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When he was CEO of 40,000-employee international energy corporation AES, maverick entrepreneur and Christian philanthropist Dennis W. Bakke realized that many of his employees were missing something God meant for them to have at work: fun. By fun, Bakke means the kind of co-creative thrill that Adam must have felt while naming the animals.

So Bakke made radical changes. As a result, about 99 percent of all decisions at the company were made not by bosses or board members, but by the employees in the trenches. He eliminated the management class and human resources department. He began paying everyone according to the same scale. Almost every employee at the company gained access to all financial data. All employees were allowed to make statements to the public about the company, including to shareholders.

Bakke's fun at AES ended in 2002 when, under shareholder pressure during the energy crisis following the Enron scandal, he submitted his resignation. But his ideas are so fascinating, if controversial, that his book Joy at Work: A Revolutionary Approach to Fun on the Job (PVG, 2005) made The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal business bestseller lists. Associate editor Agnieszka Tennant recently interviewed Bakke. This is the longer version of the conversation that ran in the July 2005 issue of the print edition.

Some people find it hard to utter the words joy and work in the same breath. Is this idea even biblical?
Of course! I was teaching from the parable of the talents at a church stewardship class. The boss sends folks out to make all the decisions. He doesn't guide them from afar. He says, "Come back when you've risked all, invested things, made decisions." The people who take the biggest risks are the ones rewarded. The one who didn't take any risks gets soundly chastised. Someone in the class pointed out this little tag line that follows after the master says, "Well done, good and faithful servant." And what does it say? "Enter into the master's joy."

When did you first realize that your employees weren't having fun?
When I visited our plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania, I was told that after a person joins the plant—often right out of high school—within two weeks of doing shift work, that person will figure out the day they can retire, and circle that date. That's like a jail sentence: You go in, and now everything you think about is when you can get out. Many people feel that way about their job, because they're told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. But when they talk about sports or games, what do they say? It's something they get to do; it's great; it's fun! So I said, "Maybe I can figure out something from games and lasso it and bring it back into the workplace." Let's take basketball. What's the most fun thing to do in basketball?

To score?
To have the ball and to shoot the ball. When's the most fun time to shoot the ball?

The final seconds of the game?
And what's the score?

A tie?
Michael Jordan once said something like this: "Forty-nine times in my career I had the ball at the end of the game to win or lose." And then he said something very interesting: that he lost more games than he won. Did Michael Jordan love the game of basketball even though he lost? There's never been anyone more passionate about the game.

How does this translate into the workplace?
The way we're made is not to win—it's to be in the position to use our skills, our gifts, our God-given abilities to do something, to take action, to make a difference that actually affects the outcome of the game. And it doesn't mean winning. We are to be faithful and use our skills to the best of our ability. That's what makes us filled with joy. We can work hard to win, but the joy comes from being able to compete.

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July (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49