Up the Organisation

Lola’s comment on the Jacob Rees-Mogg post,

“WFH has not worked for my business – all my people could not wait to get back into the office. Which is surprising as we are just the sort of business where you’d think WFH would be a winner. It might be that I try to make work fun (!) and generally our clients join in with that.”

reminded me of an excellent book on management, “Up the Organisation”, by Robert Townsend, which I would recommend anyone to read. Despite being a book on management, it is neither dry nor boring, in fact it is funny and interesting, from the cover, which has the question on it, “If you are not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?”, via the introduction which kicks off with “Here is a plan for humanising business – for having fun while making it all work better than it ever worked before…” and sections entitled “Boss, how to retire the”, “Ejaculation, premature and “Secrecy, a child’s garden of diseases” to “The guerilla guide to working women”. Even though it was written in 1970, the message, that people work better when they are treated fairly and having fun is as relevant today as it was then.