How To Make People Mad While Trying To Save The World

Warriors, there are times in your career when you’ll asked to be on something called a “strike team.” Sometimes these are called SWAT teams or action teams or “that thing I’m obligated to send someone too, but which I don’t give a shit about, so I’ll send that guy.”

These teams are temporary gatherings of people from around the company brought together to solve a problem or improve a process and, as always, to make PowerPoints. I’m coming to suspect that that is indeed the purpose of all corporate existence, to produce PowerPoint presentations.

The particular strike team I’m on is made up of wonderful people with smart ideas and if the company would listen, it would hear answers.

But it is deaf. Any noise that might cause a change is ignored. Any suggestion that might cause a shift in thinking is politely declined. A whispered hint that we might need an alteration to the way things are done is greeted with gritted teeth and a, "Go fuck yourself.”

But here I am anyway, on the team tasked with making noises, suggestions, and whispers about change.

What to do when you are being paid to flog a dead horse?

Crack that whip. Crack it good.

Recession cured! Through the magic of PowerPoint!

Warriors, it’s becoming clear that the way to cure this recession is more meetings, lots more meetings.

It must be, because that seems to be my company’s way of dealing with it, scheduling more meetings, with more worldwide travel, more conference calls, with more PowerPoint creation, more rehearsals, more late night meetings to prepare for the meetings, more rounds of feedback on presentations, which results in more working on presentations.

We’ve decided that instead of speaking to customers, and figuring out better products and better ways to talk to customers, we are going to talk to ourselves, often, and through an animated slideshow program with pictures clipped from Flickr and funny moves from YouTube. What are we telling ourselves? Basically, when you boil it down, we’re telling each other everything is going to be okay. We have products. We are going to market them. We will remain employed. Probably.

All these meetings? It’s the same thing as getting a hug from your mother after you scrapped your knee. And as about as helpful.

Well, not really. It’s less helpful. It is more like your mom is so intent on your listening to her that she won’t let you up so you can spray antiseptic on your bleeding wound and bandage it. Instead, she’s going to hold you down and scream meaningless into your face until your knee gets gangrene and has to be amputated.

(Helpful PowerPoint tip: If you need pictures of people who look kind of like your target market, just search on Flickr!)

Corporate Vocabulary #1 – Schadenfeedbackrude

Today’s word is a derivative from the German compound word “Schadenfreude,” which is the peculiar and slightly guilty pleasure one takes from misfortunes of others. Leave it to the German to define that particularly ugly human emotion.

In the corporate world, we have “Schadenfeedbackrude,” which is the pleasure one takes from the negative feedback someone else gets.

For instance, say a co-worker, a friendly competitor, or your boss is up in front of an audience pitching a presentation, clicking through those PowerPoint slides, feeling so good about how wonderful it is to be on stage and spewing highly polished bullshit.

And then, feedback lightning strikes, a senior exec in the audience calls bullshit, criticizes logic flaws in the plan, complains that the research methods are invalid or that the choice of fonts and colors is atrocious.

"Oh god, if I see Tohoma Bold ever again I'll just claw my eyes out!" (Hardcore PowerPointers are passionate about fonts. And don't get them started on animations.)

The presenter deflates. His eyes fill with panic and hurt. He gets defensive. You can see his soul suffering. Wetting his pants is not out of the question.

And maybe your presentation, the one before his, wasn’t so great, but wasn't tied to a stake and stoned. In fact, in comparison, you’re looking pretty damn good.

That feeling warming in your chest that makes the air taste good? That urge to lift the corners of your mouth into a slight, almost imperceptible smile?

That, warriors, is Schadenfeedbackrude.

The Lost Weekend

Alcohol. Pot. Smack. Shrooms. Bolivian marching powder. Illicit sex (with or without other people being involved). Gambling. Watching every episode of Dancing With The Stars on DVD while gorging on mint chocolate chip ice cream.

All are horrible, debauched and pathetic ways to spend a weekend. But none of those match the shear sadness of a weekend spent PowerPointing. And all of them are preferable, even the Dancing With The Stars weekend, because at least that comes with ice cream.

PowerPointing has made writing a simple product plan just so much more than putting your best ideas into a document and sending it around. That would be just too easy, too effective, to old school.

Thanks to PowerPoint, you’ve also got to spend time selecting just the right photos from Google images, adding in funny cartoons, worrying over font selection, and staring at your computer screen for hours trying to shorten 10 word sentences into four-word bullet points. Your template needs to be as beautiful. Your jokes need to be hilarious. Your organization needs to flow.

It’s got to please people who will review it without letting you speak, so the words need to convey all the points you need to make. And it’s got to make happy those who think your slides should say almost nothing, and you should be speaking to all your important points. Those people want big pictures, slides that have but a single word in a 72-point font, and an overall "feel" that says more than words can ever say.

What’s truly awesome is when your boss is a PowerPoint minimalist and your boss’s boss is a PowerPoint detailist. How do you please both of them? You don’t. But you spend your weekend trying.