Schluss mit Lustig

Yesterday, I learned about Judith Mair (via Laurent Bossavit), head of a German advertising and web design agency, and writer of the book Schluss mit Lustig – a title that translates as “End the Fun,” or “Fun is Out”.

Her opinion is, according to an article in Times, that “the boundary between work and leisure has become too blurred”, leading to poor productivity and sloppiness. Her solution is a disciplined, puritan approach to business. In another article she says, “The fact is that work has nothing to do with fun. I began running the company on this principle three years ago and the system has decreased rather than increased the level of stress at work and at home.”

At her company, conversations about other matters than work are restricted to five minutes; private e-mailing is confined to the thirty minute lunch break; laughing is prohibited; socializing with other employees outside the office is discouraged. The employees clock in at 9am each day, and leave the office at 5.30pm, after clearing their desks – and no work is taken home. To further sharpen the line between work and leisure, employees wear uniforms, and address each other formally.

Often when a situation is deemed too chaotic and uncontrolled, the remedy is to make it too ordered and controlled. One such measure is to demand employees to report with great detail what they spend time on each day – not only which projects they work on, but what they do in each project: having meetings, fixing bugs, developing new functionality, et cetera. Another measure is to making the planning process stricter, which often means nailing down the plan and spending much time on identifying tasks and estimating them, and having employees regularly reporting the status for the tasks they work on.

I feel that Mair’s recipe misses the point, but I can’t quite put the finger on it. I’m all for having a sharply defined line between work and leisure, but I’m not sure this is the right way. Also, I’m convinced that a playful and free atmosphere is vital to creativity. It might be that it’s an easier way to achieve a state where everyone is determinedly working in the same direction, towards the same goal – but if you can achieve that in a humane workplace, I’m sure it would be more creative, productive, and enjoyable.