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

by Dennis W. Bakke

It forced us to think through exactly what was meant by “fun” and the best ways to explain it. We defined fun to mean rewarding, exciting, creative, and successful.

Joy at work gives people the freedom to use their talents and skills for the benefit of society, without being crushed or controlled by autocratic supervisors or staff offices.

People I have met—regardless of class, income, nationality, and education level—want a chance to make the most of their abilities to meet the needs of their families while doing something useful for society.

“Fairness or justice means treating everyone differently.”

Equality and fairness are not synonyms,

Leaders of organizations (including unions and corporations) consistently ignore the fact that employees are unique.

The selection and identification of our shared values were just the first step in creating an ethos for AES.

“Values are not a ‘management tool’ or a special type of management system that runs parallel to a company’s audit or compensation system. Nor are they bits of ethereal matter … [they are] beliefs, aims, and assumptions that undergird the enterprise and guide its management in developing strategies, structures, processes, and policies. They constitute an organizational ‘infrastructure’ that gives a company its distinctive character and ethos—its moral personality.”

Without values, without basic preference for right over wrong, trust based on such self-delusion would crumble in the face of temptation. … And for this, we should be happy. We can be proud of a system in which people are honest because they want to be, not because they have to be.”

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

The transformation of personal values to organizational values is accomplished with the word “shared.” Shared implies that members of an organization agree on the definition and importance of a value. Sharing values, especially in a secular company, can run afoul of the popular view in our society that people should decide for themselves how values are to be interpreted. If individuals, whether they are vice presidents or board members, interpret values individually, the values are not shared.

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.

Values and principles mean something only when they affect everything we do, every day of the week.

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

We should attempt to live according to a set of unchanging shared ethical principles, because it is the right way to live.

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

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.

If we delegated these 200 decisions to people deeper in the organization, who are probably better equipped to make them anyway, it wouldn’t reduce our liability or our chances of being sued.

paternalism takes on a different cast when examined more closely. It leaves people in a state of child-like dependence. It prevents workers from taking control of their work and lives. They are never in a position to take risks or make decisions, and so never develop to their full potential. In the end, paternalism kills any chance of joy at work.

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

We need to design organizations that encourage people to look beyond job security and seek the psychic rewards that come with a creative, enterprising approach to work.

One of the things I learned from this experience was that I had done a terrible job teaching people our values and principles.

Stress enhances the experience, as long as a person has a certain amount of control over what happens. Debilitating stress stems from lack of control.

Failure … teaches us humility. Failure is nearly as important as success in creating a great workplace.

Here are some of the practices we followed at AES in an effort to make it a more fun place to work: My administrative assistant decides what computer and software to purchase for herself and for me.

Joy at work starts with individual initiative and individual control.

Every business person needs to ask for as much advice as possible before making a decision.

We had already followed the lead of Wal-Mart and others and replaced the words “employee” and “manager,” which we felt had become somewhat demeaning over time. (Let me say again that I will occasionally use these terms in this book because they are so widely applied outside of AES.) We decided we would identify every person who worked at the company as an “AES person” or “AES people.” It seemed silly that we would feel compelled to identify people as “people.” But it was more than a matter of nomenclature. Throughout history, especially from the onset of the Industrial Revolution, working people were often treated as less than human. At most AES plants, most of our people decided that everyone who was not a leader in the plant should have equivalent titles: “AES technician,” “AES plant engineer,” or something similar that would indicate general responsibility for a significant area of the plant. Most of the traditional industrial designations, such as welder or pipe fitter, were jettisoned.

In the early days of Honeycomb, we asked ourselves how many people could work together on an ideal team. Some research indicated that 10 to 15 people was about the right number for one leader. My experience suggested that teams could have up to 40 members and still be effective, even with only one official leader. The larger the number of people on a team reporting to one supervisor, the fewer levels of hierarchy are required in the entire organization.

I was very concerned about having too many organizational layers. I set a goal of having only two layers of supervision between me and an entry-level person anywhere in the company. While that number increased to three layers and in a few cases four as the company grew to more than 30,000 people, keeping the number of layers to a minimum is important to make work fun. Each layer tends to block communication and other interaction in organizations. It also separates people at one level from those at another, sometimes physically and almost always in status. Each layer requires another leader, and each additional leader increases the chances that people will feel squelched by a boss.

Keeping the number of layers to a minimum is important to make work fun.

A question related to the size of the individual team is the number of teams that can operate smoothly in one physical location. I have found little persuasive research on this subject. My hunch is that bad things begin to happen when an organization has more than 300 to 600 people in one location. This suggests that an effective organization should have no more than 15 to 20 teams with 15 to 20 people on each team.

The kind of teams I am suggesting are more like banana splits than milkshakes. Milkshakes blend the various flavors of ice cream, toppings, milk, and other ingredients into one undifferentiated dessert. In banana splits, each scoop of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream, along with the bananas and toppings, remain separate until eaten. In a banana-split team, individuals play special roles and maintain their identities. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole.

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

Before any decision can be made on any company matter, the decision maker must seek advice.

To deal with these questions, I introduced the “advice process.” It is a very simple, although often controversial, concept. It takes the “suggestion box” management approach of the 1970s and ’80s and turns it upside down. Instead of the boss getting advice and suggestions from peoplebelow, the decision maker—who is almost always not an official leader—seeks advice from leaders and from peers.

Usually, the decision maker is the person whose area is most affected, or the one who initiated an idea, discovered a problem, or saw an opportunity. If it is unclear who the decision maker should be, the leader selects an individual to gather advice and make the final decision. Before any decision can be made on any company matter, the decision maker must seek advice. The bigger the issue or problem, the wider the net that is thrown to gather pertinent information from people inside and outside the company. In my opinion, all issues of importance need advice from the decision maker’s own team. However, members of other teams in the plant or offices should also be consulted. Some decisions are so important that advice is gathered from other plants, divisions, and offices, including the home office. The board of directors should be consulted on the most important issues.

The process (of making decisions) is just plain fun for the decision maker. It mirrors the joy found in playing team sports.

People inside an organization must share all information.

Part of having joy at work is being “important” enough to have the same knowledge as leaders.

To make a large organization exciting, successful, and fun, it is crucial to limit the number of people in the home office, central staff, and senior executive offices.

People should spend 80% of their time on their primary roles and devote the other 20% to participating on task forces, giving advice, learning new skills, and working on special projects.

Task forces help people see work as a voluntary act, something they choose to do rather than something they have to do. My goal was to have everyone in the company feel like a volunteer. Volunteers are typically enthusiastic, energetic, and effective.

I do not recommend using stock-price changes, either up or down, as a significant measure of performance, even economic performance.

We evaluated performance on “technical factors” in a straightforward way. We kept track of emission rates of pollutants at every plant. We compared these emission rates with the limits specified in our permits.

Judging performance on our values and principles was more subjective and required greater creativity. In the first place, we had a difficult time finding a basis of comparison.

We finally settled on a company-wide annual values survey.

The values and principles survey was the most important score-keeping mechanism we had in the company, even though it was not basically quantitative in nature.

At AES, leaders had another way to deal with individuals who didn’t perform up to our standards. We simply didn’t assign decisions to them as often as we would have under normal circumstances. If abused, this is a form of control that can make work as demeaning as it was during the Industrial Revolution. But used judiciously, this approach can send an effective message to the underperformer while keeping work fun for the other members of the team.