{"id":5325,"date":"2024-06-26T09:00:28","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T07:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/?p=5325"},"modified":"2025-01-31T08:55:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T06:55:17","slug":"irony-at-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/26\/irony-at-work\/","title":{"rendered":"Irony at work"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why we need comedians to make us giggle at corporate culture<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They say laughter is the best medicine. Actually, medicine<\/em> is the best medicine (I\u2019ve been married to a doctor for almost 40 years), but there is something uniquely human about turning to humour in times of absurdity.<\/p>\n

We South Africans are particularly good at this\u2026<\/p>\n

\u2026as is the current batch of social media satirists known to poke fun at workplace culture.<\/p>\n

Methinks comedians who make us laugh at what we get up to at work do more than entertain: they expose some of the more ridiculous realities of the modern workplace. And as a result, we think about and talk about these ridiculous realities.<\/p>\n

A boss known for communicating only in jargon? A meeting that could have been an email? By magnifying daily frustrations, comedians connect us via shared facepalms.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Parodying the cubicle<\/h6>\n

One humourist, Sarah Cooper<\/a>, brilliantly captures the disconnected leadership often seen in office environments, together with nonsensical agendas and buzzword-heavy speeches.<\/p>\n

Then there are the “cubicle comedians”: Nicole Daniels<\/a>, DeAndre Brown<\/a> and Lisa Beasley<\/a>, known for their tongue-in-cheek examinations of hybrid set-ups, like this one from Lisa:<\/p>\n

Corporate Erin appears on your screen, grasping a coffee mug and welcoming everyone on the call back from winter vacation. “Everyone should have about 15 emails from me if you want to kind of check those and get back to me by EOD,” she tells the fictional room. “I kind of just want to check in and make sure that you’re kind of on track for everything for Q1, okay?”<\/em><\/p>\n

Writers James Schloeffel<\/a> and Charles Firth<\/a> are the brains behind Wankernomics: Solutionising The Corporate World<\/a>, a comedy-turned-MBA that leaves audiences with aching sides and a useless corporate vocabulary.<\/p>\n

And there are twin toxic-boss-hunters Ben Askins<\/a> and Chris Donnelly<\/a>. Joint winners of Forbes 30 under 30 Europe award in the Media and Marketing category in 2020, they\u2019re equally (or perhaps more) famous for their reels<\/a> and shorts<\/a>.
\n <\/p>\n

Why people can\u2019t get enough<\/h6>\n

The rise of desk jesters is no coincidence in a time characterised by corporate downsizing and widespread reassessment of work cultures. What\u2019s more, their exaggerated output allows us to deal with the realities of office life across the globe \u2013 even if it\u2019s unpalatable.<\/p>\n

Microsoft, for example, has fallen victim to numerous comedic sketches and parodies, like this one<\/a>, about bureaucratic inefficiencies and susceptibility to viruses.<\/p>\n

In fact, the company experienced significant cultural shifts<\/a> in the early 2000s, particularly when it transitioned from focusing primarily on innovation to prioritising revenue generation. (Under the leadership of Steve Ballmer, it introduced \u201cstack ranking\u201d, a management practice in which employees were ranked against each other. This created a cut-throat environment that stifled collaboration and innovation \u2013 and didn\u2019t last.)
\n <\/p>\n

What you can control<\/h6>\n

As a leader, you have a front-row seat to employees\u2019 perceptions (we call these UGRs or Unwritten Ground Rules<\/a>). From this viewpoint, you can become conscious of the experiences you cause your people to have\u2026 and the impact on how they behave.<\/p>\n

If and when you identify areas of your workplace culture that may need improvement (our UGRs Stock Take<\/a> is designed to do exactly this for you), you can intentionally work towards creating an environment where people say, \u201cI\u2019m glad this doesn\u2019t happen around here\u201d instead of \u201cStory of my life.\u201d But if all else fails, catch up on the comedy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why we need comedians to make us giggle at corporate culture They say laughter is the best medicine. Actually, medicine is the best medicine (I\u2019ve been married to a doctor…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5334,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[81,92,82,89,90,80],"class_list":["post-5325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-workplace-culture","tag-culture","tag-employee-engagement","tag-organisational-culture","tag-ugrs","tag-unwritten-ground-rules","tag-workplace-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5325"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5333,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5325\/revisions\/5333"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stefduplessis.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}