Motivational Speakers for Business

Today's Wall Street Journal featured an article in the first column on page one, concerning the newest trend in corporate motivational speakers- disabled people who survived personal trauma.

I won't go into details regarding the various people with physical or other handicaps who are making substantial amounts of money on the speaking circuit. And I don't wish to make light of their very real infirmities, disabilities, etc.

However, I'd like to focus on what the employment of these people by corporate leaders, for motivational purposes, implies.

To me, it's essentially saying to a company's workforce,

'Dear employees...we've dealt you a sorry corporate hand....live with it..no, wait, better yet, let's get someone in here with a personal tragedy which they had to overcome....now, maybe you will feel that the situation in which we pay you to be, is, in fact, your own personal life tragedy, and you'll move heaven and earth, for no more money, to make our corporate objectives feel like your own personal life struggles.'

If this were done to me, I'd be furious.

Coming from senior managment, it would further make me feel that they were, in effect, delivering this message, too,

'Never mind the options and terrific pay we, your senior management, receive as compensation. You should feel personally challenged to meet the unreasonable goals we've set for you with too-little support, mediocre strategies, and/or products and/or services with no competitive advantage. Never mind the promotion of politically-motivated colleagues above you, or the niggardly compensation increases we give you. Instead, please try to place yourself in the position of this person with a genuine, unavoidable personal handicap, learn from her or his life story, and then treat your employment situation with the same kind of gravity as this person handled her or his life.'

How cynical is that?

Hopefully, this is one of those trends, like "team building," which turn out to be just a passing fad. It seems to shift the focus for corporate performance from a realistic appraisal of a company's or business unit's situation, goals, resources, etc., to a campaign that simply instructs employees to forget all of that, and behave like the only thing that matters is personal motivation.

It reminds me of the real activities of the Soviet Army's NKVD squads in WWII. They would liberally dispense vodka to the infantry troops the night before a mass human wave attack upon German positions. Sober troops might think twice about attacking fortified lines with light infantry arms, but drunken troops could be motivated to make the ultimate sacrifice for the Motherland.

Unfortunately, corporate employment isn't combat, and it's also not a fight for one's homeland. Instead, using handicapped motivational speakers to inspire employees who have been, over the past decade, down-sized, right-sized, sigma-sixed, etc., and had their compensation squeezed as well, is misplacing the responsibility for corporate performance.

If a company is doing well, one would hope these tricks would be unnecessary. If it's doing poorly, should the CEO and his management team not analyze their strategic situation, competitive position, etc, before simply assuming the problem is insufficiently motivated shock troops?

Is it really necessary, as the WSJ piece mentions in one example, to 'inspire' internal finance managers by one handicapped person's personal story of overcoming adversity? How much adversity can there be in a finance function?

When I read this story, I was reminded of a comment made to me by my very first manager at AT&T, over twenty years ago,

"Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry. But I laugh, because it hurts less than crying."

After reading this article, I found myself laughing, because it hurt less. And resolving to read Dilbert, which was motivated by this sort of corporate managerial nonsense, a lot more often.