MARCH 8, 2024 – (Cont.) If the copyright police in the law department had caught wind what I was up to, they would’ve wrecked the party. A few months before they’d come down on the “My Favorite Boss!” woman, who had bamboozled Dan into appointing her as head of marketing for the whole department. One of her works of genius, so she thought, was a marketing piece that featured pirated use of images created by Dr. Seuss. When the lawyers found out about it, they immediately crashed down on her mercilessly.
In my case, the pirated use was recorded music, and I was banking on the internal “copyright police” not hearing about it until the show was over. I’d fly under the radar, as it were, and land the plane before the lawyers were any the wiser.
Besides, the background music that I arranged to be played as the masses entered the Hilton ballroom was from the soundtrack for the PBS series Liberty! about the American Revolution. The bank had been the main underwriter of the documentary.
The music accompanied the visual effect that greeted everyone: projection of an overwhelming image of the famous (and in the public domain) Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. Written across the bottom of the portrait in bold all-caps was the appeal, “QUESTION AUTHORITY.” It was my way of poking fun at the establishment. Who among the entrenched Republican executive “golf team” could criticize a minion who praised the ultimate icon of American Patriotism—George Washington? Yet, at the same time, who among those conservatives could honestly deny that Washington was part of and in fact, a leader of the American . . . Revolution? And wasn’t revolution the ultimate manifestation of questioning authority? At the bank, therefore, what would be wrong with emulating George Washington and questioning authority?[1]
At “show time,” Liberty! faded away, and following a 10-second silence, my audience heard Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man—another infraction to set “copyright police” hair on fire, but who was going to tell the legions of Corporate Trust employees that they weren’t allowed to hear a piece dedicated to them?
My third and fourth copyright infractions involved ties to Black History Month—and connections to the official roster of “vision and values” that my peers and I had “developed” with the aid of a high-priced consultant.[2] To highlight “visionary thinking,” I played an excerpt of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. To show the crowd the power of Marian Anderson’s genius, I shared a recording of her famous and famously ironic rendition of My Country ‘Tis of Thee sung at the Lincoln Memorial in April 1939 after having been denied the chance to perform at Constitution Hall because of her race.
At the halfway point of the two-hour meeting, I inserted some “organized play time,” which featured some light-hearted contests among divisions—a few word games and brain teasers. Before commencing the actual competition, however, I projected the portrait of Mozart onto the big screen behind the stage.
I then put him in context by telling the crowd that he was born 24 years after George Washington and died 10 days before (December 5) the Bill of Rights were certified (December 15, 1791). Then came a little mischief.
“Alright, now . . . ” I said, striding back and forth across the stage, “who’s heard of the Harvard study that discovered that exposure to the music of Mozart can temporarily elevate your intelligence?”
Not a single hand went up.
“Nobody? Well, I’m not at all surprised,” I said, “I mean, after all, now Harvard knows that you don’t have to go to Harvard to be smart. So of course they don’t want anyone to know about the findings of that study. They don’t want you to know the power of Mozart!”
After a ripple of chuckles passed through the crowd, I announced that to prepare everyone for the contest that was about to get underway, people would all get a five-minute dose of Mozart and “get smarter” in the process, while they stretched, grabbed more snacks, drinks, etc.
My assistant Drew then effectuated my fifth breach of copyright law by playing a recording of Murray Perahia performing Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21 in C. I don’t know if anyone actually got any smarter as a result, but in my own small way, I’d succeeded in my objective: giving people a dose of something great, timeless and wonderful in the midst of the corporate grind.
After the break I addressed one of the items Dan had prescribed for the meeting. How I went about it, however, was nothing close to what he’d imagined. He’d wanted me to highlight the department’s record on “Best Practices” and acknowledge the division with the most ideas per capita. To express my own dislike of the whole stupid program, I went all out: I’d given Drew the assignment of building a giant facsimile of the hand-sized pennant that the program’s administrators handed out for each submitted idea, no matter how lame, impractical, or otherwise off-base.
Upon my announcing the winning division and calling its manager to the front to accept the prize, Drew marched the eight-foot-long pennant out on stage[3]. Up on the big screen, meanwhile, was an image of the “Best Practices” pennant and the winning number per person—carried out 14 places to the right of the decimal. About half the people in attendance were well aware of Dan’s penchant for precision at least four places beyond the decimal point. They roared with laughter as the other half of the crowd merely applauded.
The presentation included many other parodies—some apparent only to a few people “in the know,” others knowable to any department employee with half a sense of humor. When the show ended, I was rewarded with a long ovation. It was probably the highlight of my vocational career, which doesn’t say much, I suppose, about my career. Several friends approached me afterward and asked only half in jest, what I thought the odds were of my getting fired by Dan. After all, I’d not entirely spared him—especially in the case of highlighting “Best Practices.”
Not five seconds later, Dan himself found his way to the front and through the group surrounding me. “Congratulations,” he said, shaking my hand rigorously, “on a job well done. I worry a little, though, that maybe some of it was over the heads of a few people.”
He then asked me if I’d be willing to repeat the show for the document custody division out in Maryland—a group equal in size to all the other divisions combined. That’s when I realized he wasn’t going to fire me over my parody of “Best Practices.” (Cont.)
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
[1] During my years as a mid-level corporate manager I discovered the practical benefit of “questioning authority.” By fostering constructive criticism—a central form of questioning authority—I learned many times over that I could improve the performance of my division. On a larger scale I learned to appreciate the importance of the First Amendment, not only as an essential element of personal freedom but as the essential means by which the democracy can be improved for the common good.
[2] I’ll never forget the “off-site” session wherein the consultant had set up a giant easel bearing a large post-it pad for each of us division managers. We were then directed to write down (with a thick black marker) for all to see, the top five attributes that best described our respective groups. After a 10 or 15 seconds of hemming and hawing, one of our peers wrote, “INTEGRITY,” which struck me as ironic, given his lack of it. The squeaks of his marker caught everyone’s attention. Within three seconds, everyone’s pad (except mine) now included the word, “INTEGRITY.” I wrote “CREATIVITY,” having in mind very specifically people in my group who brought an abundance of it to their work. They were exceptional people who with direction and encouragement moved mountains. Within seconds of that, however, all the other divisions—apparently—were likewise best described by “CREATIVITY.” Miraculously, by the end of the exercise, all divisions seemed to “own” the same attributes. The consultant congratulated Dan on having established “such a consistent and positive culture throughout his empire.” I wanted to barf—especially when after the meeting one of my peers told me he’d heard that the consultant’s half-day fee was $20,000 (1999).
[3] To my considerable amusement, the tongue-in-cheek prize pennant wound up prominently displayed on a wall of the winning division’s quarters.
