#eavoices

The Business of Fun!

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I wrote in an email to a colleague today that the work we had just completed had been fun. I meant it, yet as i wrote the words i felt a jarring semi-cringe that this isn’t the sort of word i should use when communicating about er grown up stuff, like, you know, strategy and transformation and other grown up words.

But i ignored the semi-cringe of dissonant colloquialism and sent the email anyway. However, it did make me think. 

We spend 90,000 hours at work. Why is our work not more fun? Why did i feel for a split-second that the use of the word may not be appropriate.

For me, if myself and the people i work with have found the work we are doing fun, then surely there can be no greater plaudit. The Business of Fun for me is about thinking the following things at the end of a project:

  • I have enjoyed working with the team
  • its been hard work
  • We worked on something that we thought was worthwhile
  • We had some challenges but overcame them
  • We feel like we’ve learnt something
  • We’ve been really engaged in the work
  • We feel please with what i’ve produced

None of the above is frivolous, all the bullet points above are aspects of doing good work!

So Fun = Good work.

My aim is to continue having fun at work and to make sure those that i work with have fun to. because i know if its fun then its good work.

The next question is, how can you put in place an environment to increase the ratio of Fun:Not fun work? I’ll probably explore this in future posts. 

Enterprise Architecture – the Eight Fundamental Factors

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New updated edition now in book The second edition of our book is now published and available. Here is a brief summary of what you can expect: A new title: Enterprise Architecture – the Eight Fundamental Factors. A major rewrite and rearrangement of the content, new content, and additional diagrams and charts. Practical advice, examples and case…

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Locking Down the Prisoners: Control, Conflict and Compliance for Organizations

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The most important thing to learn about management and governance is knowing when and how to manage or govern and more importantly, when not to. The story is told about a very new and modern penal facility, the very epitome of security and control. Each night, precisely at 11:00 PM, the televisions were shut off […]

The Entity Card

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Whatever business you are in, information is the most important raw material there is and it should be understood by many. Using tools like the entity card is one way of communicating on relatively stable information structures, there are other ways. People may say this is hard and takes a lot of time todo. To them […]

The Entity Card

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Whatever business you are in, information is the most important raw material there is and it should be understood by many. Using tools like the entity card is one way of communicating on relatively stable information structures, there are other ways. People may say this is hard and takes a lot of time todo. To them […]

Application Portfolio Management in Local Government

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Although Application Portfolio Management (APM) isn’t the newest kid on the block, it has had a tremendous growth in popularity lately. Due to the economic crisis and market pressures in general, IT managers and architects are constantly pushed by their CxO’s to reduce inefficiencies, improve agility of the enterprise and cut costs. The complexity of these tasks leads to an increasing need for tools and structures to help them handle their application landscape. Since over 70% of most IT budgets goes to maintaining existing applications, it is clear that there is a need for oversight and insight in the use of these applications and their added value, to reduce costs and make room for innovation.

Would you hire an Enterprise Architect?

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Facing the choice of hiring a LEAN Expert, an Enterprise Architect or two production workers, what would be the best choice? The choice is rarely presented in this fashion, but as the cost is comparable it is a choice taken daily by enterprises across the world. Where would you put your money? Being an Enterprise […]

Risk

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As architect we all constantly have to evaluate risk, but our risk assessment is mainly based on the awareness and worries on risk. So when we are worried we use extra safe seatbelt, preach on using condoms, install manual theft protection and highlight ant security concern to everyone. On the other hand when relaxing and … Continue reading Risk →

ArchOps

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I keep being told how Digital Innovation and DevOps are going to save the world. Unfortunately for the salesmen I’ve been around long enough to have seen a magazine full of silver bullets, think Distributed Computing, PCs, Information Centers, Fourth Generation Languages, End User Computing, Object Orientation, ESBs, SOA, BPM and even Java to name […]