TV Quote of the Day (‘The Office,’ on Unexpected and Unlikely Management Material)

Pam Beesly [played by Jenna Fischer, pictured]: “I have this little vacuum cleaner that's broken. If Dwight doesn't work out, maybe that can be manager.”— The Office, Season 3, Episode 3, “The Coup,” original air date Oct. 5, 2006, teleplay by Paul Lieberstein, directed by Greg Daniels

Quote of the Day (Walter Kirn, on ‘The Great Irony of Multitasking’)

“This is the great irony of multitasking—that its overall goal, getting more done in less time, turns out to be chimerical. In reality, multitasking slows our thinking. It forces us to chop competing tasks into pieces, set them in different piles, then hunt for the pile we're interested in, pick up its pieces, review the rules for putting the pieces back together, and then attempt to do so, often quite awkwardly. (Fact, and one more reason the bubble will pop: A brain attempting to perform two tasks simultaneously will, because of all the back-and-forth stress, exhibit a substantial lag in information processing.)”— American novelist, literary critic, and essayist Walter Kirn, “The Autumn of the Multitaskers,” The Atlantic, November 2007

The phrase “multitasking” wasn’t around when poor Rosalind Russell filmed her scene as a woebegone telephone operator in the accompanying photo from Auntie Mame in 1958. (The term wouldn’t be coined until 1965, in an IBM paper describing the capabilities of the IBM System/360.)

But, with the rise of the PC and the cellphone, the phenomenon has spread far and wide, as office workers have attempted to keep up with the productivity promised by information processing. (Don’t imagine that the practice is absent from the C-suite: I have even heard of one exec who checked out sports scores on his iPhone during a board of directors meeting!)

Walter Kirn diagnosed the problems with all of this accurately in his Atlantic article 16 years ago, and the passage of time has only confirmed what he thought. Ryan Fuller, Nina Shikaloff, Renee Cullinan, and Shani Harmon warned in The Harvard Business Review back in 2018, “If You Multitask During Meetings, Your Team Will, Too,” going on to explain why they were concerned:

“While multitasking can, at times, be an efficient way to work, most of us have had the experience of sitting next to the person busy clattering on their keyboard during a meeting. It’s distracting. And, ultimately, multitasking is task switching. When we shoot off a quick email during a meeting, we miss that part of the conversation. We – and others – may not even notice, but it means we have gaps in our understanding of what took place. That can lead to different interpretations of a decision, missed opportunities to provide critical guidance, or inconsistent follow through on action agreements. Beyond that, multitasking can signal to others that we don’t value their time or their contributions. When you and your entire team engages in this behavior, little good can come from it.”

Sadly, it may already be too late: The rise of Zoom calls in the pandemic has only encouraged the practice. The consequences of all this, in terms of inattention and stress, remain to be tallied. 

TV Quote of the Day (Steve Martin, on Jimmy Fallon’s ‘Clean Image’)

“You have such a clean image. And that’s hard to do in today’s world. I suggest that whatever you’re paying the National Enquirer, you should double.”—Actor-comedian Steve Martin, to late-night host Jimmy Fallon, appearing with Martin Short on The Tonight Show, February 14, 2019

In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the “two-minute hate” is a public screaming session in which members of a totalitarian state vent their anguish and frustration toward a politically expedient enemy. It becomes a “hideous ecstasy of fear and vindictiveness, a desire to kill, to torture, to smash faces in with a sledge-hammer.”

In the age of shortened attention spans and social media, that tendency to express one’s suppressed hate has spilled over from politics to entertainment.

When, it’s discovered, performers behind the scenes are not as genial as their public image, the vitriol directed in their direction becomes too much to handle, and damage-control doctors (formerly known as publicity agents) justify their salaries by working overtime and taking any headache remedy at hand.

Rosie O’Donnell, dubbed “The Queen of Nice” by Time Magazine as a daytime talk-show host in the early years she was on, can relate. So, even more so, can Ellen DeGeneres.

The latest TV star to experience this phenomenon is Jimmy Fallon—the subject, you may have heard, of a Rolling Stone expose of his show’s toxic environment.

Fallon is now in a situation in which every utterance that he or a guest makes is likely to be scrutinized on the spot or reinterpreted at some point in the not-so-distant future, at least sometimes in a manner not originally intended. It’s happening already, in the Tonight Show episode featuring today’s “Quote of the Day.”

Fallon’s critics are citing Steve Martin’s joke as a sly way of pointing out the host’s phoniness—especially since it came right after friend Martin Short’s remark in a similar vein: “This is the greatest show on television because there’s no host on late night that pretends to care the way you do. I mean, no one captures phoniness the way you do.”

A close look at the Martin-and-Short segment in which this exchange took place shows how out of context such criticism is (especially since the two comics lobbed increasingly absurd remarks not only at Fallon but also each other). But that won’t seem so to Fallon haters.

“There’s no business like show business,” advised Irving Berlin, but that adage is only true to an extent. Money passes through show business like all other kinds, bringing with it greed, insecurity, ruthlessness, and the arrogance of power.

If show business does differ from other professions, it is because its members are more glamourous and more charming than the rest of us—and, thus, more adept at concealing their less savory character traits.

The Fallon Fiasco is, in a sense, an outgrowth of the #MeToo movement—which, far more than an attack against the misuse of sex in employment, was an outburst against the misuse of power.

In the wake of these scandals, employees have grown more accustomed to bringing their grievances to journalists. What toxic entertainers and their enablers may have counted on previously—silence—no longer works so well.

In years past, biographers would have to wait at least several days following their subjects’ burial before they could safely state with little fear of recrimination, for instance, that Jackie Gleason was far from “The Great One” to Honeymooners writers, or that Johnny Carson could be variously drunk, verbally abusive, or aloof when not in front of an audience. Quite a difference from today.

Will Fallon be canceled as a result of these revelations? Not necessarily. With the writers’ strike putting TV production on hiatus, he will have more time to work out an apology to the public and not just to his staffers.

If the not-so-subtle hints in the article are true, he could also take the time to go into rehab, in order to deal with the substance abuse that, the Rolling Stone article strongly hints, may have contributed to his moodiness.

In one sense in his remark above, Steve Martin was being more correct than he may have realized with his reference to The National Enquirer.  In 2016, a Presidential aspirant arranged to have Enquirer publisher David Packer pay for, then kill, a story that could have damaged his candidacy.

Only now has that “catch-and-kill” program put the candidate in any sort of legal jeopardy—but I’d still bet that he is less likely to face the consequences of that than Jimmy Fallon, whose conduct did far less damage to the American republic.

TV Quote of the Day (‘The Office,’ As Michael Scott Explains His Management Style)

Michael Scott [played by Steve Carell]: “I set the rules, and you follow them blindly, okay? And if you have a problem with that, then you can talk to our complaint department. It's a trashcan.” — The Office, Season 5, Episode 24, “Casual Friday,” original air date Apr. 30, 2009, teleplay by Anthony Q. Farrell, directed by Brent Forrester

Quote of the Day (Sarah Cooper, on Proper E-Mail Use by Female Managers)

“Pepper your emails with exclamation marks and emojis so you don’t come across as too clear or direct. Your lack of efficient communication will make you seem more approachable.” —American comedian Sarah Cooper, with one of “9 Non-Threatening Leadership Strategies for Women,” in How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings (2018)

Quote of the Day (Patricia Marx, Imagining a CEO Memo From the Last Recession)

“It has come to our attention that certain persons feel that executive-compensation packages have been unduly awarded. Management has zero tolerance for negativity. Moreover, now is not the time to play ‘the blame game.’ In days like these, we must tighten our belts and be team players. Note: Anyone who received a signing bonus will be required to return it, posthaste, with interest. In fairness, senior V.P.s were asked to give back the income from last year’s exercised options, but they concluded that the calculation would be difficult and onerous.”— American humorist Patricia Marx, “Shouts and Murmurs: Memo from the C.E.O.,” The New Yorker, Mar. 9, 2009

Quote of the Day (Colin Powell, on Bad News)

“Bad news isn't wine. It doesn't improve with age.”—Former Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell (with Joseph E. Persico), My American Journey (2010)

This should be the management mantra of our time, but sadly it isn’t. Many CEOs don’t want to hear dissent and are ready to exile upper-level executives who question any aspect of their playbook. When a problem develops, nobody wants to deliver the bad news—until the situation is too late.

And so it has become in national politics, with the nation’s President (yes, a former CEO) has steadily resisted the bearers of bad news. In his mind, “I alone can fix it.” See where that’s gotten us…

(The image accompanying this post is the official portrait of Gen. Powell as the Secretary of State, taken by the Department of State in January 2001.)

Quote of the Day (Adm. Hyman Rickover, on the Best Focus of a Manager’s Energy)

“The human tendency is to while away time with unimportant matters that do not require mental effort or energy. Since they can be easily resolved, they give a false sense of accomplishment. The manager must exert self-discipline to ensure that his energy is focused where it is truly needed.”— Admiral Hyman Rickover (1900-1986), the “Father of the Nuclear Navy,” in “Doing a Job,” speech at Columbia University, Nov. 5, 1981

Quote of the Day (Scott Adams, on How Real-Life Business Surpasses 'Dilbert')

"No matter how absurd I try to make the comic strip I can’t stay ahead of what people are actually experiencing in their own workplaces….A company purchased laptop computers for employees to use while traveling. Fearing they might be stolen, the managers came up with a clever solution: permanently attach the laptop computers to the employees' desks."—Scott Adams, The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads and Other Workplace Afflictions (1996)

Quote of the Day (Tyler Perry, on His Early Management Style)

“I was a horrible boss in the beginning because I’d learned how from my father—the old-school method of ‘get a brick, hit them upside their head, and they’ll figure it out.”—Actor-writer-director-producer Tyler Perry, explaining to Best Life Magazine his initial difficulties in the film world

(Despite MBA programs that flourish like ragweed all over this country, you’d be surprised how much Perry’s style of training is still used in businesses across the U.S.)