We reflect on our decade or so of experience advising students, corporate teams and policy makers, many of whom really just want to have a good time at work and want others to as well. However they seem to be embarrassed saying so, they dress their work in the mantle of productivity, and mostly damage it in the process.

In this short opinion piece, we argue that it’s long past time to say goodnight to Taylorism, and ask what models of research aligned to something humane might replace it?