Few things are more rewarding to a leader than walking by a conference room and hearing laughter.
At our peak at Chiat New York, I could pass three separate conference rooms and hear it spilling out of each one.
To me, that meant people were working together. Coming up with great ideas. Actually wanting to be there.
Over the last month, I’ve been in several offices across different companies, different industries and something struck me: I don’t hear laughter much anymore. Sure, we’re living in dark times—politically, economically, culturally. The weight of the moment is real.
But creativity requires laughter in the process. Always has. And there’s hard evidence to prove it.
In 1999, researchers at three major universities published a study in the Academy of Management Journal with a title that said everything: “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Bottom Line.” Their findings showed that humor directly affected performance. Beyond morale, beyond culture this was actual numbers.
And a 2012 meta-analysis published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology had similar findings. In dozens of workplace studies this analysis confirmed that positive humor is meaningfully associated with employee performance, job satisfaction, and group cohesion.
In my experience, laughter is a leading indicator of success.
I call it The Laughter Metric.
Like revenue, like retention, like likes, laughter can be measured. It can be tracked and used to assess the health of a company or a team.
Try it.
The next time you’re in a meeting or on a Teams call, count the laughs. Or don’t. Then see if you can correlate those chuckles and yucks with the company’s dollars and sense.
Laughter means togetherness. Or a crazy idea gaining traction. Or at minimum, a brief respite from page 97 of a PowerPoint that could have been a txt.
In fact, show me a conference room full of laughter, and I’ll show you a company making money.
Because LOL = ROI.
Image: Mad Magazine
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