Thursday, November 5, 2009 at 5:07PM Did the governator lob the F-bomb? Looks like he did.
Not all of business is...well, strictly about business!
It is silly to state the obvious, but sometimes we all over-look what nobody seems to take notice of: In the world of business there’s always a little office politics going-on. Here’s a great story about exactly that…what people do when there’s more than just the obvious transaction going down.
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal’s “Number Guy,” Carl Bialik, wrote a column about the memo that California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sent with not only one, but maybe two messages, to California legislators while vetoing a bill passed by them and sent to him for signing.
Simply put, in his cover statement accompanying the veto there were two adjacent paragraphs, one with four separate, distinct lines, and the other with three. The first 4-line paragraph, coupled with the second 3-line one amounted to the equivalent of an acrostic poem; an acrostic poem is where the first letters associated with a line of written copy spell out a message of their own. In this particular instance the letters read from top to bottom were, by some, thought to be an obscenity that begins with “F” and where the last three letters spell Y-O-U!
When the statistically probabilities of this happening by sheer chance are calculated, the odds are about 1 in 8 billion of it happening by chance alone; however you can decide for yourself by reading Mr. Bialik himself in “Coincidental obscenity deemed extremely dubious.”
There are at least two lessons here for managers and those in business:
[1] There’s almost always another—and frequently different--agenda, or message, to accompany the apparent business at hand. You mustn’t let it distract you, but you should know what it is, how to read it, and understand what its intent is.
[2] This is the sort of stuff that makes life—and a life in business, specifically—more interesting and fun to be a part of. The world of business is filled with interesting, charming, quirky, menacing, gracious, and sometimes down-right obnoxious people; frequently it is the human element that makes a life in business from becoming completely boring! Making money is important, but it’s not the only objective in life or business; making a life that’s rich in nuance and interest is also very worthwhile—and sometimes fun...and funny!
Reader Comments (2)
We need to get Robert Langdon to review all of The Governator's memos in case there's a more elaborate code to crack.
That's funny!
Maybe--but most don't suspect conservatives of being any more sophisticated than they have to be! KM