"Get out!" There are words you probably don't want to hear from the boss. But it's the surprisingly playful message of Motley Fool's "Fool's Errand," a nifty little lottery that picks a random employee's name out of a hat, gives said person a thousand bucks and two weeks vacation, and makes him or her hit the road for half of the following four weeks. No work. No email. No contact with the company. Zip. Zero. Nada.



Fun? Sure. But also slightly terrifying. The very idea probably causes sweat beads on the average employee reading this. "What? Leave without warning?" And that's kind of the point.

A Crafty Test of Workplace Culture

Fool's Errand seems to be a story about vacation, but really it's a crafty little tale about workplace culture - and not just about the culture of doing fun, quirky things. But about the kind of culture that allows people to do (or not) their jobs.

"We want to make sure there are no single points of failure," explained a Motley Fool rep in a video.

"When you have to take two of the next four weeks off kind of unexpectedly, it makes you kind of get everything in order very fast. Because I know that if I pull your name out and you can't go, that is a problem for us as an organization."

Reward...or Pressure Test?

It's pretty smart when you think about how many people leave vacation days on the table every year. It becomes even craftier when you realize most of those vacation days are abandoned because people didn't feel they could realistically leave work behind. That comes down to companies missing mechanisms that allow people (and encourage them) to cover for each other; and that's a problem that causes not just missed vacation days, but also employees who show up with a thermometer and an airsick bag on days we wish they'd stay home in bed.

The goal is to make a real business difference...and have a lot of fun with it.

Pretty crafty, Motley Fool!