Bob Waterman and Having Fun
In Search of Excellence, published back in 1982, has been a major resource for people trying to institutionalize innovation. One of the authors, Tom Peters, has made a career of talking about excellence ever since.
But what about the other author, Bob Waterman? Bob may not be as well known, but he also has had a rather exceptional career. TomPeters.com did an interview with Bob, that produced a few gems.
Unless you understand humans and how they work—all their idiosyncrasies, ambiguities, and so on—you won’t understand how to think about organizing.
And this (about the founding of AES)
Roger (Saint) has always talked about the importance to him personally of not just doing business, but having fun doing business. He was complaining at the time that he wasn’t having much fun and he wanted to do something else. So when he started AES, fun was one of the central values that he wanted to build. We talked about the values all the time, and fun was the hardest to define.
He and I never quite saw eye-to-eye on what we call fun because he had a more business-like description of it. Do what you really enjoy doing. I agreed that that’s part of it. But the other part that I thought was quite important was don’t take yourself too seriously.
When was the last time someone advised you not to take yourself too seriously?