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The cube farm environment is already unpleasant enough with its ugly, drab walls and the steady, droning hum of incessant noise that sucks all the life out of people and turns them into brain-drained zombies, but at least once a week, something else happens.

Someone answers a cell phone.

No, I’m not talking about the people who are stuck in the cubes next to yours, and who are going about their daily activities, and happen to need to  answer a phone because you and your cube neighbors have no privacy whatsoever. Nope, that’s something that can’t really be helped until the cube revolution finally begins and all the cube walls are torn asunder and tossed into the bottomless abyss where they belong.

It’s not that at all. Not this time at least.

What it is is when someone not residing in the cube farm, who can’t live for 5 minutes without a device perma-attached to the eardrum, decides to take a call right outside your cubicle, where they’ll pace up and down gabbing and gabbing about all sorts of unimportant (to me and to most other people) things. Not only do I hear the gabber gabbing, but I also get to hear the person who is gabbing back from the other side. I may not have any clue who you are, but I do know what you’re having for dinner that night, and that you forgot to pick your daughter up from school, and even that you “really don’t have time for this conversation” because you’re in the middle of a very important meeting.  (Er…why did you leave the meeting to answer the phone? It’s called “voice mail.” Duh!)

I’ve heard that there is this big area called “the outdoors” (or even “elevator lobby”) that might be nicer than the nearby cube farm hallways for your private conversations. I unbelievably won’t be disappointed if I don’t find out about how you are angry about your speeding ticket, or happen to involuntarily overhear you getting into another argument with your dog. (Granted, that one would be more interesting than most of the others.)

Most are probably familiar with that verse from the New Testament that states, “The love of money is the root of all evil,” but I’m really beginning to wonder if that verse contained a typo, or if “money” was really symbolic of something else. Like Powerpoint.

We’ve had all sorts of common, famous, and infamous people stealing and committing fraud for thousands of years, but a whole host of crimes picked up tremendously once Powerpoint came into existence and people began to use and abuse it. (Bet Enron used Powerpoint lots!) Mind you, it’s not Powerpoint itself that is evil, but instead it’s the love of Powerpoint that is evil…and far, far too many people really, really, really, really love Powerpoint. (I think I might have left out a “really” in that last sentence, but let’s forge ahead instead of looking backwards and dwelling on it.)

It’s a detrimental and dangerous love.

How many of us have sat through a 90 minute class where the instructor threw up a set of Powerpoint slides and then droned and droned, reading right off of the slides for the entire class? *raises hand* How many of us in our various office environments have had Powerpoint presentations inflicted upon us, during which the presenter just read through a bunch of slides, punctuated every so often by a chart that is only mildly interesting (or comprehensible) to those of us who have taken an accounting or finance class or two, but a complete and utter bore to everyone else? *raises other hand*

This is a stick up! Hand over those slides!

Powerpoint is simply a tool to enhance the actual presentation. When there’s a presentation going on, we’re interested in the presenter and what the presenter has to say, and not in the slides. If it’s actually the slides that are important, just send them out and let us read them on our own time rather than requiring us to sit through yet another Powerpoint Storytime that is nowhere near as fun or interesting as storytime at the local library. Green Eggs and Ham is way cooler, and probably more valuable anyway.

If you must use Powerpoint, use the slides to creatively enhance the presentation instead of them being the main focus of the presentation. Use only one point per slide at maximum and don’t give everything away at once. Don’t allow Powerpoint to become your master as you cannot serve both God and Powerpoint.

Lots of action-y testosterone and CIA conspiracy in this trilogy of movies. What could be better?  I watched the last of this trilogy over the weekend and I think it was the best of the bunch, really wrapping up everything nicely. I have no idea if any of these movies are like Robert Ludlum’s books (probably not), but they were really fun.

Thanks to susankatel for posting the Youtube music video.

I’m finally reading The Millionaire Next Door, a book that I’ve been wanting to read for a long time but just never got to it before now for whatever reason. A main premise of the book is that millionaires can be pretty hard to spot because they aren’t necessarily the same people who live in expensive houses and drive luxury cars. The authors have studied how people become wealthy and have discovered that fewer than 20 percent of Americans have inherited 10 percent or more of their wealth.

The rest are self-made millionaires.

They are also typically very frugal and less likely to spend their money on a lot of expensive stuff. That’s not to say that they never do, but the person you see driving around in a high performance car with an expensive suit and an even more expensive watch is probably not the millionaire, doesn’t have a lot of accumulated wealth, and is likely only living paycheck to paycheck to continue keeping up the extravagant lifestyle.

In contrast, the typical millionaire is the regular guy living next door in a modest neighborhood with a ten year old Ford and a wife who clips coupons.

Since this latest recession began, many more Americans are saving and investing their money rather than just spending it on stuff and more stuff. Of course, popular media would have everyone believing that saving more money is an economic disaster, but I think it’s great! Let the economists rant! While a lot of people may still not become millionaires (especially overnight), they will become financially healthier over the long-term.

Class started up again yesterday, and we have a weekly assignment to complete a point paper (a one page outline) of an article from the The Wall Street Journal. I chose one titled Who has innovative ideas? Employees.

The idea in this article is that employees from all functions and ranks within a company can form innovation communities to come up with…you guessed it…innovations!  The trick is in getting everyone enthusiastically and voluntarily involved.

But how to do that when many employees of many companies are too afraid to voice their ideas and opinions? Employees also may not want to give away all of their ideas to a company for little or no real rewards.

One of the key characteristics of an innovative community is that it creates a space for innovation.  It creates a central meeting space where participants can safely go to discuss and exchange ideas with senior management. Employees would thus feel safe to innovate.

Now, while I think this meeting space is a good start, it doesn’t go far enough. Are participants supposed to leave innovation at the meeting room door as they exit and return to their regular duties? Innovation needs to permeate the entire corporate culture and not be limited to specific times and places. Employees need to feel safe to freely express themselves and their ideas at all times.