Ralph Kramden never skipped a Honeymooner’s episode where he didn’t find something wrong with his job. George Jetson’s Spacely Sprockets complaints were relentless. Ted Mosby could be a brilliant architect but on How I Met Your Mother he’s had to settle for a university professor’s position of leadership.
Get where I’m going here?
Thanks to television we hate our jobs. We’ve been trained for decades to locate bad taste then spill it on the circles we make.
In his book Tribes; We Need You To Lead author Seth Godin reminds us of the darker days of Corporate America when Kodak forced their employees to work in dark rooms. Letters to department heads sat in stacks of unread junk mail. The thought of working side by side with a coworker meant selling out; having personal endeavors released into the public gave permission to the strongest on the team to lay claim to what you could’ve made a success.
As horrible, gut wrenchingly painful as today’s unheard of inhumane treatment seems to come across Godin explains,
“Business owners and managers need leaders. People that don’t fear standing up to make noise; men and women heretics that engage by making change a positive step forward.”
Fearing the loss of your job is completely 1974…by now you should be physically conditioned that six days, six weeks, ten months or a year is acceptable business behavior.
According to Godin American workers shouldn’t just tell their story but thrive on it being told.
Why has Google become the top search engine in the world?
Because two unknown computer geeks from Stanford University believed helping other students easily locate information was an endeavor that would bring an end to the days of microfiche and ripped up newspapers and magazines shoved into a cardboard box.
Sergey Brin and Larry Page didn’t change a college campus they influenced the world to dig a little deeper.
Today the United States Government has publically accused Google of shattering our nation’s monopoly laws; which is pretty much a law makers way of saying, “This is what happens when you don’t send me re-election money or do nothing to promote the rich that put me in office. You gotta pay for what you didn’t do.”
My dream is to one day invent a device that makes having the flu less painful. For decades we’ve nearly broke our backs tossing our giant bodies to the cold bathroom floor to do nothing more than vomit in the Great White Porcelain; if the British can have a bidet…we need a ba-night. Because that’s when it usually hits us hardest…when finished a sprinkle of water warms your face so it can easily be washed off.
Did you know that grandparents.com was created by a man that once marketed coffee makers?
In my most recent lectures to future Broadcaster’s I blatantly spew, “If all you want to do is sink your energy into being just an on-air disc jockey expect a dead air career. Listeners have become watchers and in this age of I Heart Radio if you aren’t blogging, videoing, Tweeting and whatever else has been invented this week then you cannot call yourself a Broadcaster…congratulations you’re now a member of the Used To Be Club.
I always thought my Grandpa Dobrenz had a brilliant life until I realized he raised pigs in Wyoming.
Life in 2011 may smell just as bad but the truer picture painted by Seth Godin exposes we have more control of success than every generation before us.
Interestingly enough it’s this generation that’s decided to let go of the American dream.
Wanna fight about it?
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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