Category: Human Behavior (Page 4 of 5)

A friend of mine recently told me, “Your blog sucks.  If you aren’t going to write about business, then you need to write about personal stuff.  Otherwise, what’s the point?”

Now, I didn’t want to get into a debate of the value of SEO and owning your own brand name, so I took the point to heart.  So this post gets a little into a little bit of personal opinion on business.

I’ve waited a long time to write about this, mainly because I don’t want to embarrass anyone, and I want to keep the players in this story anonymous.  I’ve worked at a lot of places, and as a consultant I’ve been inside a number of organizations and groups, so I’ve changed some characteristics in order to hide the true identity of the players here.

Let’s begin.  I was recently told a tale by a long time colleague of mine.  This colleague wove a story about sharing drinks with an ex-coworker of mine, who likely didn’t know the two if them shared a connection with me. My colleague was caught off guard when this ex-coworker said something along the lines of, “I like to use jedi mind tricks of people I work with.  If I don’t like them, I’ll wait for them to have a really bad idea, then I’ll tell them it’s a great idea so they’ll go forth with it.  Then when they fail, they look dumb.  It’s really pretty easy to do.”

My colleague was pretty aghast, and he was especially shocked since this woman was involved with HR back in the days when I worked with her.   It led us to a discussion about “Intentional Acts of Destruction” inside companies.

Sure, nothing the woman did was illegal.  But what kind of long term issues did it cause for her company and group, to push forward ideas that were not in the best interest of the business?  What kind of resource drain was it for any man hours to be spent on research or exploration?  Where could those man hours have been better spent?

But more importantly, how many people think this way?  Maybe if you have one employee who does this, it gets cancelled out by the mass of the organization.  But suppose there is one person in each group who thinks this way?

Furthermore, as a manager, how do you decipher the evil from the ignorant?  If you want to allow your employees a lot of blue sky to fly in, how do you know when an idea is being endorsed by the rest of the team because they believe in it, or because it’s part of a sabotage effort?

We couldn’t answer any of these questions.  But we agreed that it was one of those management problems they don’t teach you in business school.  We like to think that we can follow a handbook, and that we work with well intentioned people who have the best interest of the team at heart.  But the reality is that some people don’t.  And the hard thing is, unless they drink in bars and share their misguided thoughts with others, we never know who endorses our ideas because they agree, and who is looking to execute an Intentional Act of Destruction.  It’s a good lesson for all of us to keep in mind when we head into the office. 

People who haven’t watched Saturday Night Live for years are raving about last weekend’s Betty White episode.  The masses took control.  They created a Facebook page demanding she get to host.  They promoted the show with reckless abandon through blogs and Twitter.  And then they watched, either live, on Hulu or YouTube.  The reviews were outstanding.  SNL had it’s highest rated show in 18 months.  All thanks to someone’s devotion to an 88 year old TV legend.

So that made me think about some other articles I’ve read recently.  SI had a nice piece on Hank Aaron.  The death of Ernie Harwell brought tributes from across the land.  CNBC continues to replay a great interview with Warren Buffet.  All of a sudden, being old is cool again.  

So what caused this?

It wasn’t long ago when old was synonymous with being almost dead.  An entire generation of new voters rushed to the polls to stop John Mc Cain from getting the keys to the White House.  Bob Dole looked impotent in his race vs Bill Clinton in 1996.  And we all have sheepishly wished bands like Kiss, The Eagles and other legends from the 60’s and 70’s would just stayed retired.

But look what happened when we put all our faith in the “young” generation.  We had a President busted for an affair with an intern.  Another President running around starting wars on a giant credit card.  Our young movie stars are dying of drug overdoses or ending up in jail.  All those hot shot 25 year old CEO’s in 2000 brought the economy to collapse, thanks in part to the 40 year old VC’s.  Then in 2008, the hot shot 35 year old Finance folks brought the economy back to its knees with a derivative debacle.  We put our faith in the young, and have learned the young are a lot like us.  And if we wanted someone like us running the show, well maybe we’d run the show ourselves.

So maybe there’s a new appreciation for the old.  Not ALL the old, but the old who have passed through the past decade with grace and aplomb.  Betty White never went on Celebrity Apprentice.  Hank Aaron didn’t try to regain spotlight during Barry Bonds’ Home Run chase.  Ernie Harwell never hosted Best Damn Sports Show, Cabo Edition.  The kept being classy, and now maybe, the mainstream is leaning back towards classy.

Perhaps, just perhaps, shows like Jersey Shore and the Hills have become tired.  Maybe we’ve grown weary of Lindsey Lohan, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie types.  Could the Octomom and the crazy people from John and Kate plus 8 disgust us?  

So what does that leave us?  For the last 10 years we’ve shunned making stars of what would have been the “new” old to make stars of the young.  So with that void, what we have to fall back on now is the “old” old – at least those who are still alive.  Betty White, Carol Burnett, Dennis Hopper, Sir Alex Ferguson, Vin Scully, hell even Queen Elizabeth is back en vogue.

Anyway, while my data is arguable, my hypothesis is that Betty White on SNL is an indicator that “Old” has made a comeback.  In a world of confusion, we liek to look to those with historical knowledge – not theoretical suppositions – to show us the way.