Please find the 1999 version of "The Fun Standard" below. The
Fun Standard is a collection of organizational best practices
designed to increase the incidence of fun in the workplace.
A number of minor updates and improvements have been made since
last year, and a web site has been established that always holds
the latest version at the following address -
http://www.livinginternet.com/fun/funstandard.html
Also since last year a German translation has been provided.
There are now German and Spanish translations available, with
links on the web site. If anyone can provide another language
translation, please send me an email. A French version would be
especially welcome.
Have fun!
Bill
============================================================
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"subscribe" in the body of the message. Have fun!
============================================================
(This document looks best in the font "Courier New", 10 pt size.)
The Fun Standard
----------------
Document number: 37IWS
Date effective: Today
Owner: Everyone
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 activities 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, ecstasy, 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 Every Manager will:
------------------------
- View themself as an employee 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 4 hours of meetings a week, hold regular meetings
in the afternoon, and start each meeting with a statement of
its purpose.
- Request and read a maximum half page weekly report from all
direct reports, and ensure that no staff member needs more than
half an hour to complete all of their weekly reports.
- Praise in public, criticize in private.
- Make promotions on merit, plus demonstration that at least one
member of the their staff can do their job as well as they can.
- Assign responsibility, authority, and accountability as a
single package.
- Schedule based on bottom-up estimates prepared by people who
perform the work, and plan to minimize overtime.
- Provide a feedback mechanism for all 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 Every Employee 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, write down and do anything they
say they'll do, and provide notification as far in advance as
possible when circumstances prevent fulfillment of their
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, and 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 a week.
- Ensure that all personnel receive at least two weeks of
training a year, and allow employees to choose their own
training if not chosen by their management.
- Ensure that jerks and meanies are counseled, 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.
- Use only halogen, incandescent, and full spectrum fluorescent
lighting.
- Reduce, absorb, and deflect noise wherever possible.
- Provide all personnel with a computer no more than three years
old, with word processing, spreadsheet, database, and graphics
applications, and email, news group, and world wide web access
to the Internet.
- Make large printable whiteboards and markers in at least three
colours available to all staff.
- 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 after being turned
on, and at least one shower is available.
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, and colour blind, respect all
other 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 each meeting.
- Take coffee from the second pot, and make a new pot when the
second pot is empty.
- Never raise voices, keep a sense of humor, and smile at least
twice an hour 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 real sense of joy, self-worth, and achievement.
Failure to have fun will not be tolerated.
This version supersedes all 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"
_____________________________________________________________
/
| - Unrestricted permission granted to copy, distribute,
| modify, improve, or reuse in any form.
| - The latest version can always be found at
| http://www.livinginternet.com/fun/funstandard.html
| - Please send comments to Bill Stewart at seven@fox.nstn.ca
\____________________________________________________ V19990101
--William Stewart <seven@fox.nstn.ca>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>