Management Slanguage

Triplesplaying Comcast

Here’s some real creativity from Comcast in what they call Comcast Triple Slanguage. Check out their set of funny cards with very clever definitions. For example:

Quizjacking: Using faster Internet to look up answers to TV quiz shows so you can look smarter than you really are.

You can even submit words yourself.

And the HR link? Wouldn’t it be cool to create deck of cards for your HR initiative? How fun would it be to poke a little fun at pay-for-performance, employee engagement, or self-directed teams? I’m not talking about being mean, I’m talking about making up fun words for certain behaviors. Here’s one: Cramformance Reviews: The last-minute reviews that a manager does the night before the annual review period ends.

Goggle’s Used-Generated Gmail Video

Goggle did a fun promotion asking Gmail users to submit a little snippet of video that passed the Gmail logo from left to right on the camera. They got thousands of submissions and compiled many of them into this clip. (If you can’t see the embedded video, click here.)

It would be so cool to do something like this with employees and HR could take the lead. This video has a real teamwork element to it — the envelope “passes” from one hand to the next. If you’re really into teamwork, maybe you could use it as a communication device, and have people pass something. (Or, to be funny, you could “pass the buck.”) Make it highly visual and get your employees to play along. They’re already posting user-generated video. How about letting them play along at work?

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In Praise of the Black T-Shirt at Work

I read this quote at Innovation Zen in an article called “Wear a suit to work? Not as smart as you think.” and it really resonated with me:

Think about Steve Jobs, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Mark Zuckerberg…

Managers and MBAs wear suits. People that want to make money wear suits. Professional athletes that want to look important wear suits.

People that want to change the world do not.

I know a really smart guy who wears a suit to work everyday. And I think he’s got a pretty good shot at changing the world. But I think a lot of people who rock the world are in black t-shirts and flip-flops.

What am I wearing today? Black t-shirt. Black velvet vans. Jeans. Maybe I should go change the world.

Head to Head

Meetup.com seems to be gearing up. They’re looking to double their workforce this year. The biggest, best competitor for talent? Google.

In order to recruit the folks he might lose to the googleplex, CEO Scott Heiferman has made a head-to-head comparison.

For More Creativity, Raise the Roof

Ceiling

Want to your people to focus on the details? Bring down the roof. Want more creativity? Raise the roof. Those are the findings in paper titled The Influence of Ceiling Height: The Effect of Priming on the Type of Processing People Use that will be published in the August issue of the Journal of Consumer Behavior. One of the study’s authors says:

“When a person is in a space with a 10-foot ceiling, they will tend to think more freely, more abstractly,” said Meyers-Levy. “They might process more abstract connections between objects in a room, whereas a person in a room with an 8-foot ceiling will be more likely to focus on specifics.”

Pretty interesting idea. In our office we have 13-foot ceilings in part of the office and 9-foot ceilings in others. When I want to concentrate and write, like I’m doing right now, I go into the lower-roofed room. Hey, it works!

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