE):

"Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society ~ our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value".

While most companies consider their missions 'serious', some even life/death scenarios, if you dig deep enough, you will find , with the successful ones, that somewhere woven into the fabric of their day-to-day practice is the element of FUN.

And this is where we are...in the middle of another major transition. That is what I seem to be good at and enjoy; facilitating major transitions in the market place with greater ease.

Looking forward to further discussion!

Nicely done, Jack. Thanks.