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Question: The boss of our organisation just sent around a company-wide memo that said (basically) “everyone needs to be more upbeat”.
I don’t really know what he means. Our business has been doing it tough, so he may mean he wants us to “put on a happy face”. What I do know is he will visit us on what he calls “the shop floor” soon and will ask each of us what we’re doing in this regard. What should I do?
Illustration by John ShakespeareCredit:
Answer: Regular readers of this column, and the column that preceded it, will know I’m not a fan of capital-M motivation or any of its by-products and offshoots. I find glib “affirmations” obnoxious. I find the dismissal of luck and the parallel embrace of survivorship bias offensive. I’m not even particularly keen on routine. But I make one significant exception.
I have introduced one habit into my work life that I swear by, and which (to borrow from the lingo of self-help snake oil salesmen) “inspires and empowers me” without fail every time I return to it.
Former Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer takes a break from dancing. Credit:Photo: AFP
Every six months, I visit YouTube and I enter these words into the search bar: “Steve Ballmer dancing while possessed by supernatural entity”. It brings up an extraordinary number of results, but always at the top is vision from the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 95. I strongly encourage you, and everyone reading, to have a look yourself. But for those who don’t enjoy the feeling of intense nausea paired with abject mortification, here’s a summary:
There are five men (and one or two camera operators) on a stage in front of a crowd. The Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up is playing. One of the men is Bill Gates; he’s wearing a beige short-sleeved shirt, dark trousers and a look of discomfort so consuming it seems to be enveloping him like a sentient costume in a supervillain movie. He, like everyone else on stage (except the camera operators), is dancing.
Why is Bill Gates, who looks as if he would be more comfortable slathered in burnt umber spray tan and performing in a bodybuilding contest, on stage feebly bobbing and swaying to an insipid play on words?
The answer is Steve Ballmer.