A website walked into a bar, and other humor to help with project risk and team motivation

Projects are serious things, often involving significant amounts of money, risk, and uncertain prospects for success.

Luckily, that doesn’t mean we need to take ourselves too seriously! People perform and think better when they’re laughing and enjoying themselves. Humor also helps people bond and to see things in perspective, making it easier to tackle challenging or uncomfortable issues that may come up along the way.

We’ve found that humour has contributed significantly to the subjective enjoyment and (we think) success of projects we’ve worked on. Weekly jokes, sharing of silly memes, and just having permission to be authentic all help make a project team communicate and connect better. 

We’ll share some ideas and examples for bringing humor to a project while still maintaining project focus. Some specific (possibly corny) jokes may be shared. Groaning and eye rolling are highly likely to occur during this section of the presentation.