Should work be fun or enjoyable?

Happy New Year!  It is time again to set the alarm clocks and start our daily work routine.  I thought about what gets me up at 05:45 AM and how much I smile because another work day started.  I read an article over the holidays that it now was finally proven there is no genome for laziness – it is all yours or your parents fault, take your pick.  Another article I read was “should work be fun?”.  Here are my thoughts:

Sometimes I hear people say that work should be enjoyable or even fun, most people agree, do you?  That work should be enjoyable seems plausible and humane - which is why I am skeptical.  Not that I propose being inhumane – I just don’t believe in human swarm intelligence.  Didn’t humanity believe the world is flat not too long ago?

I think it is a privilege if someone enjoys what he is doing.  Leadership should strive for as many people in their organization to enjoy that privilege as possible.  However, enjoyment from work can become a problem if there is an assumed claim on enjoyment - if employees think they have a right that their work is fun.  Does an employee have a right to enjoyable work or even entertaining work?

No job can always be enjoyable.  If someone thinks that what he is doing should be fun - the whole day, every day - it won’t be difficult to predict he will be disappointed.  Claiming 100% of a job should be enjoyable is an illusion.

Every job has elements that never ever will be enjoyable.  Every work has boring or bothersome tasks which are just part of the job.  Leadership has the job to minimize these boring, repetitive and bothersome tasks but it is an illusion that they can ever be fully eliminated.

Jobs that are never enjoyable by anybody also need to be done.  These could be jobs like scrubbing toilets but also highly skilled jobs like laying a heart bypass for the 897th time.  Even highly skilled jobs can become boring with routine and repetition but need to be done never the less.  Doing these jobs requires conscientiousness which seems to have gone out of fashion.

The claim that work is to bring joy also leaves 2 other aspects out:

It focuses on the wrong aspect namely the work itself instead of the, by far more important aspect, the result of the work or the work product.  Even if the work isn’t enjoyable we should try and enjoy having produced something.  Pride and satisfaction come from a job well done and the work result should be enjoyed rather than the work itself.  Not the input but the output is what counts.

The other reason why the statement work should be enjoyable is not a sufficiently focused or precise statement is that only the result of the work, the work product, leads to a focus on effectiveness.  The work is not essential, being effective when working is.  The more effective and involved you are with a matter, the more thorough and serious you immerse yourself the more interesting the work becomes.  One important source of boredom and frustration comes from the superficiality people apply when dealing with their work matters.

The more effective you are the easier work becomes.  What was challenging and strenuous becomes easy if you grow more effective.  Joy from success and pride can come from being effective at what you do.

Summary: It is ok if work leads to joy.  It is even more important that work results and effectiveness with which the work is done lead to joy and pride.  The best leaders help their co-workers to achieve the latter and with that a more stable source of motivation and fulfillment.  Doing that leaders contribute to the most important source of motivation:  purpose – and purpose is derived from the results of work and the effectiveness with which the work has been done.