One simple thing I’ve seen over the years is laughter as a sign of healthy organisations. Laughter is not always a positive. It can be cruel and discriminatory. The excuse the insensitive or exclusive person makes, “I was only joking”, rarely rings true. Genuine laughter makes for an organisation at ease with itself. So, what is a healthy relationship between humour and organisations?
Tedious Meetings
Look at this way. I have sat through thousands of meetings and most of them are a complete waste of time. People sit around a table, poe-faced, grinding their way through a remorseless agenda.
From time to time, someone will climb onto their hobby-horse and take it for a swift canter around the table. Agenda items return time and again because no-one actually wants to deal with them. Then someone tells a joke that falls flat. I’ve been told off for not taking things seriously enough. I do take losing the will to live very seriously indeed.
The Clique
Another pitfall is the clique. A group of people run the organisation and have done so for years. They have no interest in opening up to outsiders. There may be humour as between friends but not the humour of a group genuinely open to others. People who get on with one another are likely to get the job done, they should be aware though, they may like each other so much they become closed to outsiders.
Hospitality and Fear
To be light-hearted does not mean you don’t take things seriously. Hospitality is at the centre. The stranger should feel welcome and valued. They may not always agree with the organisation but they will go away with a spring in their step if they receive respectful listening. A group in good humour knows when to stop laughing, how to pay attention and build up even those they send away empty-handed.
Lack of humour is common where there is fear, where the organisation has taken a place in the hearts of its leaders, where they are clinging to power. The ironic thing is the power to which they cling is illusory. People who bully to maintain their place in a twopence halfpenny organisation that’s going nowhere in the real world and every which way in its leaders heads, will find they’ve wasted their time.
In a healthy organisation, people know their limitations, they greet an ironic comment with recognition of our common humanity and not as a threat to their oh so important authority.
Yesterday someone shared a dream project with me. It might work. I told him one of my rules of community development: “Most things don’t work”. He could invest in his dream and the likelihood is it will not work. But look closely at that phrase. The fact is the only way you can find the things that do work is to try them. When you try things, most will not work. Ironic, but somehow liberating. Perhaps he will try his idea and perhaps when it fails he’ll remember what I said and smile and be encouraged to try it another way.
