I normally like to Blog about what I perceive as real business issues and solutions. Sometimes I can’t help myself and propeller off into a different area. This is one of those times.
It used to be that my business email was almost pristine in terms of the types of messages and content that I received. I only got business emails and items that were germane to the work I needed to do. I understand that this must have been an anomaly in today’s electronic communications environment. The same could not be said about my personal email. I don’t know how I could have possibly won both the Ethiopian and Kenyan lotteries last month. The odds of something like that must be really astronomical, especially since I don’t remember entering either of them. However, until recently, my business address was relatively free of these types of opportunities.
That isn’t the case any more.
While I am not getting the rather colorful pharmaceutical, friendship and foreign lottery opportunities that I do get in my personal inbox, I now seem to be getting a plethora “business” trade shows, seminars, “bulletins” and symposium opportunities to either attend (for a hefty fee) or subscribe to (for another fee). It takes a set of notifications like these to actually inform me of many superfluous industry meetings and publications there are out there. They seem to exist for just the purpose of getting people to attend / buy them without any other redeeming qualities.
Am I the only one that feels this way about them?
The question now turns to who is providing my business email to these “Spammers”. It’s not me. Why would I want to commit any act that would knowingly subject me to this type of ultimately useless barrage of seminar and white paper opportunities? It has to be someone that is deriving some sort of twisted pleasure in befouling my here to fore relatively useful business email. When I check around it seems that it is possible that I might have in fact been the last person on the internet with any type of mail address that was not receiving useless unrequested mailbox clutter of this type.
It is said that “misery loves company”, so I am trying to figure out who the miserable jerk was that put me on some list that got all this started. I am convinced that all these spam lists are related. First I got just an occasional useless message. There was nothing to it. I just deleted it. Then it started to grow.
I didn’t respond to any of the messages. They must have been communicating with each other. There must be some sort of secret spammer society where they meet, (virtually? electronically? in person?) to exchange the addresses of their latest, and in my case last victim to receive their onslaught. It has truly gotten out of hand.
My mail system does a reasonable job of trying to sort out some of the junk email from the rest. I believe that it must be set according to the number of recipients in the email address. At least that would explain why every announcement from our senior executives (and HR) end up in the same Junk Mail folder as my most recent opportunity to attend an industry seminar in Miami, Florida, to go over the proper steps in justifying to senior management why it is important to attend industry seminars.
Some days I now come in and my Junk Mail folder rivals my Inbox folder for new messages, and by the time I sort out those that should be moved to Junk Mail, it is not even close.
I understand that there is a law where if you take the active step to “unsubscribe” to the email sender, they will stop sending you email….from that address. It seems that they will however just create a new email address I have now thrown down the gauntlet and Don Quixote like started charging at the windmills of industry bulletin and white paper generation. I am patiently searching through each of these emails for the unsubscribe message location. For those of you that may be interested it is normally located in either the top, middle, bottom side, or corner of the page, and it can be recognized because it is the only writing in the message that is in 4 point font. It is also occasionally written in “white”, just to add to the challenge of finding it.
This seems like a significant amount of work, especially since I don’t ever remember subscribing to this stuff in the first place. I am also concerned that if there are enough people like me in the work force who are taking these steps to try to hold on to their business email mailbox like I am, there could be significant productivity lost in the work place. Perhaps this could be a root cause factor to the current business malaise that we all seem to be in.
Category Archives: Humor
Read the Management Book Satires
In this Blog I have refered to several management books as good reference material on how to conduct both sales and your business. Despite our best efforts we invariably will find ourselves in a position that can only be described as comical. Someone will ask you a question, or senior management will give you an order that will cause you to stop, and look for the hidden camera that must be around to capture your response. It is times like these that make me glad that I have read some of the very good satires of management books.
Stanley Bing has two great satires out on books that I have recommended. “What Would Machiavelli Do?” and, “Sun Tzu Was a Sissy” are great examples of what really good management content can become in the wrong hands. I would be very surprised if you have not run into a manager as described in these books. It also gives you an idea of what can happen when fundamental principles are practiced (or twisted) to the extreme.
That also brings us to Scott Adams and the quintessential “Dilbert”. Despite its skewed view of business and management, I have learned many things and seen many truisms in Dilbert. I have also caught myself in more than one instance where I was going to act or say something that could have been featured there.
A broad sense of humor is essential for leadership. Without it we run the risk of becoming a characterization of what a good manager should be. Characterizations and satires help us to understand what the extremes of a good thing can look like. They also help us laugh, and sometimes the best thing to laugh at is ourselves.
Maintain a Healthy Level of Insanity
Many times we have all felt the urge to just sit back and laugh at the apparent insanity or absurdity of a business situation. My advice is to go ahead and do it. You need to find the humor in your job to really enjoy it.
I really enjoyed getting the corporate announcement announcing that there would be no more corporate announcements. (True story). Everyone else thought that was a good one too.
The job is important, and the goals need to be obtained, but it is not life and death. Depending on whom you talk to in the organization it and can be much more important than that. A good sense of humor and the good sense to share it are critical aspects of any job. It will make the tougher times easier to bear, and the better times even more fun. It can also provide a balance to those times and events that are serious.
As the leader it is your responsibility to convey the wishes and directions of the business to your team. It will be your sense of humor that will enable you to remain a part of the team while as the leader you must also remain apart from the team. It will enable the team to see that you also view issues and items from your own perspective, not just the one put forward by the business.
So the next time you get a notice telling you that the corporate training in how to run an effective meeting scheduled to start in 20 minutes will be delayed 30 minutes due to a scheduling conflict regarding the availability of the meeting room (another true story), be sure to share it. You could probably use the laugh, and so could the team.