Creating Joy at Work

Have you ever experienced any of the following:

• A well meaning leader (or colleague), hoping for dramatic improvement, dictating the use of a tool across the organization? Perhaps they are hot off the end of a conference or tour with wild and new-fangled ideas to try.
• A series of "improvements" scattered about the organization without an overall strategy linking them together? (And in some cases, the improvements work against each other.)
• Resistance to continuous improvement efforts due to past management programs that have not sustained? (Another 'flavor of the month' to contend with) 

If you answered "yes" to any of these, know that you are not alone! Most organizations, teams, and groups have attempted some sort of improvement effort. Most have achieved small wins, but few have achieved the types of enterprise-wide transformations promised in the myriad of books, whitepapers, and case studies that exist on Lean or enterprise excellence. 
Yet, there are organizations that have achieved something extraordinary. Those books, whitepapers, and case studies are telling real stories of achievement, often with real candor about the struggles it took to get there.  
What storytelling is unable to do is transmit the experience - the pain, anguish, struggle, compromise, failure, learning, and painstakingly slow process of achieving successes, only to find that they are fragile and hard to sustain. All of us are also looking for how to DO the thing, rather than deeply understanding the failures.
Just like what it takes to embrace a fitness goal, companies who have seen success have had perseverance, a long-term perspective, and an investment mindset.  

"Geez, Jim - I thought this post was about JOY. What's up?"

YES - this post is about joy. If we look at the definition of joy in Webster's, it reads: "the emotion evoked by wellbeing, good fortune or success, or by the prospect of expressing what one desires."
What I notice about this definition is three fold:

• Joy is a result. The definition implies that joy is what happens as a result of success.
• Joy does not mean happiness. Wellbeing, good fortune, or success - these things invariably take hard work and effort
• Joy exists when there is possibility. The prospect of expressing what one desires means that when we can provide hope, joy can be present. 

That last point is an important one. The prospect of joy is what keeps me moving forward in this work. This is also what keeps my clients moving forward. There are few things that create as much joy as well-earned success.