Play At Work

How might you go about the business of having fun at work, here is one possible answer from "Reframing Organizations."

In most organizations, play and humor are sharply distinguished from work. Play is what people do when they are not working. Images of play in conversation typically connote aggression, competition, and struggle ("We've got to beat them at their own game"; "We dropped the ball on that one"; "The ball is in his court now") rather than relaxation and fun. But if play is viewed as a state of mind, any activity can be playful. Play permits relaxing the rules to explore alternatives. It encourages experimentation, flexibility, and adaptiveness. March (author of "Ambiguity and Choice in Organizations") suggests five guidelines for play in organizations:

1. Treat goals as hypothesis.
2. Treat intuition as real.
3. Treat hypocrisy as transition.
4. Treat memory as an enemy.
5. Treat experience as a theory.