overall scheme of the business. I decided to return to fundamentals, especially as they related to our goal of making AES a fun place to work. A few years earlier, we had defined the assumptions about people that we believed had guided the workplaces of the Industrial Revolution. I took the next logical step and defined a new set of assumptions about people in the workplace that reflected our thinking at AES. Then I challenged myself and all other company leaders to evaluate every aspect of our existing organizational design and every system either in place or proposed. Was it more consistent with our basic assumptions, or was it less? I suggested we always choose the alternative that was more consistent with our values and in that way increase the chances of creating a rewarding, exciting, vibrant, successful, and fun workplace.
The assumptions about people in the workplace that follow were first put on paper in the summer of 1992, in the aftermath of Shady Point. I added the point about our fallibility a year or so later, but the others remained fundamentally unchanged over time. Note the striking difference between these assumptions and the ones that grew out of the Industrial Revolution.
AES people, I wrote:
♦ Are creative, thoughtful, trustworthy adults, capable of making important decisions;
♦ Are accountable and responsible for their decisions and actions;
♦ Are fallible. We make mistakes, sometimes on purpose;
♦ Are unique;
♦ Want to use our talents and skills to make a positive contribution to the organization and the world.
My hypothesis was that a fun workplace is one that allows people to work in an environment that is most consistent with human nature. While each person is different, some characteristics are common to all of us. The assumptions I made about AES people are intended to capture the most important of these characteristics.
Do not minimize the difficulty of matching assumptions about people with specific organizational structures and systems. It is almost impossible to do consistently. Economic realities, for example, always increase the difficulty of creating a workplace that takes into account human traits and frailties. Designing a great workplace would be difficult even if all people were the same. Because each of us is unique, it is a very tall order to create a working community that is fun and meets our individual needs—and that is also economically successful.
Compounding the problem of creating a fun workplace is the prevailing view among most people that work is, at best, a necessary evil. In my discussions about the workplace, I often ask people to play a word association game. I say “work” and ask what comes to mind. Invariably, they respond with words like “hard,” “drudgery,” “something I have to do,” “boring,” and “difficult.” I have noticed that words and phrases like these are used frequently by people who have been working for 20 years or more. That is understandable given the length of time they have spent in working environments where they were rarely challenged or called on to make an important decision. What’s surprising is that these same words are used nearly as often by people who are still in school and may not have had anything but part-time or summer jobs. Their parents and friends have crushed their expectations even before they reach working age.
For Christians, Jews, and Muslims, the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall often is cited as the reason that work is difficult. A few years ago, I was asked to give the commencement address at Eastern University, a Christian school in Pennsylvania. My topic was “Fun in the Workplace.” In preparation, I reread the Genesis account of the Creation and realized that many of us have misinterpreted the story.
God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden. In the Garden, they named and cared for the animals. They tilled the ground and harvested the fruit and vegetables. In other words, they seemed to spend much of their time “working.” Their work was not hard, difficult, or the least bit boring. It was paradise. The whole experience was sublime. Of course, they sinned and were ousted from the garden, and life became more difficult. It is this last part of the story that appears to mark our attitude and expectations about work.
Another way to view the story, however, is that God intended that the workplace be beautiful, exciting, and satisfying. Work was to be filled with joy. Work was a major reason for our creation. It was intended to be an important act of worship. It was one of the most significant ways in which we could honor our Creator. From this perspective it is our responsibility to do whatever we can to make the modern workplace the way it was intended to be. While I realize the world is not the Garden of Eden, I do believe it is incumbent on those of us in leadership roles to do whatever we can to make the workplace as fun and successful as we can.
One Latin word for work is labor. It is similar in meaning to the word “labor” in English. It does not reflect any of the joy of work that we see in Genesis. Opus is another Latin word for work, and it comes closer to the concept of work that I am championing. Opus connotes a voluntary act, an act imbued with creativity and meaning. The development of a fun workplace is based on the opus concept of work.
In many of my interactions with people in the workplace, I ask the question, “What is the most important factor that makes a work-place rewarding, satisfying, exciting—fun? The typical answers I get will not surprise you:
♦ “Good friends”
♦ “Good environment”
♦ “It’s challenging”
♦ “I get to do what I’m good at”
♦ “Fair play”
♦ “I learn a lot”
♦ “Doing something worthwhile”
♦ “I’m needed”
♦ “I’m thought of as a person”
♦ “Winning”
♦ “Part of a team”
♦ “Significant responsibility”
The first thing that is obvious from these responses is that a fun workplace has a number of characteristics that help make it that way. My study and experience, however, lead me to believe that one factor is far more important than any other. First, let’s review some of the important factors that don’t make it to the top of the list.
Good relationships with colleagues and supervisors are almost always given as one of the answers to my question. However, when I ask people if they have ever worked in a place where they had good friends but no fun, almost everyone emphatically says yes. Although good relationships and camaraderie may be important to a good workplace, they are not the most important factor.
High pay and good benefits almost never are given as a serious answer to my question. I mention this because so many leaders spend enormous amounts of time on compensation questions. In my experience, unfair compensation can make a workplace less attractive, but fair or generous pay will have almost no effect on the quality of the work experience. People make pay an overly important factor when they choose a job, in my opinion. Most find out later that their happiness in the workplace has very little to do with the level of financial compensation they receive.
A special workplace has many ingredients. The feeling that you are part of a team, a sense of community, the knowledge that what you do has real purpose—all these things help make work fun. But by far the most important factor is whether people are able to use their individual talents and skills to do something useful, significant, and worthwhile. When bosses
