Nothing is important
stahlhartes Gehäuse
Last time I mentioned Webers [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_cage](Iron Cage) and I do have to apologise.
Sorry.
I should have said stahlhartes Gehäuse of course. It’s a much more accurate and telling description. Because it’s in German. German is one of my favourite languages. Since German has poetry baked into the language. Every German is a poet.
Wir haben uns lange, lange nicht geseh’n
und es gibt so viel, so viel zu erzähl’n
Aber wir schweigen, wir schweigen fast schon laut
Das nicht gesagte beschreibt alles ganz genau
It’s not a coincidence, I referenced Kafka and Marx as well. They wrote in German.
Irgendwann ist es zu spät
Um zu früh draufzugeh’n
Irgendwann bin ich zu alt
Zu alt, um jung zu sterben
Doch ich hab’s versucht
Ich hab’ es wirklich versucht
Wirklich versucht
Glaub mir, ich, ich hab’s versucht
Doch vielleicht nicht gut genug
The sad thing is I never brought up the discipline to properly learn German and be comfortable reading German texts or having conversations. Maybe I should. But then again, there’s maybes everywhere and there’sa maybes all the time and maybes about everything and nothing. Maybe I shouldn’t.
Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt
An evening stroll
I was walking my dog the other day when we ran into the coot
“Good morning coot”, I said
“Good morning”, the coot said
“You are not a fish, though you can swim”, I said
The coot stared at me
“You are not a plane, though you can fly”, I continued
The coot lit a cigarette
“You are not a human, though you can walk”, I tried
The coot sighed
“You are not, …”
“Dude, would you just take it easy? I’m a bird, ok? Relax”
“A bird”, I thought, “a bird”
Smiles & Joy & Laughter
I work(ed) with so many nice people. They all score very high on the “#-of-smiles-generated” KPI. The KPI that is not in job ads, not in function profiles, not in competence matrices. But it’s there and it’s important. It’s the glue and lubricant of your culture.
___
Someone finally did it, the translation engine we have all been waiting for.
Turns out, scientists found out you’re in shits creek if you are impressed by this sort of language:
“To test the impact of corporate bullshit on workers, Littrell developed a “corporate bullshit generator” that generates statements such as “we will actualize a renewed level of cradle-to-grave credentialing”, creating “a hyper-connected, frictionless, and impact-minded global enterprise” all while “getting our friends in the tent with our best practices, we will pressure-test a renewed level of adaptive coherence”.”