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Joy At Work: A Revolutionary Approach To Fun On The Job Dennis Bakke 
 Format: Paperback, 314pp. ISBN: 9780976268642 Publisher: Pear Press Pub. Date: July 1, 2006 Average Customer Review:  
For Bulk Orders Call: 626-441-2024  Description and Reviews From The Publisher: Imagine a company where people love coming to work and are highly productive on a daily basis. Imagine a company whose top executives, in a quest to create the most "fun" workplace ever, obliterate labor-management divisions and push decision-making responsibility down to the plant floor. Could such a company compete in today’s bottom-line corporate world? Could it even turn a profit? Well, imagine no more. In Joy at Work, Dennis W. Bakke tells the true story of this extraordinary company—and how, as its co-founder and longtime CEO, he challenged the business establishment with revolutionary ideas that could remake America’s organizations. It is the story of AES, whose business model and operating ethos –"let’s have fun"–were conceived during a 90-minute car ride from Annapolis, Maryland, to Washington, D.C. In the next two decades, it became a worldwide energy giant with 40,000 employees in 31 countries and revenues of $8.6 billion. It’s a remarkable tale told by a remarkable man: Bakke, a farm boy who was shaped by his religious faith, his years at Harvard Business School, and his experience working for the Federal Energy Administration. He rejects workplace drudgery as a noxious remnant of the Industrial Revolution. He believes work should be fun, and at AES he set out to prove it could be. Bakke sought not the empty "fun" of the Friday beer blast but the joy of a workplace where every person, from custodian to CEO, has the power to use his or her God-given talents free of needless corporate bureaucracy. In Joy at Work, Bakke tells how he helped create a company where every decision made at the top was lamented as a lost chance to delegate responsibility—and where all employees were encouraged to take the "game-winning shot," even when it wasn’t a slam-dunk. Perhaps Bakke’s most radical stand was his struggle to break the stranglehold of "creating shareholder value" on the corporate mind-set and replace it with more timeless values: integrity, fairness, social responsibility, and, above all, fun. And Bakke doesn’t shrink from describing the assault on his leadership when AES was sucked into the Enron downdraft and faced a plunging stock price. At this moment of crisis, influential colleagues and directors distanced themselves from the values that had made AES one of the most celebrated companies in the world. Joy at Work offers a model for the 21st-century company that treats its people with respect, gives them unprecedented responsibility, and holds them strictly accountable—because it’s the right thing to do, not just because it makes good business sense. More than any book you’ve ever read, Dennis Bakke’s Joy at Work will force you to question everything you thought you knew about corporate success. *********** Dennis W. Bakke’s passion is to make work exciting, rewarding, stimulating, and enjoyable. While most business books focus on top executives, Joy at Work is aimed primarily at the working life of the other 90 to 95 percent of people in large organizations. According to Bakke, co-founder and CEO emeritus of the AES Corporation, a worldwide energy company with 40,000 employees and $8.6 billion in revenue by 2002, a better measure of an organization’s success than the bottom line is the quality of work life. In Bakke’s view, successful business people should be guided by principles and purposes “meant to be ends in and of themselves, not techniques to create value for shareholders or to reach financial goals.” He is disturbed that society’s preoccupation with economics often leads people to calculate their worth as individuals based on their salaries or wealth and to judge their leaders more on financial results than on values. Bakke views winning—especially winning financially—as, at best, a second-order goal. Yet, most business books do not go beyond this objective and thus fail to define the ultimate purpose of an enterprise. Bakke challenges us to broaden our definition of organizational performance and success beyond dollar value. The “timeless values and principles” he advocated during his tenure at AES, he says, stand on their own merits, whatever a company’s share price. Bakke and AES partner Roger Sant redefined the basic operating structure for organizations and created an unconventional global success story. At AES, said senior executive Tom Tribone, “We try it out in practice and then see if it works in theory.”  • Dennis Bakke's Top Ten • Chapter 6 Summary: Leading To Workplace Joy Reviews "A must-read book for anyone who wants to make work fun." —Jack Kemp, former HUD secretary and vice presidential "Dennis Bakke’s book is a ‘coaching manual’ on how to make fun and success synonymous in the workplace." —Mike Holmgren, coach of the Seattle Seahawks "Joy at Work is simply the best book I have ever read about integrating human values and economic success." —Peter Block, author of Stewardship "This book provides valuable ideas for leaders who wish to build or strengthen organizations using sound principles." —Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship Ministries
About the Author Dennis W. Bakke was raised in Saxon, Washington, and graduated from the University of Puget Sound, Harvard Business School, and the National War College. He co-founded The AES Corporation in 1981 and served as its president and CEO from 1994 to 2002. He is now president and CEO of Imagine Schools, a company that operates elementary and secondary (K-12) charter schools in 10 states. He and his wife, Eileen, live in Arlington, Virginia. Find Items On Similar Subjects  The Decision Maker: Unlock the Potential of Everyone in Your Organization, One Decision at a Time The One Thing You Need to Know: About Great Managing, Great Leading, and Sustained Individual Success
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