Inspiring Workplaces: How Might You Create a More Inspiring Workplace?

Published: Wed, 07/18/18

Humor at Work

ISSUE 734 - July 18, 2018


			How Might You Create a More Inspiring Workplace?

	I hope everyone is enjoying the (hopefully) beautiful weather wherever you are! I'm back from a fabulous trip to Estonia where I attended the International Society for Humor Studies conference, and later met with some phenomenally cool companies in Estonia and Finland that I'll be reporting on in the weeks ahead. In the meantime, it's another edition of random musings and ideas... As simple as this sounds, shifting your language from "How can we..." to "How might we..." is a proven way to help people stay more open to new ideas and find solutions, rather than immediately putting up roadblocks when new ideas are suggested. Your workplace culture is only as good as the worst behavior you tolerate, so here's an interesting question for your team to discuss: What's the worse behavior your workplace allows, and why is it being tolerated? A study published in the Health Environments Research and Design Journal found that people who listen to 15 minutes of ocean waves showed a decrease in pulse rate, muscle tension and stress level; while a study from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute found that when people listened to a mountain stream they were in better moods and better able to concentrate than people who worked in silence, listened to white noise, or worked with regular office noise. A recent article in Forbes suggested that $75 billion dollars is lost annually in the U.S. due to poor service! Ouch! To make this meaningful take the time to lay out all the costs associated with losing a lifetime customer in your business and post it everywhere as a reminder. Summer is a great time to encourage employees to offer up their personal expertise and deliver lunch 'n learns or snack 'n learns on non-work related topics. One company does this with great success, where employees offer up sessions on everything from fly fishing to cake decorating.

		Mike's Fun at Work Tip

A great way to add some fun to all of your meetings: Every time a meeting participant says something that someone else deems to be profound, pithy, hilarious or otherwise memorable, the person writes the name of the "profound one" on a slip of paper and tosses it into a hat or box. At the end of the meeting draw a name from the hat for a small prize - obviously the more times your name gets tossed in, the greater your chances of winning.
		Quote of the Week

"My friend and I laugh at how competitive we are...but I laugh more."
		It's a Wacky World

July 24 is official Tell an Old Joke Day, so if you want to impress your friends why not tell them a really old joke? The oldest recorded joke dates back to 1900 BCE, a Sumerian quip that I can't reprint here for fear of offending some of you, however you can also reach back into an anthology of 200 jokes from the fourth century for some really old jokes, such as: "A student dunce went swimming and almost drowned. So now he swears he'll never get into water until he's really learned to swim."

Cost-Savings to Bring Mike in to Energize Your Workplace!

New Brunswick: August 21-23
Montreal: August 24-September 4
Toronto: September 14-19 Vancouver: September 24-25
Edmonton: September 27-28
Toronto: October 8-10 Winnipeg: October 15-16 Sydney, Nova Scotia: October 18-20
Texas: October 24-26
Costa Rica: January 3-18 Winnipeg: January 23-24

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Mike is quoted in the Business Insider article Seven Things Successful People Do the Night Before a Vacation

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