Recently, I’ve got myself a book called “Fish Tales!” by Harry Paul, John Christensen and Philip Strand. This is a sequel to the famous “Fish!” book which teaches us about the “Fish!” philosophy.
Fish! philosophy talks about making your workplace a fun place to work in. This is severely lacking in our world today. Look at your current workplace……can you find something which you can label as “fun” or “entertaining” ? Maybe you can gather a few colleagues to crack a joke or two…or maybe laughing at somebody else’s weird behavior….but that’s about it. Or maybe your company management is so kind that a “fun” party is organized for the employees on a particular day….for maybe 2 hours. That’s it. Why must it be only that 2 hours? Or have you ever hear your boss saying “Fun time is over lads, now get back to work!“.
Everyone loves to have fun, though there is a small group of people who thinks that being serious at work means it cannot be related to the word FUN. Different people different preferences but I am sure there are a lot of people out there, who wants to enjoy their work by mixing in work + fun.
It’s not impossible. A lot of companies have done it. Why not yours?
Fun is necessary for people to stay occupied in something for a long period of time. Take programming for example. A lot of IT companies believe that squeezing their programmers is the right thing to do….or maybe, to rephrase it to a better sentence…the only thing they could do due to the timeline given. I strongly disagree. Yes, we do have project timeline which is critical. However, squeezing your programmers to work > 12 hours a day is ridiculous…..unless, they can associate fun with their work. I know some companies who have this “fun” element, and their employees don’t mind working for long hours. The “fun” element keeps them occupied and make them feel like they’re enjoying their work.
Sadly, most companies do not care about this mentality. It’s out of the norm…it doesn’t align with the beliefs the old companies have. In the end, employees are forced to work for very long hours without “fun“….which means they don’t enjoy the work they’re doing. And when someone doesn’t like the work he’s doing, it spells disaster. The person will either work half-heartedly, or resign to seek for something he really enjoys doing.
That is why, I strongly believe the importance of mixing fun and work together. Make your job fun. Doesn’t that sound great?
Remember, fun is the source of creativity and innovation. Without it, you’ll be working like a pre-programmed robot, not a creative human being. 
6 comments
Comments feed for this article
February 8, 2007 at 11:57 pm
Ronnie Ann
Your last sentence says it all, Alvin. Nice post. One of the best IT bosses I ever had always found time to come up with some fun thing to add to our work day – even if it was just a joke or funny story. Not only did we have more fun, but so did he – and we were an incredibly productive team that others wanted to join. Wouldn’t it be great if that was the way it was for everyone?
February 9, 2007 at 12:47 am
Dmitri
We have some fun elements at work. Right now, installing Vista and Office 2007 is a fun activity, since most of us are working with XP and Office 2003 (wow, 4-year gap in Office release!). But making the work fun in general is difficult – it takes a very agile, funny and interesting manager to motivate employees to actually be productive, and enjoy it too. I have seen such a manager in my former place of work, and know for a fact that he was painfully effective at getting lots of work done and lots of money flowing. That, in an academic environment! However, things are not always as exciting…
February 9, 2007 at 2:51 am
anthonyhriley
You might also enjoy the following:
http://higherbar.wordpress.com/2007/01/30/worst-hr-2007-the-flounder-award/
This is what happens when the Fish Principles get into the hands of bad management.
February 9, 2007 at 8:53 am
Alvin
Yeap, it’s very difficult to strike a balance btw work and fun. Many companies have failed, yet many companies have also succeeded. In the end, it is up to the management to play the important role. If they screw up (trying to be creative, like the company mentioned by Anthony in the prev comment), then it’ll surely backfire.
Making a work environment fun will need to depend on few things such as the type of employees you’re targeting, the work nature, the office environment and also how “open-minded” can the managers be?
February 9, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Angie Tan
Cool article.
I’ve always harped on if you enjoy your work, it means that you’re having fun. But sometimes, we all need a break too, that is non work-related.
I remember many years back while away on project at a site, while working late, my colleagues and I, including the project manager took some time out to have fun. I found this rubber ball to kick around and we took some time off to play a bit of Euro 2002 Goal-Kick competition!
Of course, we did this AFTER office hours when no one was around… It did relax us and we enjoyed ourselves immensely before returning to the grind of implementing the solution. Of course, the PM said, “guys, lets get back to work afte r 1 hr!”
I tried to implement an after-office LAN game on one of our Linux boxes but turned out that not everyone could stand the 3D environment. We opted for an online game in the end. We played for a while before returning to work.
It made the staff a lot happier and relaxed. We all worked long hours anyway, and it was one way to motivate staff and blow off some steam.
However, it is not possible in a customer environment. So, for relaxation, we take some teh-tarik breaks but even then, it had to be after office hours.
Frankly, not many organizations encourage “fun” in M’sia. There was one place which I heard had pool tables and a punching bag but sadly, that company is no more in M’sia.
I’d guess if we work at a facility like a programming R&D lab (read google), we probably have more room to have fun.
However, this is a hard idea to sell to alot of management folks who view business as being serious and that time is $$$$. So, one option is to have more activities after office hours to compensate and also to foster unity amongst the staff.
February 11, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Alvin
Nothing is impossible. I am sure someone will come out with a perfect solution for this in Malaysia.