2.
YOU HELP CREATE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT’S FUN

If you are to make people think better of themselves, the environment must be friendly instead of hostile, open instead of closed, supportive instead of discouraging, relaxed instead of rigid, inclusive instead of divisive — all the things that all the books on leadership and empowerment espouse.

But it must be more than that.

If you want ideas to flourish, it must be fun.

“Make it fun to work at your agency,” wrote David Ogilvy. “When people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good advertising. Kill grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance.”

Mr. Ogilvy did not have to limit his remarks to advertising agencies and advertising. The same could be said about any kind of business producing any kind of product or service. For you know it’s true:

People who have fun doing what they’re doing, do it better.

“The number one premise in business is that it need not be boring or dull,” said Thomas J. Peters. “It ought to be fun. If it’s not fun, you’re wasting your life.”

Note that neither Ogilvy nor Peters had any doubt about which is the more important — good work or fun. The fun comes first.

“If you ask me what is our primary purpose,” said Ogilvy, “I would say that it is not to make the maximum profit for our shareholders, but to run our agency in such a way that our employees are happy. Everything follows from that — good work, and good service to clients.”16

My experience tells me what Ogilvy’s experience told him — people do good work because they’re happy, because they’re having fun, not vice versa.

Granted, they have a sense of accomplishment, and they feel pleased and fulfilled when they do good work; but — at least among the writers and art directors in the advertising agencies I worked in — those feelings do not seem to carry over to the next job, or to the next.

Fun does.

Fun, like enthusiasm, is contagious and has a snowball effect that helps generate good work over and over again throughout the organization.

This was proven to me early in my career.

When I started in advertising, the writers and art directors dressed the way everybody in business dressed — the men wore suits and ties; the women, dresses or suits.

In the late ‘60’s all that changed. People started dressing in sweaters and blue jeans and T-shirts and tennis shoes. I was running a creative department then, and the Los Angeles Times asked me what I thought about people coming to work like that.

“I don’t care if they come to work in their pajamas,” I said, “as long as they get the work out.”

Sure enough, the day after the article (with my quote) appeared, my entire department showed up in pajamas. It was great fun. The office rocked with laughter and joy.17

More important, that day and the weeks that followed were some of the most productive times my department ever had. People were having fun, and the work got better.

Note again the cause and effect relationship: The fun came first; the better work, second. Having fun unleashes creativity. It is one of the seeds you plant to get ideas.

Indeed, nothing is more important for an ideaist to do than to create this kind of an environment, an environment where people enjoy coming to work everyday, where there’s a feeling of camaraderie and good fellowship, where people attack their work with alacrity and confidence, where they like the people they work with, where they think of themselves as partners instead of employees, where — in short — it’s fun to work.

When this happens, the work ceases to be a drag and takes on an effortless, easy-flowing, natural, Zen-like quality that results in more solutions, fresher solutions, better solutions, easier and faster.

The authors of 301 Ways to Have Fun at Work agree. Dave Hemsath and Leslie Yerkes wrote, “We believe that fun at work may be the single most important trait of a highly effective and successful organization; we see a direct link between fun at work and employee creativity, productivity, morale, satisfaction, and retention, as well as customer service and many other factors that determine business success.”18

So too does the philosopher Alan Watts: “Don’t make a distinction between work and play,” he wrote, “and don’t imagine for one minute that you’ve got to be serious about it.”

* * * * * *

What follows are some suggestions on how to help the people you work with believe in themselves, and how to create the kind of environment that encourages that kind of belief — suggestions, in short, on how to get them to come up with more and better ideas.

If any of the suggestions don’t make sense to you or don’t set well with you, disregard them.

Be your own kind of ideaist, not someone else’s. Follow your own gut feelings, not someone else’s.

Here’s why:

First, if you don’t feel good doing something — if it isn’t easy and natural for you — you probably won’t do it well. And if you don’t do it well, it probably won’t work, no matter how “right” it is.

Second, when you do something someone else’s way and you succeed, you never know if you also would have succeeded doing it your way. And if you fail, you never know either. It is a lose-lose situation.

On the other hand, when you do it your way and you succeed or fail, it is a win-win situation, for you know that it was because of you, not someone else, that you succeeded or failed.