Build a culture to support dispersed development

Great Expectations

I suspect that Comrade Carl Marks (our chief nerd) may have changed the dosage of his Lexapro/Cipralex from 10 to 20 mg. He has been manic for about a week, talking endlessly about creating a culture to support "dispersed development".

"Let's go out for breakfast Gloria, my dear". That in itself was a bit strange because it was 4 PM. I told Carl that I eat breakfast at 6 am, and he replied, "Kibinimat Gloria, that's the point. It's 8 am in Tehran and we need to change the way we do business in order to support dispersed development".

My Dad, Pierre Elliot, had mentioned the city of Tehran when I was growing up. Before Khomeini returned from Paris to Eye-ran, Dad used to say. "the west better knock this guy off, or we are in for a lot of trouble". I do not think Dad knew how right he was.

Out for breakfast we went. Comrade Carl ate some Danish licorice, bacon, a bagel and a glass of red wine. I ordered a diet Zero, in line with my core values of eating breakfast in the morning.

Comrade Carl said to me, "Gloria, in dispersed development, everyone needs to trust everyone else. I have a lot of Poles, Israelis, Russians and Chinese working for me, and they sure don't trust as easily as our naive Americans. However Gloria, the problem is not hiring more white-Americans as you would think, but rather enabling an organizational architecture which supports an environment that allows nerds to virtually transcend cultural difference in the metaphysical sense".

I almost coughed up my Zero. Carl ordered more wine with a buttermilk pancake and continued.

"Gloria, get on the same page with me, kibinimat. Move beyond transactional Machiavellian HR. Emulate the great transformers of our time. Have you ever read about Obama's leading from behind, or the Battle of Stalingrad"?

I knew then that the Comrade had zonked out. As we walked back to the office, he asked me if I thought Greenland should be independent.  

The take away of this is that HR professionals must master some psychiatry. There are many short webinars I can recommend.

Webinar to master psychiatry