What's the best way to revolutionize the workplace? Forget restructuring and reengineering. Have a little fun! Imaging sendig a pizza to your assistant's home after keeping her late at the office...or writing a "thank you" note to her spouse for being so understanding! It's not business as usual, but as management consultant Matt Weinstein makes clear, recognition and appreciation can play a vital role in boosting morale and productivity among stressed-out, overworked employees. Based on his success with some of America's best-known and most profitable companies, Weinstein presents a step-by-step plan for building an enthusiastic, high-performance team and offers hundreds of tried-and-true techniques for enhancing employee satisfaction and personal pride. Jack Canfield coauthor of the bestselling Chicken Soup for the Soul Inspirational, upbeat, practical. I can't remember when I've had more fun reading a business book and learned things I could put into practice the very next day. Dr. Stephen R. Covey Author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Provides practical, amusing solutions, using laughter as a common ground. Patricia Holt San Francisco Chronicle A spirited and fun-filled book. Ken Blanchard coauthor of The One Minute Manager Managing to Have Fun is a fun read, but don't let its playful tone fool you. This is an important book about a serious subject, a must-read of any manager. Matt Weinstein is a psychologist, management consultant, and nationally acclaimed expert on play. One of the most widely requested speakers on the corporate lecture circuit, Weinstein is the founder and Emperor of Playfair, Inc., an international management consulting firm that presents innovative team-building programs to more than 400 clients each year. He lives in Berkeley, California. Chapter 1 The Four Principles of Fun at Work Why a Company That Plays Builds a Business That Works Work is not supposed to be fun. That's why it's called work. Work and Play are supposed to be opposites, like Love and War. "Make love, not war." "Quit playing around and get back to work!" Just as love is sweet and war is hell, play is fun, and work is... hard. Traditional business wisdom says that if you see someone having fun on the job, then that person is probably slacking off. This time, traditional business wisdom is dead wrong. By having fun on the job, perhaps an employee is expressing the joy of working in a job that is satisfying to her. Or perhaps she has found a healthy way to deal with the stress and pressure of a difficult assignment. Or maybe she is taking a momentary "fun break" from a difficult task, to which she will be able to return more alert and energized. But if taking a fun break and wasting company time both look pretty much the same, how can you tell which is which? How do you know if you are looking at someone relieving stress, or if you are looking at someone who is just goofing off?. It's all a matter of perception. When you see your employees or coworkers having fun, you get an opportunity to encourage an atmosphere of excitement, support, and celebration on the job. Once you realize that "goofing off" is in the eye of the beholder, you can look at fun at work a little differently. Instead of suppressing fun at work, you can begin to nourish and cultivate it, because the expression of fun at work can be extraordinarily beneficial for the morale and productivity of your entire organization. I am always amazed when people proudly proclaim, "I never mix business with pleasure." I want to reply, "What is wrong with you?" If you want to build a successful team at work, your management philosophy should be exactly the opposite -- you should always mix business with pleasure. You should be constantly finding new ways to bring pleasure in business to yourself, your employees, and your customers! For too many companies, building a team means creating a high-powered, smoothly functioning organization that has plenty of muscle, but not much heart. It is the absence of the human side of business that depletes employee morale, and contributes to job dissatisfaction and burnout. By adding an element of fun and celebration to a team-building program, you can take an important step toward humanizing your workplace, and creating a sense of heart and soul in your organization. The Four Principles of Fun at Work How do you establish a corporate culture that values celebration, appreciation, and the human side of business? There is no right or wrong way -- every business is different. There are thousands of ways you can approach the transformation of your own particular workplace. How, then, do you begin? There are four basic principles that can help you begin to incorporate fun and play into your business life. Principle 1: Think About the Specific People Involved Bringing fun to the workplace does not happen in a void -- it happens as a natural outgrowth of what is already