All work and no play can equal failure, says a local author and consultant. Leslie Yerkes is serious about the need to infuse a little fun into the American workplace.
"We're not going to stop being entrepreneurs or valuing Type A behavior", says the founder and principal consultant of Cleveland-based Catalyst Consulting Group. "But since we spend more and more time at work we have to find a way to secure some joy, meaning and satisfaction into our lives."
Released in June 2001, Yerkes' second book, Fun Works: Creating Places Where People Love To Work, focuses on 11 companies that exemplify her principles of "fun/work fusion". It has been featured in The New York Times, Financial Times and Fortune. (Yerkes' previous book, 301 Ways To Have Fun At Work, was published in 1997.
Yerkes sat down with Inside Business to discuss why everyone should pencil in an appointment with fun.
Q. How do you respond to the adage: "If work was fun, it wouldn't be called work"?
A. "In 150 years of industrialized management, the message communicated to employees is that fun and work are incompatible. The myth is that if you're having too much fun, when will the work get done? Nothing could be further from the truth. Fun is a life-giving force. It's the secret sauce that turbocharges the situation. If you want to succeed at business, get the fundamentals right, but don't forget to have fun."
Q. Hasn't the failure of many dot-coms hurt the notion of making the workplace fun?
A. "We've credited the dot-coms with the advent of fun, but they're only one of many environmental conditions' that have brought the principle of fun into the workplace. It's a universally understood premise. Smart organizations have been doing this. Healthy people have been doing this. It's ages old, and I certainly don't want to be credited with creating it. I don't believe the failure of dot-coms hurt making work fun. Dot-coms failed because they didn't get the [business] fundamentals right."
Q. Does fun begin with employees or with management?
A. "Both. You're acknowledging an outdated hierarchy when you think, 'If I do this, will I be taken seriously?' Leadership needs to support [fun] as a core value and place the same importance on it as they do quality. And as the worker, the question shouldn't be, 'Does advocating [fun] stop you from being a peak performer?' People will want to work with you because you get the job done and you have fun doing it."
Q. What type of fun is not appropriate in the workplace?
A. "Every says, 'Tell me a story of fun gone wrong.' If you hire the right people to begin with, and you trust them with the organization's most valuable resources, why not trust them to decide what's appropriate and not appropriate for fun? The minute you start making rules, it suddenly becomes someone's job to enforce the fun. Then you have fun monitors and this thing is suddenly elusive."
Q. How does Leslie Yerkes make her workplace fun?
A. "I live these principles each day. I surround myself with people who value the same things I do. I take my work seriously, but I lighten up on life. And when I do that, well, the fun just shows up."
