Got an April Fool’s Day trick or prank on you? Possibly you were responsible for pulling a prank on another person or two?
To what extent do you allow humor, tricks, jokes, and these activities to permeate your business or organization? For example, professional speakers for years have been opening their talk with a humorous story, as they hope this will allow for a better connection with their audience. Does the same work in your business, to help develop teamwork and camaraderie?
Where is the line drawn?
Consider a common behavior that occurs in small and medium-sized businesses and organizations. The owner, founder, CEO, or possibly a few members of the leadership team attend a two or three day workshop. It is attended by other senior executives from other small and medium-sized companies. Upon your return to the home office, like clockwork, meetings take place and a new method, process, software, you name it, becomes the mantra. Many of the people leave the meeting feeling like they are participating in another cruel April Fool’s Day prank. Unfortunately, this is not the case. This will become the ‘hot’ topic for the next few weeks, until the reality of being back ‘in the office’ fighting the daily fires again, and the two or three day conference materials are put on the shelf or be archived. somewhere, he was never heard from again.
None of these statements or actions mean that the workshop content or materials were not of value. What it does mean is something much bigger. The leadership team is not prepared to honestly and critically review where they are in their business and where they hope to proceed. The leadership team recognized, when they were removed from daily activity, that some action was necessary. They may have discussed why the content or materials in this workshop were the solution. The actions they took upon their return were not set up for success. They took an action like a person telling an April Fool’s Day joke.
The personality of your organization will develop from the leadership team and its personality.. The creation of this personality must be by design. The same is true for the path you take for your business. It is never a straight line to success. This does not mean that there is not a planned line or a course to follow.
