Need More Cowbell: applying 80’s technology to 60’s work processes

admin July 21, 2008 leadership, vision 7 Comments

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Technology has allowed us to communicate more quickly. It hasn’t improved the content of our communications nor has it changed the somewhat linear nature of our communication in the workplace. That is, we don’t present budget proposals as multimedia sensory experiences nor do we incorporate other experiences into everyday meetings, though we could. Instead, we essentially work the same way our parents did, just with more speed and intrusion. So it’s more stressful. Isn’t that nice? I want to begin my next staff meeting in a dark room. Then I want to hear some bass, with maybe a flicker of light in the corner–like a fire. Then an unfamiliar voice can be heard from the speakers “Welcome to the staff meeting,” followed by a guitar riff. Lights come on and all the directors are hanging from a jungle gym in the middle of the room wearing crazy hats. We recite our agendas while the rest of the staff wails in a Greek chorus-like fashion, the loudest wails reflecting items of greater interest. Staff reenact the drama of the problem while we critique, role play, and exorcise our demons. Perhaps a blood-letting or maybe some nice interpretive dance?

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7 Responses to “Need More Cowbell: applying 80’s technology to 60’s work processes”

  1. rufusb said:

    Jul 22, 08 at 10:18 am

    CTO actually means “Chief Theater Officer”.

  2. jaeger said:

    Jul 22, 08 at 11:13 am

    Have you changed your medications recently?

    Honestly, one such staff meeting like that and I’d need therapy.

  3. kdghty said:

    Jul 22, 08 at 12:45 pm

    I think someone’s seen All That Jazz a few times. With, I dunno, a little D&D?

  4. admin said:

    Jul 22, 08 at 4:44 pm

    I think Rufus nails this one. Especially given the multiple meanings of “theater” as in “theater of operations” during wartime…

    KD: nah, don’t you sense a little bit of Jesus Christ Superstar in there? An earlier draft involved Joel Gray and the word “wilkommen.”

  5. kdghty said:

    Jul 22, 08 at 7:45 pm

    Ah. The crazy hats should have tipped me off that it wasn’t ATJ – Take Off With Us. I feel that my musicals cred has diminished. I am bereft.

    Yet, yet! Common threads – Ben Vereen. Judas on Broadway in Superstar. O’Connor Flood in All That Jazz. And, um, gotta use IMDB now -Baayork Lee and Bobby Lupone! Both in film version of Superstar. Both in the original cast of A Chorus Line. Annie Reinking played Cassie in ACL during the original run – was actor and character in ATJ. And special for the CTO – a judge in Mad Hat Ballroom.

    I feel better now (though, of course, it isn’t all that amazing to find common threads in the world of spontaneous singing and dancing).

  6. Sukey said:

    Jul 23, 08 at 4:15 am

    Playing comment catch-up here …I started thinking about using Brazilian Director Augosto Boal’s “Theater of the Oppressed” techniques for your next staff meeting to open dialogue between IT & Faculty. It’s kind of like improv meeting transactional analysis. I included the quote for you to work in your revised IT mission statement:

    see http://www.theatreoftheoppressed.org

    “Theatre of the Oppressed is the Game of Dialogue: we play and learn together. All kinds of Games must have Discipline – clear rules that we must follow. At the same time, Games have absolute need of creativity and Freedom. TO is the perfect synthesis between the antithetic Discipline and Freedom. Without Discipline, there is no Social Life; without Freedom, there is no Life.”

  7. kdghty said:

    Jul 23, 08 at 11:53 am

    what’s the safe word, sukey?

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