Why the Corporate Cloning Culture kills Productivity

Posted on June 5, 2015 by Kerry Cue

I flew to Sydney last week courtesy of Saxton’s Speakers Bureau to speak at the Cuscal Women’s Initiative Networking Program Event. When I found myself surrounded by a diverse and fascinating group of highly capable women I was inspired to write this humorous piece.

I’m a humourist. This isn’t a word you’ll find on many corporate CVs, but I have worked for over 30 years as a presenter dispatched to enliven serious but dull corporate conferences. Over that time, I have met some fascinating and inspiring individuals. I have also met many corporate clones, who talk the same clichéd talk. I’ve met so many, in fact, I kept thinking ‘Didn’t I meet you last week, but wearing a different tie?’ Come to think of it, the tie wasn’t that different. A narrower stripe, perhaps.

Many corporations evolve a culture that forces staff to shed the greater part of themselves as they walk in the office door. The workplace protocols, in-house rules and/or megalomaniacal memos and edicts that rain down on the lower ranks suppress all human spontaneity and interactions, leading to unbelievably hilarious and inefficient outcomes such as demonstrations of how to sit in an office chair in a ‘Best Practice Chair Sitting’ workshop. Here are just two terrifying corporate archetypes:

Read full article here:Why the Corporate Cloning Culture kills Productivity

Halloween Vs Guy Fawkes

Posted on October 17, 2014 by Kerry Cue

Remember, Remember the 5th of November? Once we had Cracker Night. It was banned over 40 years ago in Australia. (Read more here.) No other festival has emerged in the Aussie burbs to excite kids, promote random outbursts of minor anarchy or foster neighbourhood interaction like Cracker Night except, perhaps, Halloween on 31st October.

Halloween is not an Aussie tradition. Nor do we celebrate the Hispanic Day of the Dead. The DAY OF THE DEAD to me means election day. Nevertheless, we know all about Halloween. We’ve watched American TV series for yonks. The tradition has dripped into our conscious thoughts like strong brew filter coffee. But we do not celebrate Halloween.

A few midget ghosts and ghouls have knocked on our door over the years. We’ve had to scramble around the house to scratch together some suitable treats including muesli bars and loose change. One time my daughter, then 18 years old, opened the door to three 15 year olds dressed as half-baked and bedraggled jailbait fairies.

‘What do you want?’ my daughter asked,’drugs, booze or cigarettes?’

Many a full moon has risen and ebbed since then and now Halloween has managed a ghoulish foothold in Oz. This year, in one suburb of Melbourne, neighbours left a balloon and instructions in each letter box in the neighbourhood. Willing participants were asked to put the balloon on their letterbox at Halloween so that little trick-or-treaters could knock on their door.

Photo Courier Mail

No drugs, booze or cigarettes are involved, but lots of squeals of excitement. And why not? It may not be our tradition, but it gets the kids outdoors and away from their screen-based lives. And, more significantly, it engages the local community.

Of course, we’d have to make Halloween our own. So bring on the Aussie spooks and Okker skeletons, along with ghosts and ghouls girt by sea because no one can remember the 5th of November.

Stage Bomb Prank or Me-Me Porn?

Posted on August 5, 2014 by Kerry Cue

Gen Y (Gen X or Gen Whatever) Outrage! Lumping a vast cross-section of humanity into a vile yet bland stereotype is a form intellectual sloth. Yet, every now and again someone puts their hand up to represent the vilest extremes of their generation.

Yesterday, it was Gen Y Gold Coast citizen Genevieve LaCaze’s turn.

Screen Grab Yahoo sport

LaCaze, 25, who by the way came 5th in the steeple chase at the Commonwealth Games, stage bombed Kylie Minogue’s performance at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, Scotland.

Athlete Genevieve LaCaze invades Kylie Minogue’s Glasgow Games show, The Guardian, 4 AUG 2014.

Some commentators complained that LaCaze would not like it if Kylie ran onto the track while she was competing. This analogy is not even close. How would LaCaze feel if some unknown school kid ran beside her on the track, not only marring her performance but the entire race?

But LaCraze wanted her moment in the media. She told her parents to watch the closing ceremony. Her look-at-me antics have gone viral. This is Me-Me Porn. A Media-hyped Selfie posted to the world.

Why get annoyed? Because we paid for this narcissistic ‘photo op’.

Or, as WAJohns commented on the Guardian website ‘Why is it always an Aussie dickhead?’

Good question.

Bimbos 4Eva

Posted on February 17, 2014 by Kerry Cue

To Fiona Connolly,

Editor-in-Chief

Yours Magazine

Dear Ms Connolly,

You claim your new magazine, Yours, from the Bauer stable (Women’s Weekly and Woman’s Day), is aimed at women in the 50+ demographic.

Really?

What does YOURS offer us?

More recipes, more gardening hints, more celebrities????

Bingo the lot! But wait. These celebrities are old. You wheel out the old standards including Michelle Pfieffer (55), Sharon Stone (55), Nicole Kidman (46), Jerry Hall (57), Olivia Newton-John (65) etc. But it gets worse.

Women’s mags have been pushing the skinny big-boobed blonde bimbo stereotype since we were 16 years old. Now we’re 60 and you’re still doing it. See ‘Welcome Chiristie Brinkley to the 60+ Club’ (left).

OMG!

We’re meant to be Bimbos 4Eva.

You seem to forget women 50+ threw out the home & hearth stereotype for women years ago. We burnt our bras. Elbowed our way into the workforce often before equal pay was ratified in Australia (1975). We’ve reared children, which meant for many, post-divorce, supporting ourselves.

Meanwhile, you claim ‘We’ve spent the last year listening to what women like you …… want to know more about …..‘

Could Yours be aimed at the Geriatric Barbie Demographic?

Apparently, we want to know more about Pineapple Chutney, Homeopathy for dogs, Sexual Intelligence, swallowing our anger, loving ourselves and recipes for Date & Walnut Loaf (Could Tuna Casserole be just around the corner?).

Like all women’s mags that chortle the ‘love yourself’ mantra while providing 300 pages of how to change yourself, Yours, offers makeover tips to flog products such as Immortelle Brightening Moisture Mask. Cost? $82. What do you get for your money? Wrinkles that last forever?

Honestly, if any anti-wrinkle cream actually worked we wouldn’t need the stuff as we’ve been applying this goop for over 40 years.

Or store your makeup brushes. Who needs 12 makeup brushes? Dame Edna?

There are, of course, some lovely articles about some lovely ladies of a certain age, but whoever thought we should make a lovely cutlery roll out of a gingham tea towel should have her eyes stabbed out with a fork. Firstly, we are the generation who can – in varying degrees – sew. Secondly, we were a generation who were, too often, denied an education in useful subjects like maths and physics and taught instead how to embroider a linen tray cloth or cross-stitch a hessian peg bag. We’ve had to fight for the right to be treated as intelligent beings. Don’t mess with us. And finally, how dim-witted do you condescending 30-somethings think we are? If we really needed to take cutlery on a picnic, we’d simply wrap it in the bloody tea towel!!

If, you, Ms Connolly, a 30-something (Crickey) Editor, think you can patronise our generation, forget it. Go burn your booster bra, Ms Connolly. We’ve been through this before.

We’ll define ourselves, thank you very much, as we have at every other stage of our lives. And one more thing, we don’t give a rat’s what you or any other age-group thinks.

Cheers

Classic Kerry Cue piece on brainless women’s mags : Abracadabra

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