Unmotivated

My boss and I went down to San Antonio today for a speaker/trainer showcase: a half-day sampler of motivational speakers broken down into easily digestible, ten-minute chunks.

I mean, the presentations were broken down into ten-minute chunks. The speakers themselves seemed to be more or less physically intact, and none of them looked particularly appetizing anyway.

One of the interesting things about this format is that, when you have to go through them every ten minutes, the gimmicks speakers use to engage and involve their audience really stand out. Or stand up, as the case may be. Stand up, hold out your arms, find out a random fact about someone else in the audience, make a circle with your thumb and forefinger and put it on your chin (as the speaker places his on his cheek and half the audience does what he does instead of what he says - hilarity and enlightenment ensue), close your eyes, take three deep breaths, point in different directions, now point in the same direction, turn around, sit down, stand up, sit down, fight! fight! fight!

Conflict resolution is a popular topic for corporate trainers. It's a great topic to train on, because you can deliver inspiring platitudes all day without ever actually solving any problems, and therefore rendering your further services unnecessary.

My favorite speaker today talked about negotiation. "There are four possible outcomes to a negotiation," he said. "One, you could get everything you want and the other person could get nothing. But how often does that happen? Two, the other person could get everything they want, and you get nothing. Three, you could compromise; but if you do, how do you feel? That's right. Compromised. Or four, you can go for the win-win."

One, win-win is a myth. There's always compromise; in a relationship, you may take turns getting your own way, or you may know and care about one another enough to give on the things that matter to the other person, and stand stronger on the things that matter to you. Personally, I think that's as close enough to win-win as makes no difference. I once took a negotiation-skills class where we divided into two groups fighting over an orange crop, each needing it desperately for our own particular purpose. Of course, once the exercise was over and the groups revealed their instructions to each other, it turned out one group only needed the fruit, while the other only needed the rind. So there really never had to be any conflict at all, and if the students had only been smart enough, we'd have worked together and each of us would have gotten everything we needed for half the price we had been prepared to pay if the other guy got shut out, you see? But come on - is life ever really like that?

Two, he was wrong. The four possible outcomes are win-lose (both of his first two options were examples of that one), compromise, win-win, or lose-lose. He forgot that last one completely, but sometimes I suspect that's what happens most of all: you can't reach an agreement, your pride gets in the way, you need appeasement, the other party feels equally hurt and angry, everything goes horribly wrong, and finally, talks break down completely, nobody gets anything they want (not even what they started out with), and hope is lost forever.

Another favorite gimmick of motivational speakers is the random, unsubstantiated statistic. Did you know that 68% of customers who don't return aren't staying away because of bad customer service - they stay away because of indifferent customer service? Maybe there's a study somewhere that backs this up, but the speaker didn't cite it. I've been leery of statistics like this ever since a trainer I had to listen to in 2001, to back up his assertion that we all needed to expunge the word "try" from our vocabularies ("Don't try... Do!"), claimed that ever since Avis adopted the motto "We Try Harder," their sales had dropped by 75%.

This is obviously rampant bullshit, because of course if there were any truth to that claim, Avis would have gone out and found them a new motto, toot sweet - something less offensive to the car-renting public, like maybe "Avis: We Kick Puppies."

Oh well. At least it got me out of the office all day.

Going Down, Arrr!

Okay, somebody needs to write my stanza for the 3-Martini Marauding Group pirate poem. Because you can’t write poetry about yourself. That’s just conceited.

It’s my last week and I have not really been able to get in the kind of slacking off that I feel is appropriate for a short-timer. Which is okay. I don’t mind work per se, but today I had to cover the division phones for two hours. I hate this. I can’t believe I got roped into doing it on my last week! What’s next, a staff meeting (Robbie calls them “pointless fish meetings”) on Friday afternoon during break time?!

I should not even type that out loud.

In preparation for moving, I trimmed up my plants, and ended up with several containers full of clippings to give away. So I sent the following email out to most of my division yesterday afternoon:

Do you find your cubicle bare and colorless? Do you wish you could brighten it up a little? Have you always dreamed of having an office you couldn't get into without a machete?
 
Well, this is your lucky day, because (in the interest of portability) I have pruned back my plants.  Several yards of lush green foliage are available for all your cube decorating needs!
 
Pothos ivy loves fluorescent lighting and is practically impossible to kill: just add dirt and water! It grows quickly! It's vibrant! It's beautiful! It lifts the spirits! It freshens the air! It even eats unwelcome visitors!* Supplies are limited, so stop by and get yours today!
 
—---
*As long as they sit very still for a really long time

By 9:00 this morning all the clippings had found homes, so those who weren’t quick enough will just have to eat their own unwelcome visitors. But I’m pleased: the greenery went to some of the fresh-faced, up-and-coming young mappers, to an admin in another section, and to the one I will miss most of all: the one and only, the matchless, the incomparable Bubbly Bitching Nonsmoker. So I feel I’ve left a legacy that will keep on long after I’m gone. It’s a good feeling.

Abandon ship!