BLT(*) topic: How important is it for you to have fun within your business?

1. Define “fun” in a work context?

Quotes from around the table:

Anywhere I can wear jeans to work…

I’ve worked with undertakers before…they need to have fun at work, otherwise the job can easily overwhelm them…they have an extremely dark sense of humour!

For certain industries, work has to be fun by nature to permit creativity.

Software developers used to be allowed 20% free ‘fun’ space for messing around on new projects and blue sky thinking.

It’s important to distinguish between fun and fellowship.

You just have to decide whether you’re a Tigger or an Eyeore.

To summarise, “fun” seems to depend upon the nature and size of the industry; for example, the concept and expectations of “fun”  in a small creative firm will be very different to that in a large legal practise.

2. Are you allowed to have fun in the workplace nowadays?

There has been a growing trend, imported from trendy Silicon Valley offices, for beanbags, bars and ping pong tables to make their way into the UK workplace.

The question is whether this is just “pretend fun”?

Around the table, stories abounded of ‘office additions’ designed primarily to keep people at work for longer rather than to enhance their creativity; e.g. the video game competition starting at 4.30pm on a Friday to ensure people would still be there to answer the phones at 6pm.

3. Funding the fun

Do you really expect to go to work to have fun?

For many people, fun is a byproduct, a rare bonus, an added extra…it certainly isn’t the raison d’être for going to work in the first place.

That reason is that working enables you to have fun at home and in your private life; hence, work is a means to ends and if you need to be happy at home, you will be prepared to sacrifice happiness at work.

4. Cultural v commercial

“Culture is what you do when management isn’t looking.”

Building a culture is a lot more difficult and takes far more time than importing a few pool and ping pong tables.

However, a defined culture encourages the right people to stay at a firm, whilst weeding out those who should be working elsewhere, who aren’t right for it.

So, if you can build a culture, this enables you as a business owner to step away from your own business. In other words, you can manage your work:life balance far better …which enables you to have more fun.

It’s a conundrum:

• Small agile company = owner has to be everywhere = indispensable
• Larger process-driven company = less fun, owner still indispensable

5. Delivering Happiness

Zappos is an American shoe company, famed for its customer service.

Many examples abound on the internet…this is just one for illustration purposes:

“Jay was about to be a best man at his friend’s weddings and purchased his shoes from Zappos.com (mainly because they were the cheapest!) but they were mistakenly sent to the wrong address and wouldn’t be arriving in time.

Jay called Zappos and informed them of his dilemma.  Not only did Zappos settle the problem by offering to courier  a free replacement pair of shoes overnight at no cost, Jay was also upgraded to a VIP account and given a complete refund.”

“Zappos has earned a customer for life — In addition to all of this, I originally ordered from them because they had the cheapest deal on the shoes I needed.”

Tony Hsieh, the founder and CEO of Zappos wrote a bestseller, Delivering Happiness, which stated that everything good (and fun) stemmed from a strong company culture.

Even though Zappos sells shoes, it’s not a commoditised product that they’re selling. They believe there is a higher purpose – to make people happy, so much so that this is one of Zappos’ core objectives.

Other objectives include:

• Make customer service the responsibility of the entire company, not just a department; if you focus on great customer experience, your brand will grow automatically.
• Focus on company culture as the #1 priority: always hire carefully…hire for culture not for gain.
• If you have a strong company culture, formed by people who have a common goal, your company’s core values will form naturally.
• Apply research from the science of happiness to running a business.
• Try many things to see what works and, along the way, you’ll discover what you don’t want to do as much as what you do want to do.

http://deliveringhappiness.com/book/

Conclusions

• Fun is a relative concept.
• Fun at work has to be authentic to really be “fun”, hence the need for an underpinning culture.
• If you run your own business, it is up to you to build “fun” into your work schedule…and if this includes being a film extra and commandeering tanks across the lawns of Knebworth House, then so be it!

(*) BLT is a free fortnightly networking group that meets from 7:15-8:45, every other Thursday at The George & Dragon, Marlow.

For more details, please leave me a message – new networkers are always welcome.

The next meeting is Thursday 21st June.