Time-wasting: Guaranteed and PatenTED

Spotted on the library book shop's giveaway shelves—

Actually, I spotted it months ago: back when Morning Huddle was held daily, its script cobbled together by someone with all too many dates to fill. At the time, I felt quite relieved to know Patton was unlikely to be among the current crop of management consultants whose wisdom would be cribbed to produce daily scripts.

On the other hand, a mere one-minute sounds much better than the present routine. Now that it's Weekly Huddle, the boss expects a full week's padding to be stuffed into the pointless gathering.

Well, his agenda is what he hinted at last week: Simone Legree's group huddles for an hour, "to exchange information and discuss problems"... Now we must compete with them. Therefore, we were told any kind of presentation will do ("It doesn't have to be about work; it could be something you're interested in...")

After he dropped these hints, his assistant (helped by someone marginally more plugged into management lingo) planned today's festivities: subjecting the group to a TED Talk.

Cruel and unusual huddling, I call it. The session started with ten minutes of impressive technological action: a third person's unsuccessful fumbling with the controls of a giant monitor, until the official organizers decided to give up and project the video by other means. The main event was introduced by the marginally more sophisticated of the two: "Has anyone heard of TED? It's a non-profit that sends around YouTube clips that are ...[pause for grasping] ... educational..."

It also just so happens (as she mentioned) that the faculty's LEAN taskmaster had sent this particular TED to the whole department. (Nothing says streamlining the operation as well as having your entire staff spend time this way.) Of course, this is the process by which my co-workers keep up with the latest: they snap to attention upon learning a superior is gung-ho about some lame cliché that's news to them.

This was the Talk.

The Good Leaders including a couple of Heroic CEOs, but it's mostly military who "make you feel safe."

This earlier military hero seems to have had a bit of a temper problem with some underlings. And it must have really set him off, that his men got their bad ideas from "The Jews."

It would seem he kept his promises.

Leaders do mark their territory; it seems he was, uh, manly about it. A bit different today, at least where I work.

The previous Dear Leader marked his turf this way. And my absolute favorite: instead of keeping to institutional tradition that the space remain discretely unmarked, the toilet across from the Chairman's office suddenly sprouted a sign reading, Executive Rest Room... Below that, a repeat in braille—just to be sure no uppity blind person wander in and take liberties.

The newest Dear Leader's real estate grab.

At my office-in-exile, it appears the ego of our unit's leader was adequately messaged today by TED. The payoff: he let us leave for tomorrow's holiday an hour early.