No fun at work – values in action
I heard this story from one of our workshop participants. We were talking about values and how they play out in practice. Their organisation, a government department, has ‘fun’ as a stated value.
With that in mind Janet (not her real name) thought it would be fun to take her team on an outing to the newly opened Museum of Old and New Art in Hobart. She mentioned her plan to her manager who suggested she should write a memo outlining her plans. The memo was sent to her manager’s manager and the text was edited and massaged and eventually it was sent all the way up to the head of Janet’s division.
That was six months ago and she has never heard a thing about it since.
What would you say is valued in this organisation?
A company that values ‘fun’ should be teaming with ‘fun’ stories. It’s a little difficult, however, to have ‘fun’ stories without fun experiences.
We’ve developed a story-based approach for embedding values. Send us an email if you would like to explore using this approach in your organisation.
Shawn, author of Putting Stories to Work, is one of the world's leading business storytelling consultants. He helps executive teams find and tell the story of their strategy. When he is not working on strategy communication, Shawn is helping leaders find and tell business stories to engage, to influence and to inspire. Shawn works with Global 1000 companies including Shell, IBM, SAP, Bayer, Microsoft & Danone. Connect with Shawn on: