How to Have More Fun in Business – Part 4 Summary

roland hanekroot

Wrap up… How to create more Fun in your Business

And what happens when you do

roland

In part 1 of this series of articles I wrote about how 3 letters, FUN, are the most important thing to focus on in your business.

In part 2 of this series I wrote about the 4 steps to take to create REAL FUN in your businessIn part 3 of this series I wrote how we can go about measuring how much Fun we are having on a day to day, week to week and month to month basis and how to apply that knowledge to the way we run our business and where we focus next.

Here is a link to read part 1

Here is a link to read part 2

Here is a link to part 3

So in part 4, I will summarise the whole idea of fun in business for you and sketch out some real word examples of the concept and how to apply it.

Overwhelmed and stressed…

gates of hellAs I’ve said, most small business owners are overwhelmed, stuck and stressed; there are so many different priorities vying for their attention every day that they simply don’t know where to focus next. It is simply too much… everything is important and then there are the crises.

So what we tend to focus on instead are two things:

  1. The crises… the everyday brush fires. The crises have to be dealt with or else… so we don’t have to think about that.
  2. What we are best at, our actual skill…the thing we started the business for…carpentry, architecture, graphic design, IT development or whatever… we revert back to “swinging the hammer” in other words, because at least we know how to do that properly.

The stuff that falls by the wayside is the Stuff that Steven Covey in his book “The seven habits of highly effective people” refers to as “Quadrant 2” work… the work that is important but not actually really urgent… it can always be postponed for another day or another week.

The work of the business owner…

The problem is that exactly this work is what I call “The work of the business owner” as opposed to the work of the business, and hence the business stagnates and you as the owner of the business start to feel stressed, frustrated and overwhelmed even more.

So how about if there was one measurement that could tell you what the most important thing to do was in the coming week to move out of that stagnation and overwhelm.

And that is the concept of “Fun in Business”

Because when a business is Fun, it means that everything is working.

Raving Fans…

If your business is FUN, it means you are making money and staff are engaged and customers are Raving Fans, and all of that good stuff.

And most importantly, it is actually possible to measure Fun in business as a relative measurement and when you do so consistently and systematically; it can help you decide where to focus your time and energy next. Then what happens is that you will start to move out of overwhelm and stagnation and start to build your business that works for you again, instead of the other way around.

funometerSo if you ask yourself and your staff: “How much fun did we have last week on a scale from 0 to 10, where 10 is that we just couldn’t wipe the grin of our faces and 0 means the opposite?” you can find an answer. Let’s say that the answer is 6.5, for last week; you can then ask yourself (or your team): “What do we need to do to make next week a 6.6 on that same scale?” This last question can often lead to surprising and very narrowly focused answers…

Answers I have seen to this question have been as prosaic as: “Let’s make sure we collect some more of the outstanding invoices this coming week” or: “If we could all come in an hour earlier this week, then we can get this project out the door and that is just going to be such a relief for all of us”.

I wrote about my client Richard and his design business in part 3 of this series, and how he implemented the Fun scale in his team management.

John and his casual staff…

Another client of mine, John, has a small chain of cafés in the inner city of Sydney. John also incorporated the Fun in Business scale in the way he manages his businesses.

A problem John has is the transient and casual nature of a lot of his staff. Managing the business is therefore a headache, as he never knows how long his staff will stay and how committed they will be.

But John has taken the fun concept even further in an effort to engage his staff.
It is difficult for John to get all his staff together on the same day at a staff meeting, people might only work on aMonday and never meet half his other staff. So John has introduced a digital system that integrates with his time sheets.

Each staff member has to sign into his staff management computer system when they arrive for their shift and at the end of their shift they have to sign out in the same system but at the last shift of the week the staff member also has to answer a couple of questions in the form of a survey.

It’s all about the questions…

The questions are:

  • Question 1: “On a scale from 0 to 10 where 10 is that you have had the most fun you could imagine having at work this week, and 0 is the opposite, what score would you give this week?
  • Question 2: “What rating on that scale would you like next week to be?”
  • Question 3: “What can we, your manager, and the business as a whole, do to help you achieve that number?”
  • Question 4: “What can you do yourself next week to help you achieve that number?”

These questions were confronting at first for a lot of staff members, but slowly but surely people were starting to see the point, especially when shown that their manager (John in most cases) took their suggestions and requests seriously.

on the tarmacAfter a few months of consistent application of this Fun in Business system, John’s business truly became unrecognisable and his business started growing again.

And that is why deciding to take a determined focus on having more FUN in business may well be the most significant decision you make in your business.

You have a go now…

Thank you for reading this series of articles… Now it is your turn… I’d love you to start thinking about how to start measuring how much Fun you are having in your business… why don’t you call a staff meeting and discuss it… brainstorm it… see what people think?

You might be surprised how even a few conversations on these topics might start to introduce a little bit more fun for everyone in your business.

Cheers,

Roland Hanekroot

Call me if you’d like to explore how I can help you have more FUN in your business. Or come to the next Small Business Masterminds workshop… follow this link to read more and book in

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