Today is Flip the Bird Friday

We are The Fun Specialists and this is the way.

I had a huge success here at the MC Agency three weeks ago. My colleague, Ruthi, walked into my office and flipped me the bird. 

My partner, Jeff, and I started the MC Agency on March first. Our old agency got sold, and we decided to head out on our own (with a lot of help from our partners and the insurance companies). Maybe we would make a little more money, maybe not. I think that the big thing for both of us was that we wanted to have a better, more healthy culture. We wanted to work in an office where people laugh and they are excited to come into work every day. 

It’s not uncommon in the insurance world for the office culture to be this odd competition of who can  “out serious” each other, and who can worry more about what might trigger an E&O lawsuit.  Not Super Fun.  It can and does make for a long day. There is no rule that says that we can’t have a lot of fun, and still do a great and thorough job with the insurance for our clients. People who are laughing and happy get more done. Not drinking at lunch seems to help too. 

Ruthi has worked for me for almost four years, and has worked in the insurance industry since 1983. She is quiet, kind, and unassuming. And she flipped the boss the bird. Ruthi shows up every morning at six and mows through the work like a combine. She is dedicated and efficient. Unfortunately, Ruthi has spent more than a few years in offices where the men yell at the women, take credit for the successes and point fingers when failures occur. She has also worked in the super-corporate world with all of the rules and none of the fun.   

Sometimes, when something goes wrong, Ruthi solves the problem.  Then she gets all worked up and comes and tells me about the extra terrible problem, and how she solved it. She is usually visibly worried. So, I flip her the bird, and she laughs and goes back to work. That is a natural “boss” reaction for me, but I am coming to understand that I am kind of an outlier, personality wise, on that sort of thing. Oh, well, I hope that it works out. 

So, in the third week of March, in our third week in business, we had to make our first payroll. We had the money and everything, but it was the first one. It seemed like the only natural and sensible thing that I should do was to send Ruthi an email and tell her that payroll was way, way too much money and I was going to cut in in half. She marched into my office, and flipped me the bird. Both hands. I laughed, told her she was fired (I do that a lot.) and told her to get back to work. 

As a leader of a company or team, that might be my biggest success. If the people around me feel that comfortable in their skin, then there is not going to be much that we cannot do. People need to be passionate about their jobs, and they also need to enjoy coming to work and enjoy the work day. None of us is as smart as all of us, and if the staff around here is comfortable telling me when they think I am making a mistake, I will probably make less mistakes. I think that if I am the boss who encourages the staff to flip me the bird, it is more likely that I will get more and better feedback about how we should be running things around here.

So, I declare that this is Flip the Bird Friday. I am going to go around the office and flip everyone the bird before I go home. (Remember in Bug’s Life, those two Japanese Beatles, it will be kind of like that.) If you are sure that you cannot do that, then if you want to, you can think about working in a place where you can.

This is not a practice life.

Wade