Fun at work revisited
Something I’ve been thinking about again recently …Almost ten years ago, I wrote about the importance of having fun at work: learning to enjoy the size of the problem.
At that time, I was working as Head of Design at DWP. The work was hard, and the confidence we had to work in new ways, with the intent to make user-centred approaches a meaningful part of how we worked, meant that there was no end of challenges.
The big thing I realised was that everything came down to relationships across teams and programmes of work. I saw how design could make a huge difference in how we helped teams convene each day. This meant the harder it got, the more creative we had to get. As I set out at the time to our teams:
“The bigger the problem, the more fun we need to have. The more motivation we need to keep coming to work.”
This was the start of the mantra keep going.
Reflecting, I don’t think the work has become any easier in most parts of government. There are always new challenges alongside new opportunities, and that’s where design is so important.
This is the ability teams have to be creative in how they work and how we collectively bring others into the work. It extends to how we work with stakeholders, colleagues, and our service users.
Creativity (and even fun) continues to shape our ability to work with diverse opinions, ideas, and even misaligned intentions or motivations.
When there’s something important at stake, the work is rarely easy. But I’m still convinced that how people make progress, and learning to enjoy the size of the problem, are interlinked – especially at the points when the work matters most.
This is my blog where I’ve been writing for 20 years. You can follow all of my posts by subscribing to this RSS feed. You can also find me on Bluesky and LinkedIn.