Futility: Playing the harp before a buffalo

Sometimes even the best ideas go terribly, terribly wrong in the right hands.

Take, for instance, an "innovation" meeting. We were told to come up with innovative ideas to transform the organization and then come together to share ideas. It sounds like such a great idea, doesn't it? I mean, what manager doesn't want an innovative group of employees?

Unfortunately, this particular group of employees might need to re-think its definition of innovation. For me, I think of Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr., Elvis, etc. Not so much, for this team of innovators in the innovation meeting. Oh no. No, the only idea snatched up was creating an innovation poster (!) ... complete with a team photo and a list of "innovations" that the team has concocted. Surely, you are thinking, The Lady V must be making this up. Because no one would really, truly give voice to such an idea.

But you'd be wrong. Wait, the story gets better -- the list of innovations includes the "Maria CD," a compilation of about 12 songs with the name Maria in it, which was given as a gift to a co-worker named (you guessed it) Maria. And it would include the organization calendar made with Shutterfly that features employees for each month (not naked. Which, although it might be an improvement, is certainly still not an innovation). And it might even include the Jeopardy game that featured answers like "The newest employee to start working here." The game took up 40 minutes of the 60 minute "strategic" all-hands meeting.

I swear, I must have seen this in a Dilbert cartoon before. Or maybe in my worst business nightmare. This, I think, was worse than the time at Big Red when I sat in a town hall meeting, awed by a short video montage of missile test firings (!) set to the Pat Benatar song "Hit Me With Your Best Shot." Hm. Okay, maybe that was worse. But not by much.

Of course, the question that follows is, why did no one speak up at this innovation meeting? We're not exactly a group of wallflowers. Yet, there was something about the futility of the entire meeting that just smothered any spark of creativity that flickered pathetically in the great shadow of the innovation poster. It's interesting how just a few people can completely change the ambiance of a meeting from open dialogue to silent protestation. Not that I'm immune to this fault ... on the contrary, I know very well that I can be heavy-handed, over-bearing, and over-passionate. Yeah, I kinda suck. And that would be exactly why business without people would be so much easier. People (and me most of all) are just so darn messy.



----------------
Now playing: Nico Gomez - Aquarela
via FoxyTunes