# An Intentionally Humorous Mission Statement By:: [[Brian Heath]] 2024-01-15 Unless an organization provides humor as an entertainment service, organizations rarely embrace anything humorous. For example, virtually no organizational mission statement is intentionally funny. Yet, humor is a mainstay of our humanity. It allows us the alternative to laugh at the absurdity of our suffering. Otherwise, everything becomes endlessly severe and tragic. If one is always serious, one misses the opportunity to live. Why must organizations always be so serious? Some may argue that it is only their mission that is serious. Their culture may be full of humor. In some ways, this is true. Laughter in the workplace indicates a place where humans can be more authentically human. However, this quickly comes to an end when organizations are faced with the most absurd situations imaginable. If this weren't true, works of humor like *The Office* and *Office Space* wouldn't be so funny. The absurdity of the modern organization cannot be denied. As with most things, one can laugh, cry, or be a robot. Many choose to be inauthentic robots as modern organizations do not want humans; they want robots. This is our modern work paradigm. There is no more apparent reason for its forthcoming failure: it is entirely inhuman. While the current paradigm has produced amazing physical wonders, it has done little to progress humanity beyond showing a way to minimize starvation, which is not to be ignored or belittled. But, as we move up the hierarchy, we will discover new ways of being at work that will look as strange and magical as electricity is to cave dwellers. After all, the joke of the current work situation is not lost on many. As a starting point, I challenge organizations to create an intentionally humorous mission statement such as this one for a private equity firm: "To boldly go where everyone has already been but this time with more profits and shenanigans." #### Related Items [[Organization]] [[Humor]] [[The Human Condition]] [[Progress]] [[Work]] [[Paradigms]]