Tag: communications for motivation

A Culture Wall helps to define the values, beliefs and behaviors that an organization or individual supports or aspires to accomplish. It serve the purpose of being a place of communications and consideration, where themes and ideas can be shared and discussed. And given that the Holidays are upon us, we thought you might find Santa’s Thoughts on His Culture Wall to be the gift of an idea worth considering for your workplace:

Season’s Greetings from Santa, the Elves and Reindeer!
We’re happy to share news of our Workshop’s good year!
We’ve improved our production and general good cheer
Cause we feel we can freely share our ideas around here!

To that effect, we’ve created something we all hold dear
And that’s our Culture Wall that makes sense and is clear,
Because it displays valuable ideas to which we adhere–
And it hits home to all of us–Santa, Elves and Reindeer!

Try creating your own Culture Wall of concepts you revere;
You’ll find it supports a most gleeful working atmosphere!
By inspiring us and acting much as would a reflecting mirror,
We examine our behaviors and generate ideas to pioneer.

So, he and his team discussed possibilities and came up with this as his anchor point for discussions about performance and innovation:

If you would find such a collection of posters and themes of interest, connect with us and we will work to make this a solid possibility for your organization. We are at the beginnings of putting a wide variety of images and quotes together into a working process. Let’s collaborate and roll things forward.

—

For the FUN of It!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement products. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant who designs simple, powerful learning tools.

New teambuilding game, The Collaboration Journey Challenge

You can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com
See his poems and performance haiku poems at www.poemsontheworkplace.com

Learn more about Scott at his LinkedIn site.

Square Wheels® is a registered trademark of Performance Management Company
LEGO® is a trademark of The LEGO® Group®

Thoughts on communication – Nothing Made Sense…

By Dr. Scott Simmerman

On May 5, 2013

In Change Facilitation, employee motivation

A favorite quote is from Joseph Heller, author of the book, Catch 22. In the first couple of pages of his sequel, Closing Time, Heller writes:

“Nothing made sense, and neither did everything else.

For me, that explains a lot about how things work in so many situations. It just does not make any sense sometimes. Some of the other great Heller quotes, from Catch 22 include:

“He was never without misery, and never without hope.”
“He was a self-made man who owed his lack of success to nobody.”
“There is no disappointment so numbing…as someone no better than you achieving more.”
“The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.”
“He was going to live forever, or die in the attempt.”

Anyway, I was messing around this morning and came across another one of those “funny videos about communications.” This one with Bill Cosby talking with a woman living near Philadelphia that was from North, South Carolina. She describes the location of North as 90 miles Southeast of Due West. North is south of The Capital in Columbia. (Yes, that is actually true.) Again,

“Nothing made sense, and neither did everything else.

You really need to check out this 6-minute conversation to see how it parallels a lot of the issues that people have in communicating with others:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO1kmfLmGRA

This also got me looking at some of my other favorite funny videos around communications and of course you will remember Abbott and Costello — celebrating their 75th anniversary of “Who’s on First.” You can see a couple of versions at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbJwwJ33TEI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sShMA85pv8M

Lastly, there is a really funny parody of George and Condi discussing world affairs — you can see that at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwaeD0SHbXs

Communications are always interesting. And that is one of the reasons I find Square Wheels to be such a good communications tool, since it allows people to explain their issues and opportunities pretty clearly.

Have FUN out there fixing things!

Dr. Scott Simmerman is a designer of team building games and organization improvement tools. Managing Partner of Performance Management Company since 1984, he is an experienced presenter and consultant.  Connect with Scott on Google+ – you can reach Scott at scott@squarewheels.com

Follow Scott’s posts on Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/scottsimmerman/

Ideas on People and Performance, Team Building, Motivation and Innovation

Tag: communications for motivation

Santa’s Square Wheels Culture Wall

Thoughts on communication – Nothing Made Sense…