In my workplace, as well as in your workplace, there are two
kinds of workers: those who love what they do and the others who love the small
fonts of their paycheques. Or, in other terms, and respecting the same
sequence, the fools and the smarts. In any company from any country from any
system, the percentage of fools is way lower than the percentage of smarts. Is
this good, is this bad? No clue at this point, but remains to see what could
transpire from this (pseudo)analysis.
First off, let’s see what makes a fool a fool. Being
passionate about what you do, and this is not applicable to the workplace only. A passionate
man is a passionate man. You can see his mark on everything he or she touches.
And if there’s something he hates he’s going to tell you right there, right
from the get go. This frankness qualifies him as an outspoken person, and
that’s the end of any pretenses that he or she could be political creatures. These people are not politically correct. They love what they do and they
are convinced that everybody else loves what they do. Moreover, they would bet their yearly incomes on the rule that one loves what
one does. In their minds the world is built on principia, the most logical and most
fair of the premises. And if something goes wrong, there’s always a 3-step fix:
1) recognize the wrong; 2) discuss and agree on the solution of extirpate the
wrong; 3) apply the solution. That’s it. That never works, of course.
What else is there about the fools in my workplace, and in your workplace?
They do not care too much about the paycheque. It’s good to have it, of course,
because paycheque means entertainment in all its modern aspects (from HDTV to
cruises in Patagonia), and entertainment is just a way to recharge the
batteries of their creativity. Creativity that will be applied back into the
workplace, like a recycled investment. With potentially good results, I’d say, that would always materialize with one condition: if the smarts would all fall asleep, missing to watch the fools, failing to dart from their starting blocks to stop them from accomplishing anything
good. But this never happens. The smarts are always alert and watching and also
good athletes.
What makes a smart a smart? First off, a combo of missed ingredients: imagination, spontaneity, innovation. The plain truth is that all smart people are intelligent, without any trace of doubt (some
of them very intelligent), but, with rare exceptions, the intelligence doesn’t go usually hand
in hand with the creativity. For a simple reason: intelligence means preparedness
to face any situation with a set of pragmatic, common skills, acquired during an eventless infancy. Well spread skills
equipping most of the people who paid close attention to their parents when
they were teaching them to play safe, aim low and be successful. Creativity is a wild run
in the unknown, and the best partner you can get is brazenness. When it gets
combined with a touch of recklessness it
gets sold as a deluxe package, highly productive, highly unsuccessful among
common people leaving common lives.
The smarts love their paycheques, and the more they show
their love, the fatter the paycheques become. It’s his secret practice of the Duh Paycheque deity’s cult that makes a
smart a smart. Of course, the workweek
for such people is hell, this goes without saying. Of course the best place for
them to hide are the big, stale organizations where, beside the fact that their number is getting
bigger by the successful financial quarter, the workdays are planned in such a
way that the professional innovation and dedication are considered work related infractions and punished with maximum severity. While the fools struggle with the
wide spread creativity symptom, called otherwise inadaptability to the mediocre job requirements, the smarts are
quite an adaptable race of achievers. They never get sick with doubt, and its more severe form, the need to challenge the establishment. They make it through the workdays
avoiding the commitment, skirting the debate and planning their vacations.
There are no better vacation planners than the smarts. Go to them instead of a
travel agent. They know every single trick in the book, nobody can fool a smart. A smart outsmarts everybody, even another smart. When they talk about vacation, for a few moments they grow the wide wings
of the fools, and their eyes fill with passion. It’s an amazing metamorphosis
which, fortunately, is short lived. And yes, the smarts are the best
politicians in any organization. They don’t speak out their minds because
there’s nothing to be spoken out. They are quiet and in control, they look
mannish and cool, because their thoughts are simple, devoid of any thinking
substance or human emotion. When you don’t talk, you don’t look smart, you don’t look
dumb, you look cool. And no cool guy ever made mistakes.
The smarts are the engine of our modern economy. The fools
are hunted down more and more by a weapon that the smarts invented in order to
survive and multiply: the process. Any respectable, successful, highly competitive company brags about its
processes. These processes are solid shelters for lethargy and lack of
creativity. They are the fortresses of rampant stagnation. Every smart will use them to
hide from ingenuity.
The stagnation is more of a buzzword nowadays. Dressed up in
a nice attribute that gives it a stance of irrevocability, the economic
stagnation is the public agora for all the smarts in this world. They take
turns to tell us what we must do, in order to avoid the professional
advancements. And they will always remain politically correct, no worries
there.
