At the end of the week, do you ever feel like you are waking up from a crazy dream? Do things suddenly start to make sense again?
Maybe it's because you finally get to do what you want, instead of what someone else wants you to do.
Earlier this week, my Theory of Seven article generated a healthy discussion about whether it makes sense in business to communicate as though you are talking to seven-year-olds. My point was that simple and memorable messages work best.
A few folks objected. Ken Walker, for example, wrote, "Adults are much more capable than you describe here; this is downright demotivating and, frankly, depressing."
But my point wasn't that people are stupid. It's that business sometimes makes us feel that way.
People are smart about the things that are of most interest to them. Malcolm Gladwell argues that "genius" starts with an intense love of something, which translates to the ability to spend immense amounts of time achieving mastery of that area.
Over the weekend, you get to spend time on what you love.
If you love particle physics, you can read about it. You can swap theories with like-minded friends. You can spin heads with your knowledge of the latest work out of Fermilab and CERN.
But on Monday morning, don't be surprised to find someone in your office who scolds you like a child, because you filled out your expense report incorrectly. "It's explained in plain English, here, on the back of the form, in step 18b."
Companies generate endless piles of stuff about which you don't care. The new vice president's "vision memo" isn't difficult to understand because you lack the intelligence to comprehend it, but because you couldn't care less about a seemingly endless stream of buzzwords and platitudes.
People act stupid to get money. Like me, you need money to eat, clothe your family, and send your kids to school. So when you see the new vice president, you can't tell him that you only read the first paragraph of his memo. Instead, you might tell him that you agree with Ken (who immediately sent a suck up "this is genius!" email to the VP and everyone else in the firm.) 30 others did the same. But the problem is that almost no one read the entire memo, and literally no one understands it, including the VP himself, who had a consultant write most of it.
So my Theory of Seven isn't a slight to the intelligence of your colleagues. It's a function of the reality of corporate life: business can make us act dumb, because it involves us in so many situations that deaden our intelligence... like having to report to three different people at the same time, and who have three different opinions... or not being able to understand which one is responsible for paying you fairly.
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Bruce Kasanoff is author of Simplify the
Future, your guide to a successful career and a rewarding life.Image credit: Flickr member Arimoore
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