Laura Ricci, a consultant who helps clients win big contracts, endorses a variation on wallflowers: "wackos." Ricci, the owner of 1Ricci in Pewaukee, Wisconsin, may spend years embedded in a company, trying to shake up its culture. She finds that "cool ideas come from people on the fringe--creative souls who don't fit in very well." Ricci recalls one project for which she tried in vain to persuade a client's employees to update some databases. She sought the help of a guy widely regarded in the company as an odd duck. He first wrote a script for a voice mail broadcast in which he threatened to upend a box of kittens into heavy traffic if the updates weren't finished. Ricci nixed that. Then he composed a series of six e-mails, each in the voice of a different American novelist. "They were fabulous," says Ricci. "People were so captivated by them that they said, 'Okay. Okay. For you, I'll do it.' And they did."
Only 14 percent of survey respondents said someone in human resources handled fun, and some CEOs we interviewed scoffed at the very idea. Phrases like "too cautious," "not creative," and "sanitized" came up frequently. What HR staff does well is to note when morale is poor, many agreed. In that case, leaders should encourage them to tap others to get things moving.
The First Rule of Acting
Workplace fun often flows from the top down. But the best fun--the really fun fun--moves in the opposite direction. To encourage that, says Ricci, CEOs should follow the first rule of acting: Don't step on someone else's line. "In theater, there's a moment when the actor is about to evoke a reaction from the audience and another actor steps into the spotlight or talks too soon and ruins it," she says. "The jokes in your organization are probably already happening, and they'll get louder if you don't step on them." Kase agrees. In fact, he encourages his executive team to engage in irreverent banter in front of employees, to model how much is now permissible.
In all but the smallest companies, grass-roots fun is often specific to departments or other subgroups. Yet somehow everyone knows about it. At Blazer, for example, most employees can tell you about the pranks and wild displays of fandom that rage in an accounting department riven by loyalties to rival college football teams. Workers of a certain age squirm in apprehension of a visit from the Older Than Dirt Club, a group of women who leave black, leafless trees on people's desks to commemorate their 50th birthdays. Wandering around the parking lot at lunch one day, Cox discovered a small subculture of people who barbecue in the back of their trucks. "I don't know that you can create a fun culture," she says, echoing Ricci. "What you can do is not stop one."
Employee-driven fun often involves pranks: the office full of Styrofoam peanuts, the stapler that mysteriously empties itself every day. CEOs know they have a fun culture when the jokes are on them. Jim Haudan, for example, has been the butt of several elaborate pranks at Root Learning, his $20 million strategy-implementation and consulting firm in Sylvania, Ohio. On one occasion, several employees connived to convince Haudan that a top executive was leaving to appear in a movie with Katie Holmes. (The prank included an e-mail from the actress's real brother and a fake movie poster concocted for the cause.) Haudan tried to dissuade the executive, expressing serious doubts about his acting chops. The executive recorded this impassioned spiel, then played it before a howling audience at a company meeting. "I went for it hook, line, and sinker," says Haudan.
An exemplary instance of employee-driven hilarity is the "attack monkey," which has been cheerfully murdering people at AppRiver, an e-mail security company in Gulf Breeze, Florida. Three years ago, Hurricane Ivan ripped the roof off AppRiver's headquarters, forcing it to set up shop in a temporary location. To cheer the troops, software developer Erik Forsberg used a digital camera to film his sock monkey attacking another developer. Others pitched in on the film, and the staff was in hysterics as it made the rounds. Later, an administrative assistant decked out the monkey in a tiny red hood with devil horns.
Now when someone is hired, staff mull ways the monkey could attack, explains CEO Michael Murdoch. "We have a lot of funny people here, and I don't want to stifle that," he says. So far the 55-employee company has documented about 45 kills, including electrocution, strangulation, poisoning, and hit-and-run. The attack monkey finished off Murdoch during a job interview. It slid its salary requirements across the desk, and the CEO suffered a fatal heart attack.
Our Guys Are a Hoot!
Employees aren't just the best instigators of fun, they're also fun's best subjects (next to the boss, of course). Reality television grew fat on the entertainment value of the personalties and experiences of ordinary people. Ordinary people whom everyone knows are a richer vein of amusement.
Companies seem to get that. Among our survey respondents, mock talent competitions in the spirit of American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, and The Gong Show were almost as popular as bowling. Another common diversion are in-house films that document workers just being themselves. At its holiday party, Blazer screens a video--including a blooper reel--that features reenactments of funny and peculiar happenings around the business. This isn't Farrelly brothers material: "We did a story about our plumbing department hiding a coffee pot that's not allowed on the plant floor," says Cox. But for Blazer employees in on the joke, it's comic gold.
