Don't Put the "FU" in Stunt-Driven 'FUN'

I love great pranks on April Fool's Day.

It used to be fun. Remember that?! Genuine fun where customers and employees laughed because it wasn't a stunt for PR.

So I am a huge fan of fun in the right ways.

Here's where it fails for many companies.

It's supposed to be genuine fun.

It fails when it's forced fun that ignores people and their needs all year long.

Sure it's Kinda Fun; Here's 3 Reasons People Don't Really Care

1. A company ignores genuine concerns all year with culture, equity and psychological safety. When employees aren't treated well all year, April Fool's is a bandaid on a hemorrhage. At best. When a culture treats people well all year, then employees care with real emotional bandwidth about things like April Fool's.
2. A company tries to 'mandate' fun. Fun is a genuine value that cannot be forced. It is practiced consistently. When fun is organic and employees decide and can opt in or out instead of being forced into it, then fun can mean something. And fun isn't what management decides it is; it's what employees decide. Every group is different. As I've written about in my books and other places, genuine efforts 'shouldn't put the "F U" in fun.'
3. A company turns it into a PR stunt. Fun is again organic and if we're vying for who had the 'best' viral marketing from it; we're again signaling what really matters is PR cycles and ROI, not genuine morale.

Fun is a Value All Year That Lets People Take Risks, Laugh, Learn, Grow

The best thing: FUN should be a corporate all year. That encourages people to screw up, fail, learn, grow, take risks to create and innovate. To be bolder communicators and braver creators and move the company and people forward in human ways.

The true power in FUN is in how people feel, how they can express it THEIR way, not the company's, and what it means to be able to create a culture of fun, safety and experimentation. I think that's the real value of April Fool's - that it's not just once a year.