Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach To Fun on the Job (Pocket Wisdom)

by Dennis W. Bakke

I believe that integrity requires an organization to communicate the same message to the general public that it does to its own employees. That means openly admitting mistakes to shareholders, bankers, and governments.

Business executives don’t spend much time talking about values, so misunderstandings and disagreements are bound to occur.

“Employees love these values, and they work harder and more productively because of them.” This is the pragmatic line of thinking about values that I had fought since the early days of the company. It ignores the moral dimension of values and regards them as nothing more than a means to make money.

I feel strongly that people should be able to bring many of their basic beliefs about life into an organization. AES people were encouraged to live their beliefs inside the business just as they would at home, in their places of worship, and in their communities.

When we go to work, we’re supposed to leave our “Sunday school” or “homespun” values at the door. My view is just the opposite. Because our central values and principles were derived from mainstream values practiced by billions of people around the world, we hoped that most of our people could bring the key elements of their personal philosophies into the workplace.

Less popular was the idea that we should practice AES values both at work and in other areas of our lives. For example, integrity at AES meant that we did not cheat, steal, or lie on the job. It seemed logical that we should also adhere to those strictures in our private lives.

In making “social responsibility” one of our core values, we recognized that every corporation is given certain rights and privileges by the state. In return, the company should operate in ways that benefit society

“We are trying to live these values because they are right, not because they work.” High ethical values rarely conflict with pragmatic economic behavior. However, this does not mean that economics should be the reason or motive the organization undertakes to live the shared values.

Purpose over Profit

“Methods are many, principles are few. Methods change often, principles never do.”

I suspect that in most companies, especially ones that put a premium on individual freedom and diverse views, values are not really shared by the majority of the employees. The values either are adjusted frequently to suit changing situations, or they are defined so ambiguously that everyone can agree with them. As a result, they have very little effect on the behavior of the organization or the individuals who work there. They become especially irrelevant in times of trouble.

The values articulated by many companies have only a minimal effect on how they conduct their businesses.

Paying lip service to values may be good public relations, but it is a hollow and cynical exercise. Values and principles mean something only when they affect everything we do, every day of the week.

Block wrote, it is “the willingness to be accountable for the well-being of the larger organization by operating in service, rather than in control, of those around us. Stated simply, it is accountability without control or compliance.” My response was to make serving the needs of society the cornerstone of our corporate purpose.

There are four major shared values (at AES): to act with integrity, to be fair, to have fun, and to be socially responsible.

the Company seeks to adhere to these values not as a means to achieve economic success, but because adherence is a worthwhile goal in and of itself.

Until Thomas Newcomen’s invention of the first practical steam engine in 1711, most people worked the land as farmers and before that as hunters and gatherers. Large organizations of working people were mostly limited to soldiers, servants, or slaves.

Many of the attitudes that took hold during the Industrial Revolution linger on today,

Specialization became the rule. Lines of authority were clear. Workers were told exactly what was expected of them. A curious arrangement of staff and line positions emerged (experts suggest that the Prussian Army was the first to use this approach, late in the 19th century).

based on my own observations, I suspect that many corporate leaders still hold some Industrial Revolution views. What’s more, many of the approaches and practices in modern workplaces are nearly as demeaning as those used during the Industrial Revolution.

Executives are either oblivious to the similarities—or won’t admit them. These are the only plausible explanations for the relative lack of change in the structure of work in modern corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit organizations.

working conditions in large organizations today are no more exciting, rewarding, or fun than they were 250 years ago.

Most working people are boxed in by job descriptions and corporate hierarchies and have little opportunity to make decisions on their own. I was struck by this lack of freedom during visits to Japan in the 1980s. Several bestselling books had been written in the previous decade analyzing and to some extent glorifying Japanese business prowess. I got a very different impression.

What struck me was that work in Japan lacked passion and joy. Fun was something that happened away from the workplace. Work was work and play was play, and the two never overlapped. Japanese “salarymen” didn’t leave work as much as...

We have made the workplace a frustrating and joyless place where people do what they’re told and have few ways to participate in decisions or fully use their talents.

to change the workplace in a positive way would require executives to give up a large measure of their power and control. This is the chief impediment to a radical overhaul of our working environment.

the rewards of power are usually too strong to give up. The result is that few leaders have been willing to take the bold steps necessary to junk a workplace model that reduces employees to little more than gerbils on a treadmill.

Small organizations, especially those where most of the workforce is homogeneous, with similar educational and socioeconomic backgrounds, will often have a more collegial feel than organizations of the industrial age.

Dunbar’s number!

most new workplaces soon become more concerned about improving efficiency and making profits than about creating a more fun and humane environment.

More often than not, lower-ranking people are closer to the problem and better positioned to come up with a solution.

There is an intrinsic organizational assumption that mistakes or problems could be avoided if high-ranking people made all the decisions.

Ordinary workers need independence and a feeling of control if they are going to show initiative and risk failure.

People become passive under the control of bosses. Ordinary workers need independence and a feeling of control if they are going to take on responsibility, show initiative, and be willing to risk failure. Putting one’s talents on the line is essential to creating a healthy and fun workplace.

Treating employees like children is not in their best interest, nor does it serve the goals of an organization.

The lack of freedom may be the single most debilitating and demoralizing factor in the workplace today.

The key to joy at work is the personal freedom to take actions and make decisions using individual skills and talents.

I committed myself to teach our values every day in word and deed.

Repetition, repetition, repetition

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.

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

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.

What if we did away with procedure manuals? They are always out of date, and no one follows them anyway. What if we did away with detailed job descriptions? What if we didn’t have an organization chart with boxes representing people and their jobs? What if we didn’t have any shift supervisors? What if there were no written limits on what individuals could authorize the company to spend? What if all the specialist titles given to employees were eliminated? What if we created teams of people around areas of the plant to operate and maintain the facility, instead of letting bosses assign tasks and run the plant? What if each group could set its own hours of work? What if team members hired and fired their own colleagues? What if you could make important decisions rather than leave them to your supervisor or the plant manager?

We organized ourselves around multi-skilled, self-managed teams.

Our team system showed that complex tasks could be learned and understood by the average technicians within the operating units.

Dividing a business into specialists (staff groups) and operating departments, as most large organizations do, blurs responsibility and decision making in ways that make work far less satisfying. The traditional structure also can make it more difficult to sustain economic success over a long period. Stories of waste caused by central purchasing or “sourcing” departments are at least as numerous as stories of cost savings.

Haft recognized that a business is more responsive when workers are freed of the arbitrary limits placed on their authority.

Rigid job definitions are not compatible with joy at work.

I have seen no credible evidence that limits on authority produce better decisions in large businesses. Yet, such limits remain standard operating procedure in most modern organizations. It is a carryover from the patriarchal system of the early Industrial Revolution.

from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, working people were often treated as less than human.

Groups that perform a variety of functions are an essential part of a successful and fun workplace. This means taking these functions away from specialist staff groups. When teams handle a variety of tasks, individuals are able to make full use of their skills, and work becomes more challenging and enjoyable.

The primary factor in determining whether people experience joy or drudgery in the workplace is the degree to which they control their work.

The questions focused on finding self-starters who would take responsibility for their own actions.