All posts tagged espionage

Forget the Clean Desk Policy, Go Messy!

Albert Einstein office

For many years, employees in the corporate office have been told to have a clean desk at the end of their working day. However, for those numerous recalcitrants of unhindered mess that have deliberately not heeded the instruction, relax, as you are indeed the wise ones!

Yes, according to a soon to be prestigious university, in the not too distant future, some ground-breaking research will be remarkably discovered under copious reams of randomly scattered papers deeply buried on the Professor’s desk.

Although the handwriting will be a tad illegible, the key findings will be indisputable.

Finding 1: Dementia
A messy desk requires the owner to have a phenomenal memory in knowing exactly in which pile that unique piece of paper scribble written more than 6 months ago had been placed. A clean desk provides no such opportunity to test and improve your mental memory faculties.

Finding 2: Thinking Time
If you add up all the time that an employee wastes in tidying up their desk at the end of each day, you would immediately rescind the instruction. Messy employees are blessed with having additional time for strategic thinking by not wasting their valuable intellect in work distracting activities such as cleanliness.

Finding 3: The Purge
Those with a messy desk are not presented with the potential threat of discarding an important document on a daily basis. They have a more cunning and clever methodology where their entire desktop is typically purged on an annual basis. Afterall, if a paper hasn’t been touched once during that time period, then by default it can be deemed not important and can be happily placed in the recycle bin without any hesitation or doubt.

Finding 4: Security
Now this is the mistaken crux of the clean desk policy, that being, that an unwanted intruder won’t be tempted to steal a document that cannot be seen. But this is where the messy desk has a distinct advantage in that the patience of the industrial spy will be tested to the point of severe frustration as they willingly give up searching for that prized paper gem, owing to the severe lack of order and ingeniously unfathomable filing system.

Now when you add all these four masterly findings together, the true source of the research is disclosed, that being innovation. Yes, if you want to promote an innovation mindset in your corporate office, you should actively encourage mess.

Yes, mess is indeed the best.

 

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by Steven Cramer on October 4, 2019  •  Permalink
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Posted by Steven Cramer on October 4, 2019

https://thinkingfuturethoughts.com/2019/10/04/forget-the-clean-desk-policy-go-messy/

Something is rather fishy here

growth-hacker-640x485

The instruction was clear. I had to read it twice, just to make sure that I really understood this significant and totally bizarre change. However, I was not the only person in this most peculiar and unfamiliar situation. Work colleagues of mine all around the globe were also stumbling over the words from a comprehensive perspective. But, it had to be followed, that’s the way it is in this organization. You don’t ask questions, you only obey.

A few hours earlier in a remote and very small office in Miami, Florida, a lonely IT guru had just hacked the global computer system of their competition. One minute and strategic change had been implemented, and was about to take effect.

The chain of unquestionable command now came into operation as the hacked instructions were followed to the letter by all the organization’s kitchen employees, thereby initiating the unusual replacement of “beef” with “fish”.

Unsuspecting children and adults who habitually ordered their favourite menu item were tormented with sensory disappointment immediately following their first bite. Customers all around the world experienced massive displeasure and sought a prompt upsized replacement, or financial reimbursement. Outcries were expressed in the media, with many negative customer slurs making it to the front page of national newspapers. The theme of “That’s not a Big Mac” resonated for hours until McDonald’s senior management identified the cause of the catastrophe and quickly made the required “Big Mac” ingredient correction.

But those based in the company in Miami smirked with delight knowing that a major public relations coup had just prevailed, particularly as they watched “Whopper” sales reach a new daily record.

Now readers, let’s step back for a moment from this “Big Mac” experience and ponder how this episode may have an impact on those working in the corporate office. How many of your employees actually challenge instructions and current work practices with the view of improving the process? Do they just blindly follow them without asking “why is this so”? If this is your organization, then you are creatively doomed, as a culture of innovation will never make it to the “menu” that you provide to your customers.

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PS: Now on the subject of hamburgers, I must admit I don’t like the standard script of these fast chain restaurants. I like the poetic license that all Australian hamburger makers abide by, that being, you can have anything you want as long as it fits within the bun (which must include beetroot, pineapple and an egg!).

 

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by Steven Cramer on April 17, 2016  •  Permalink
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Posted by Steven Cramer on April 17, 2016

https://thinkingfuturethoughts.com/2016/04/17/something-is-rather-fishy-here/

Exploits of the “Paid Gentlemen”

Spy vs Spy

It was indeed a masterful, and strategically well executed plan in which the “paid gentlemen” (and I use the term “gentlemen” quite loosely let me assure you), had finally found what they were looking for after ransacking the Melbourne corporate office they had stealthily entered in the early hours of the morning precisely thirty minutes earlier. Dressed in the latest Australian Vogue approved designer fashion espionage dark clothing, with matching matte black soft kangaroo leather gloves so as to leave no fingerprints, and wearing matching black sound deadening yachting boat shoes, they systematically searched all potential hiding places.

To find the treasured item they were seeking, absolute darkness and silence was a non-negotiable prerequisite. Any search equipment illuminating light, such as torches, mobile phone screens, or audible communication between the “paid gentleman”, would make finding their objective impossible, as it would immediately, and permanently, disrupt its purity thereby making it worthless. As this was a risk they were not willing to take, specialist and custom fitting Ray-ban infrared goggles, together with some rather spiffy complex hand signals were the “paid gentleman’s” search accessories of choice.

To their great excitement, and might I say massive relief, they finally found that what they sought in a very sneaky and rather cunningly clever hiding location. The item was packaged in a lead lined small wooden red box. The “paid gentlemen” then placed this precious red box into a small attaché suitcase and locked it decisively using the twelve-digit lock combination that they would only divulge on receipt of their exorbitant $500M payment from the unscrupulous buyer.

Following a highly tense sixty-minute flight from Melbourne to Sydney, a surreptitious rendezvous with the seeker of the valuable item was arranged at a secret location in a prestigious hotel in Darling Harbour. It was there that the private exchange took place, upon which the now well “paid gentlemen” slowly departed the scene with a sense of relief and a new feeling of personal affluence.

The new illegal, and rather thrilled, keeper of the item quickly went up to her penthouse hotel suite on the ninth floor and swiftly bolted the room door. All lights were turned off; all window blinds were drawn to ensure complete darkness. She hurriedly unfolded the piece of paper on which the well “paid gentlemen” had written the twelve-digit code, and one by one the numbers were accurately entered until the small wooded red box was revealed. Her heart was now thumping so loud she thought her eardrums might explode with anticipation! Her trembling slender fingers toyed with the box latch and she opened it slowly. As the box opened, what seemed like a burning green gas hissed loudly upon release, followed by a large explosive pop. The startled woman quickly opened the box to make sure that the contents were OK and noticed that there was nothing inside apart from a small typed yellow parchment. She speedily grabbed her metal-rimmed spectacles and read out loud the following words: “Innovation is not something you can buy or steal. Innovation needs creativity!”.

In a fit of temper, combined with a rich and complex range of choice expletives, she heeded these words, and with a sense of “innovation and creativity”, she picked up the red box and attaché case and threw them straight out an open hotel window and then burst into tears with extreme disappointment and massive financial loss. Seconds later, these two hurtling objects landed with decisive and heavy force upon the unprotected and fragile heads of the soon to be very dead “well paid gentlemen” as they gleefully walked out the hotel with their unscrupulous financial gains.

With justice done, the small red wooden box bounced a couple of times on the footpath awaiting the next potential seeker of innovation and creativity!

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by Steven Cramer on February 19, 2015  •  Permalink
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Posted by Steven Cramer on February 19, 2015

https://thinkingfuturethoughts.com/2015/02/19/exploits-of-the-paid-gentlemen/

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