The Fun Standard

Document:  37IWS
Date effective:  Today
Owner:  Everyone

”In every job that must be done
There is an element of fun
You find the fun and snap!
The job's a game."
- Mary Poppins

1.  Purpose

There are standards to describe all sorts of processes in all kinds of organizations all over the world.  These processes preserve best practices and prevent the wasteful reinvention of excellence, but they can't create success by themselves.  People must also enjoy their work to be productive.

Maximum productivity is obtained by having fun. This standard collects best practices that help organizations have fun. Addition of the final ingredient, the actual "fun" itself, can only be done by you.

2.  Definition

Fun: Consisting of animation, bliss, buoyancy, cheer, chuckles, delight,  gladness, happiness, jests, jokes, joviality, joy, laughter, light-heartedness, merriment, mirth, play, pleasantries, quips, rapture, sport, tranquillity, and witticism.

3.  Process

The organization shall be predisposed to mutual cooperation, trust, communication, and goodwill.

3.1  Management will

• View themselves as employees of their organization, and focus on removing roadblocks and providing the resources their staff needs to perform their work.

• Improve the plan, manage the schedule, put the right people in the right place, and ensure that everyone knows how they can help the team.

• Have at least one meeting a week, mandate attendance at no more than 2 hours of regular meetings a week, and start every meeting with a clear statement of its purpose.

• Practice management by walking around (MBWA) to obtain unfiltered information about how the organization functions.

• Make promotions on merit, plus demonstration that at least one member of their staff can do their job as well as they can.

• Assign responsibility, authority, and accountability as a single package.

• Praise in public, criticize in private.

• Schedule based on bottom-up estimates prepared by people who perform the work, and plan to minimize overtime.

• Ensure that no staff member needs more than 15 minutes a week to prepare regular reports.

• Provide a feedback mechanism for employees to communicate with top management, and visibly action and reward useful suggestions.

• Share profits with everyone in the organization.
• Share credit for all successes, and take responsibility for all failures.

3.2  Employees will

• Place first priority on fulfillment of the goals of the whole organization, and refrain from construction of disconnected empires unrelated to business goals.

• Never ask for something they don't need, never promise results they know can't be delivered, do anything they say they'll do, and provide notification as far in advance as possible when circumstances prevent fulfillment of a commitment.

• Share information with everyone, never use technical double-talk, and say they don't know when they don't know.

• Maintain a good working relationship with all departments, and respect all personnel independent of their area of expertise.

• Decrease the complexity and shorten the cycle times of all processes under their control.

• Write documents to be read; use brevity to maximize clarity.

• Double-check anything they give to others for accuracy, completeness, and consistency.

• Relate to their boss the way they would like employees to relate to them if they were the boss.

3.3  Human Resources will

• Ensure that all personnel receive at least three weeks of vacation a year, and that at least three weeks of unused vacation can be carried over from one year to the next.

• Facilitate flexible working hours, and allow overtime hours worked to be taken in time off.

• Provide all personnel with medical, dental, and disability insurance, and repay out-of-pocket expenses within two weeks.

• Ensure that all personnel receive at least one week of training a year, and enable employees to choose their own training if not chosen by their management.

• Ensure that jerks and meanies are counselled, and, if unresponsive, allocated to a peripheral group where they can't damage the rest of the organization and have to work exclusively with each other until reformed.

3.4  Facilities will

• Ensure that at least three live plants and one outside window are visible from every working area.

• Reduce, absorb, and deflect noise wherever possible.

• Use only full spectrum lighting.

• Ensure that bathroom stalls are at least three feet wide, toilet paper has a roughness level less than plywood, water taps stay open for at least five seconds, and at least one shower is available.

• Make printable whiteboards and markers in at least three colours available to all staff.

• Provide all personnel with a computer no more than three years old, with word processing, spreadsheet, database, and graphics applications, and email, newsgroup, and web access.

3.5  All Personnel will

• Strive for excellence through continuous improvement in all aspects of their job.

• Actively listen to everyone, never interrupt, and change their mind when they hear a better idea.

• Be gender, disability, religion, age, and colour blind, respect all personnel as human beings of equal value, and never try to increase their sense of self-esteem by decreasing someone else's.

• Never spread harmful gossip about others, and congratulate others whenever possible with specifics.

• Turn complaints into constructive suggestions for improvement.

• Protect the environment and save costs at the same time.

• Never come to work with a contagious or infectious illness.

• Erase the whiteboard at the end of the meeting.

• Take coffee from the second pot, and make a new pot when the second pot is empty.

• Never raise their voice, keep a sense of humour, and smile at least twice a day for at least five seconds each time.

4.  Exit Criteria

This process ends when all personnel look forward to coming to work at the start of each day, and leave at the end of each day with a genuine sense of joy, self-worth, and achievement.

Failure to have fun will not be tolerated.

This version supersedes previous issues and takes precedence over constitutions.

5. References

The following references are applicable to this document.

a. Scott Adams,  "The Dilbert Principle".

b. Norman Augustine,  "Augustine's Laws".

c. David Firth,  "How To Make Work Fun".

d. C. Northcote Parkinson,  "The Law".

e. Robert Townsend,  "Up The Organization".
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Improve this! Content available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License - http://creativecommons.org/.  The latest version can always be found at FunStandard.org. This version 2020-03-14
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