Humor in Business management

The sense of humor is essential for business leadership. This article describes the central place of humor in life and the possibilities of using the precise humoristic expression in business training with daily cartoons.


With the advancement of computers the good businessman can simulate all the routines before he goes to the business work.
He has the opportunity of concentrating more on the uncomputerised human expressions:
The customer service, the relationships among fellow workers, safety and self improvement.

The occupation with the human capital in business management is obligation to deal with emotions.
Emotions volumes are not measurable accurately, contrary to cognitive or physical volumes.
The reason is that emotions expand all the time. It gives them their unique attribute: The human ability of identify with the other and be empathic.

We can measure exactly sales volume, I.Q. and weight lifting, but not the intensity of love and hate.
For example: Questionnaires about satisfaction from a product or a boss give very limited answers.
This leaves the business leader exposed to mistakes of emotional intelligence and the computers cannot help him.


There is nothing better then the sense of humor, the best known therapy for the soul, for illuminating the human factor.
Humor is derived directly from an overloaded mind which seeks to facilitate the feelings it faces with others.
Any accurate expression of emotion is followed by humor as part of a relief.

The definition of humor is: Emotions made precise.




Isaac's ['Laugh' in Hebrew] Sacrifice


Every business negotiation is also a transaction of emotions. These are accurate emotions, purified through the long bargaining process.
After a deal is closed, there is a mutual sense of emotional relief between the negotiating sides.
While this sense of relief fades away down, It create a by product in the form of a lightness of the spirit, a sense of humor.


The precision of humor makes it suitable for the businessmen training.
There is a use for humor in all aspects of business communication, but currently it is limited in scale and methods.
Humor workshops for businessmen are relatively rare.

Large part of the business continuity, from the morning meetings, through the motivation papers and finally with the private learning,
is dedicated for advice on human resources.
The amount of humor in it is very small, compared to humor in ordinary life.
While daily life is a continuous effort for laugher, business life is a cooperated effort for making life more serious and heavier.

The business office needs steady humor supply. Otherwise its athmosphere may turn into acidly cynic.


Business fun is not as simple as it looks like. It demands professionalism both in humor and business. It has to be precise.
Otherwise there is a danger of getting out of focus. Laser precision is part of any humor. If the target is missed, the damage is big.

One medium of humor, the cartoon, is more suitable for the business office.
The Visual aspect of the cartoon makes it easy to grasp the content. It affords a visual relaxation in the visually intensive business world.


Two major daily cartoon series deals directly with the business work:

One is Dilbert by Scott Adams.

Another one is The Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen.



An example of Glasbergen's cartoons


Let us compare between these two cartoon series:

Dilbert has not a very inspiring affect. The characters are clumsy. They create clumsier situations.
It is the result of their incriminating surface behavior. It is very hard to understand them. We laugh at them without very much intellectual gratification.

The Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen is much more sophisticated. A delicate situation, the result of ordinary human behavior, is at the center and not a character.
The situation is mostly a very sharp event regarding money. The elusive world of money making motives finds here its accurate, funny representation.
The characters serve just as a mean for clarification. The subject is not a certain character with unique attributes, but a situation with a familier background.

The reliance on practical situations makes the Daily Cartoon by Randy Glasbergen a favorable choice for the business world.
If we could apply it on a daily basis, we would laugh all the way to the bank.


To do so we need a closer focusing on business stories.
Anybody can identify and act properly when facing a situation which was represented before him in a cartoon with dynamic replacing of characters.

There is a huge need for sophisticated cartoons in all that is concerned with hman resources. It is a business training technique.


The Business cartoons by Randy Glasbergen combines intensity with sophistication.
New cartoons are published every day and they are backed up by a huge archive.
The subjects of the cartoons deals directly with all the modern business environment:
computers and Internet work, management and workers, decision making, work morality and so on.
It covers in exactingness almost any field with a very positive affect.

Whenever I open my Daily Cartoon website I find also ideas and advice regarding other aspects of life, like health, family and self improvement.


I suggest cartoons as the best way for introducing emotional intelligence to businessmen.
Applying them to the daily business processes, adding more sub topics and finding ways for implementing them to the infrastructure of business management,
will give us a better world.