2010: A banker walks into a boardroom and announces he’s becoming a Chief Humor Officer.
2025: That same banker watches as companies scramble to inject humanity back into their AI-saturated workplaces.
Funny how things work out, isn’t it?
The Revolution Will Be Hilarious
When I launched Chief Humor Officer in 2010, it felt like showing up to a funeral with a kazoo. The banking world wasn’t just resistant to humor – it was actively allergic to it. Risk assessment? Absolutely. Compliance reports? By the dozen. But suggesting that laughter might be a legitimate business tool? That was the kind of talk that made people check if their career insurance was up to date. Paul Iske was able to allow people to talk about brilliant failures in his deeply funny and profound talks. Happiness as a way of goal to strive for as in a Disney movie got also a bit of accepted. But humor as a way of working to get better and new results, this was never ever going to happen soon.
Plot Twist: The Universe Has a Sense of Humor
Life, as it often does, threw me a curveball. Health issues, caused by business quarrels, forced me to step back for a few years – a pause that felt like a cosmic punchline to my mission of bringing joy to corporate corridors. But here’s where it gets interesting: during my absence, the business world started changing in ways that made my “crazy” idea from 2010 look downright prophetic.
2025: When Humor Became a Survival Skill
Fast forward to today. We’re navigating a business landscape where:
- (Agentic) AI handles our analytics but struggles with our office jokes and memes
- Virtual teams need human connection more than ever, understated by the most famous sentence in conference calls….”can you hear me?”
- Corporate authenticity has gone from buzzword to necessity, and not only because some branding groups decided that redesign of the logo was necessary
- The most valuable skill is being unmistakably human, but again who is human? Elon probably not, although alien skills can also be useful at times…😉
Suddenly, being a Chief Humor Officer doesn’t sound so absurd anymore. In fact, it might be the most serious job title of 2025.
The Accidental Prophet of Corporate Culture
Looking back, what seemed like career suicide in 2010 was actually just extremely early market research. While everyone else was optimizing their LinkedIn profiles for keywords like “strategic thinking” and “results-driven,” I was accidentally preparing for a future where human connection would become our scarcest resource.
The Science of Corporate Joy
Here’s what fifteen years of professional humor has taught me:
- Humor isn’t the opposite of seriousness – it’s the antidote to meaninglessness
- The most innovative companies aren’t the ones with the best tech, but the best human dynamics
- In an AI-driven world, our ability to laugh together might be our last competitive advantage
The ROI of ROFL
Remember when we thought the future of work would be all about efficiency and automation? Plot twist: it’s actually about being inefficiently, gloriously, messily human. The companies thriving in 2025 aren’t just the ones with the best algorithms – they’re the ones where people actually want to turn their cameras on during virtual meeting and dare to doubt things because they do not know, or just laugh on the virtual floor laughing, because sometimes it is just so good to laugh about a politically incorrect joke.
From Outlier to Oracle
That nervous banker in 2010 wasn’t just pitching a quirky job title – he was accidentally glimpsing a future where our humanity would become our most valuable asset. The health setback that seemed like an intermission turned out to be a perfect pause for the world to catch up to the idea.
Your 2025 Rebellion Toolkit
For anyone looking to lead with humor in today’s landscape:
- Audit Your Human Algorithm
- Map out where your organization has become unnecessarily robotic
- Identify moments of genuine connection and amplify them
- Calculate your company’s Daily Laugh Average (DLA)
- Upgrade Your Humanity Software
- Schedule intentional moments of workplace joy
- Create “AI-free zones” where human messiness is celebrated
- Develop your team’s humor resilience
- Measure What Matters (Really)
- Track smiles per meeting
- Monitor your team’s “return on imagination”
- Celebrate moments of brilliant human imperfection
The Next Fifteen Years
As we stand here in 2025, with AI reshaping every industry and remote work redefining our connections, the ability to make a room laugh isn’t just a nice-to-have – it’s a revolutionary act. It’s a reminder that in a world of algorithms and automation, our most powerful tool is still our ability to connect, to surprise, and to find joy in the absurdity of it all.
So here’s to the next fifteen years of corporate rebellion. May your meetings be human, your innovations be joyful, and your ROI include at least a few good laughs.
#FutureOfWork #HumanLeadership #CorporateHumor #Innovation2025 #LeadershipEvolution