The case for having more fun at work

{"text":[[{"start":8.14,"text":"How much fun do you generally have at work? "}],[{"start":11.39,"text":"I found myself asking this question the other day, when I came across a British academic named William Donald. "},{"start":17.457,"text":"He is an associate professor at the University of Southampton, where he works on career development and human resources management, and in 2022 he had a brainwave. "},{"start":26.187,"text":"What if he could publish a paper with another academic whose surname was Duck, so that anyone citing their research would have to say it was by Donald and Duck? "}],[{"start":34.11,"text":"I would like to say there was a serious rationale for this venture, but when I called Donald, he said he did it chiefly because, “I thought it would be mildly entertaining”. "}],[{"start":43.26,"text":"Alas, finding a co-operative Duck proved arduous. "},{"start":46.839,"text":"Donald spent 18 months contacting potential co-authors via LinkedIn before he found Nicholas Duck, an organisational psychologist in Australia who runs a workplace productivity consultancy called Opposite. "}],[{"start":58.769999999999996,"text":"Unlike some other candidates, Duck did not find Donald’s proposal offensive or ridiculous. "},{"start":63.949,"text":"“I like shaking things up and not taking things too seriously,” he told me last week. "},{"start":68.592,"text":"Donald’s idea was right up his alley, he said. "}],[{"start":72.6,"text":"Since the pair had a shared interest in the workplace, they decided to write a paper on what they called the Donald Duck phenomenon, or the unconventional reasons that propel academics to publish. "},{"start":82.292,"text":"These included revenge against a rival; collaboration with a hero; a desire to promote a cause and simple amusement. "}],[{"start":89.19999999999999,"text":"The result was a slender work of just three pages — five including references and notes — which was, somewhat astonishingly, published last month in the GiLE Journal of Skills Development. "},{"start":99.579,"text":"This is a relatively new, open access publication that nonetheless claims to use a “robust” peer review process. "}],[{"start":106.69999999999999,"text":"For all that, the paper does not add an enormous amount to the sum of human knowledge. "},{"start":111.49199999999999,"text":"It is arguably self-indulgent and childish. "},{"start":114.15899999999999,"text":"But it is also a delight and I wish there were more follies like it. "}],[{"start":118.36999999999999,"text":"It’s not just that these things make the large slice of life spent at work more bearable. "},{"start":123.06199999999998,"text":"There are serious reasons for fun at work when governments across Europe are fretting about a post-pandemic drop in average working hours that is being blamed for making economies more feeble and uncompetitive. "}],[{"start":133.85999999999999,"text":"Jokes alone are no answer, obviously. "},{"start":136.88899999999998,"text":"But it is telling to consider how rarely one hears about playfulness at work these days. "}],[{"start":142.33999999999997,"text":"It is 17 years since Steve Jobs stood on a stage in San Francisco to unveil a new Apple gadget called the iPhone and dialled a nearby Starbucks to order “4,000 lattes to go, please”. "},{"start":153.057,"text":"He immediately said, “wrong number” and hung up. "},{"start":155.962,"text":"But the store was still getting orders for that many coffees from Apple fans years later, to the bafflement of managers. "}],[{"start":162.89,"text":"Chief executive capers, however, are thin on the ground. "},{"start":166.75699999999998,"text":"I was astonished to read recently that Jane Fraser, the chief executive of Citigroup, is a serial prankster with a long history of playing jokes on colleagues. "}],[{"start":175.32999999999998,"text":"In 2022, she asked her senior team to sign a waiver to go skydiving, the Wall Street Journal reported, and left them to agonise about the prospect of the bank’s leaders all risking death together before emailing again to say: April Fools’. "}],[{"start":189.24999999999997,"text":"Another time, she reportedly kidnapped a teddy bear she had once given to an executive in charge of cost-cutting, duct-taped its paws and told the man to ease up on the cuts or the bear would get it. "}],[{"start":199.83999999999997,"text":"News of this jolliness might jar in some quarters at Citi, where Fraser is overseeing sweeping job losses. "},{"start":205.91899999999998,"text":"Even academic citation jokes can misfire. "}],[{"start":209.70999999999998,"text":"In the 1940s, a physicist named George Gamow decided it would be fun to add the name of an eminent friend, Hans Bethe, to a paper that Gamow and his student, Ralph Alpher, had written on the origins of the universe. "}],[{"start":222.02999999999997,"text":"This had the excellent effect of creating a paper by Alpher, Bethe and Gamow, a pun on the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha beta gamma. "},{"start":230.80899999999997,"text":"But Alpher was reportedly miffed, fearing his contribution would be diminished by the addition of the eminent Bethe’s name. "}],[{"start":237.22999999999996,"text":"You can see his point. "},{"start":238.90899999999996,"text":"Jokes at work need to be deployed with skill and care. "},{"start":241.82699999999997,"text":"Yet the best are glorious and the working world would be a far better place if we had a great deal more of them. "}],[{"start":246.95999999999995,"text":""}]],"url":"https://creatives.ftacademy.cn/album/155308-1716111419.mp3"}