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Out of the Loop and into the Breach (A Farewell Column) As my last column for Educom Review, I am reprinting a column that appeared a year ago and that a number of people seemed to enjoy. Like many of my columns, it pokes gentle (actually, too gentle) fun at the bureaucrats, technocrats, and officials of this imperfect world, who, alas, have little sense of humor. [Cf., Dilbert, Swift, et al.] 9
Easy Steps to Your Career as a Visionary Let me count the ways. Why do I want to count the ways? Because I've learned that, if you don't enumerate, you don't exist. To survive, you need to know how to count. Some examples: If you're in the Army, don't just pick up your rifle and put the thing on your shoulder, as though you had been given a simple task. No! Putting a rifle on your shoulder is not a simple task. Move the rifle to your shoulder in 4 discrete movements, and assume a thunderstruck expression when you've succeeded in completing that complex, difficult endeavor. If you're Vice President Gore, don't reform the IRS with some simple, friendly guidance on the order of: "Stop being such jackasses over there!" No! The problem is much more complicated than that. You need to propose 197 specific improvements, such as (No. 37) getting someone (or anyone, for God's sake) to please just pick up the phone after it has rung more than 56 times. Later, if you're the Vice President, you can assume a thunderstruck expression if you call the place and someone there actually picks up the receiver without immediately replacing it in the cradle. If you're publishing a magazine, do what all the other magazines are doing: enumerate. FastCompany offers 20 lessons to help "create your own future." Forbes ASAP identifies 100 corporate winners (and 7 losers). Prevention tells us about the 22 "hottest" vitamin and mineral supplements. Vanity Fair honors the 35 people who made the year's "hall of fame." Cosmo describes 44 ways of... but, wait, let's not get into Cosmo. To move on: The important thing for you to learn is that you need to use quantification to give the impression that you know what you're doing and that your ideas have been formed by painstaking application of the scientific method. So that's Step 1 ("Enumerate!"). Write Step 1 down, if you want to become a visionary, because successful visionaries need to have their idea-lists printed and reprinted and posted on the Web. Okay, great, you're on your way! Here we go.
What? You fail to see anything to get excited about? I'm sorry, then you're not getting the point. Look. Being a visionary is not about humility or self-effacement. You've got to learn to blow your own horn! Can you expect other people to follow you if you yourself are not thrilled by every little thing you say -- every tiny, inconsequential whisper of a thought you have? Of course not. So what you need to remember is: Everything you do is exciting! Everything! You are an exciting personage, because you are a visionary. This will become clearer to you as you grow into the role. For now, don't worry, just follow these 9 easy steps. We're learning the basics now, and they are guaranteed to work! Let's continue to move on. Step 4: Make lots and lots of friends, because a visionary needs followers. Question: If a visionary, alone in a forest, falls over dead, does anyone hear his or her final visionary predictions? Answer: Who cares? A visionary alone in a forest is not a real visionary. No successful visionary would be caught dead on some Loony-Tunes walk through the woods, except for some weird kind of photo-op. If you want to be a visionary, you've got to be a highly social animal. Get with the program. Step 5: Act with supreme self-confidence. For this purpose, it's a great advantage if you don't know very much. In fact, I can think of one successful visionary (I won't name names) who knows nothing at all. Nothing. But his ignorance is part of his charm, for he is doing reasonably well on the third-tier visionary circuit. His followers say: "That must be an act. Since he is a highly regarded visionary, he couldn't know as little as he appears to know! That would make him a fool or an impostor, and we would not be following him. The man is clearly very deep!" Well, no, actually the man is a nincompoop, but he is blessed by being completely oblivious of his own ignorance. We should salute, envy, and emulate him. Step 6: Stay on message. It doesn't matter what the message is: right or left, up or down, computer or anti-computer. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Just stick with it. Don't admit to a variety of opinions; don't dispute them, never even mention them. Focus, focus, focus. You are a visionary. Step 7: Don't be brief. Remember that the laconic Calvin Coolidge is one of our least appreciated presidents. His second inaugural address consisted, in its entirety, of the following four sentences: "Conserve the firm foundations of our institutions. Do your work with the spirit of a soldier in the public service. Be loyal to the Commonwealth, and to yourselves. And be brief -- above all things, be brief." If you are capable of following his advice (any of it), you are unfit to be a visionary. You need to adapt your speaking and writing styles to match the bloated, gaseous speeches of today's politicians as they prepare us for more of the same in the 21st century. Step 8: Don't be silly. Remember: you're not Monty Python and His Flying Circus, you are a Certified Visionary (CV). Granted, compared to any random collection of visionaries, the members of Monty Python are much smarter, more widely read, more insightful, more articulate and more creative. But they have a critical failing. They are not pompous, and so can never become eligible for visionary status. Watch them at your peril, if you want to follow your Visionary Dream (VD), and not end up in somebody's flying circus, which is no place for a CV. Step 9. Choose a mystical number when you create your list. Don't have 8 lessons when you can have 7, because 8 is a stupid number. All it signifies is 2/3 of a dozen eggs. That is not much to signify. It is in fact a demeaning number of eggs. So shorten or extend your list to 7 or 9, which are both mystical numbers. Or proceed to 10, which is a good Biblical number (though I can't remember its significance). Step 10: Recheck your numbering system. You would be amazed if I told you how many times a Novice Visionary (NV) starts a list of 9 steps, then while writing them down adds a 10th step but forgets to go back and change the title of the list from 9 to 10. In fact, this can even happen to a Seasoned Visionary (SV) such as myself, when the SV is tired or discouraged. So don't make this kind of mistake. If you do, people might fail to understand the importance of your vision. That would be both your loss and, especially, theirs. |
