Inspiring Workplaces: Ideas to Smile Over

Published: Wed, 05/06/15

Humor at Work

ISSUE 581 - May 6, 2015


			Ideas to Smile Over

	It's time for another edition of completely random thoughts and ideas... Apple's wildly famous "Think Different" campaign was launched by Steve Jobs not so much for the public, but to inspire Apple employees. Does your external advertising inspire your employees as much as it does your customers? Steve Jobs is credited with embedding a "non-acceptance of the status quo" in Apple's culture. Assuming that's a good thing, what are you doing in your culture to drive a similar philosophy? Why do companies only send their leaders to leadership training programs and encourage their leaders to develop as leaders? If you're encouraging a "leaders leading leaders" culture, if you're planning for the future, and if you're encouraging everyone to be engaged in your future success, wouldn't everyone benefit from being included in leadership development and reading leadership and management books? Is what your leadership team learning a secret? Unilever placed GPS devices in random boxes of one of their detergent products in Brazil and then swooped in on their customers' homes to surprise them with gifts. What are you doing to surprise your customers...maybe without having to track them down? May 3-9 is North American Occupational Safety & Health Week. Find out how a bit of humor might help create a safer workplace: Humor Helps Create Safer Workplaces. Many Japanese offices are creating cat-friendly workplaces to help lower stress. May is official Smile Month. There are, supposedly, 18 different types of smiles. Service staff who smile more often receive, on average, 18% higher tips. Our smile is the facial expression most visible from far away. Some have suggested smiles may have evolved as a way of signalling to strangers: "I won't bite, and to prove it I'm showing you my teeth." Research posted in a recent Harvard Business Review suggests that rudeness at work has doubled in the last decade...so perhaps Smile Month is a good excuses to practice smiling more often!

		Mike's Fun at Work Tip

Encourage every employee to create a "Fun Facts About ____" sheet that lists anything they feel comfortable sharing about themselves and that might help people get to know the real human being lurking behind the job title. It could be quirky hobbies or interests, favorite ice cream flavors, weirdest questions ever posed by a customer, strange past jobs, unexpected celebrity encounters, their ear-wiggling ability or their ability to play the nose flute. Share them on your internal intranet site or share them with your customers on your website. Distribute one a week to everyone via e-mail as a way of getting to know someone better. And speaking of weird past jobs...thanks to the dozens of you who responded to last week's request for their "worse job ever." The most memorable was someone who referenced someone else they met who had a really weird/awful job: massaging the testicles of a rhino at an African game farm to keep the rhino calm for tourist photo ops. Yup...it can always be worse folks.
		Quote of the Week

"Humor has bailed me out of more situations than I can think of. If you keep your sense of humor, creativity follows." Jimmy Buffet
		It's a Wacky World

First Norway...now Ottawa, Canada: Silly Walk pedestrian signs are encouraging pedestrians to cross the street John Cleese style. A brilliantly wacky idea that should spread to every city in the world! Check it out: Is a Ministry of Silly Walks Far Behind?

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