Take 2 Steps for Fun's Sake

How have your perspectives and understandings changed over time? What has persisted in your outlook over many years? 

I've been revisiting my earliest thinking. At the time, in the mid-nineties, it was centered on what people do to have fun at work. Four years later, fun at work was part of my research into how successful businesses built places where people love to work. Fifteen years on, I'm circling back to the original work because it will influence the foundation for a new book, 101 Ways to Have Fun at Work.  

What's been transformed since 1997 is the core of my understanding. In the introduction to Fun Works, Creating Places Where People Love to Work, I wrote: 

Creating places where people love to work is about creating a culture where individuals can freely bring the best of their whole selves to work each day. My research demonstrates organizational resiliency and sustainability can be attributed to the successful interactions of these two things: business smarts and a positive culture. I call these two things hard science and soft science, and think of them as the Yin and Yang of high-performance organizations.

            Hard science deals with great product, good strategy, continuous improvement, service orientation, strict fiscal management, and a vision that embraces the ever-changing business environment.

            Soft science is about the people, their interactions with and relationship to their individual work and to each other -- the culture of the organization. People make the hard science work, or not work; shine or simply get by.

            To be successful, an organization must first have powerful hard science. To be sustainable, the organization's hard science must be supported by effective soft science. Both hard and soft science are equal in importance - they must both exist if success is to be the result. Yet it is the soft science that ultimately differentiates and contributes to the long-term, sustainable success.

Nowadays each of the 12 Steps from my first book has been transformed by this later understanding. How do these steps look to you in your life and environment? 

Step 1: Start with Yourself 

Don't wait for someone else to start the fun become the fun catalyst. Discover the fun that naturally resides within you. Each of us is fun in our own unique way. Cultivate your natural style. Get a little zany and create a chain reaction of frivolity that starts with you. Examine how you spend your time and evaluate what you can change to enliven the spontaneous, fun spirit within yourself and your coworkers. 

No. 2 Inspire Fun in Others

Be a role model for fun. Encourage others to engage in fun-loving activities. Recognize and support the effort of others in the creation of fun. Don't be afraid to appear silly.

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Have great days!

Leslie

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