Of Silver Lions and Deviant Employees

Saw an episode of 'Storyboard' on CNBC the other day, showcasing the ad's that won at Cannes recently. The ingenuity, imagination and creativity just left me spellbound. What minds people have! Amazing! One ad particularly stayed with me long after I left the telly alone. This was an ad about AIDS, and it won a Silver Lion. The ad was in black and white and showed a village in Africa - people sitting around, women cooking on open fires, children running around... (it could be easily be a village in India). Suddenly, a hush falls over everybody. Then one by one, people start panicking. Mothers pick up children and run into the house, everybody rushes indoors to safety. In a second all you can see is visuals of frightened eyes looking through little gaps in thatched doors. A silhouette of a slightly bent man is shown somewhere in the distance and the viewer is left believing for a second, that someone with AIDS has come into the village and therefore the villagers were scared (my assumption, since I already knew that it was an ad for AIDS ).

Then the screen slowly fades into a shot of an old man - white beard, hollow cheeks and all. And then the punchline on the screen ticks by : The average life expectancy in Africa is 47 years. (which means that most people in Africa will not see an old person in their lifetime). It's a scary thought, because a situation like this is going to be inevitable in India too (with over 5 million people with HIV) and it's an AHA moment when you 'get it'. Very nicely done. Stark, simple and very effective.

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Happened to lay my hands on a magazine called "The Focus" - a German publication, I think. Good articles in this issue - with a focus on the theme of 'Innovation'. One article however felt like I was reading about myself. The title was "Learning from the Mavericks" and it was about "deviant" employees and what to do with them :). I quote from the section called "Building a deviant mousetrap"

Quote
"...... It is generally accepted that deviant employees are attracted to challenges and repelled by repetitive assignments.Deviants love work and hate jobs. They are perfect for skunk-works projects precisely because such activities exist outside what they see as the suffocating confines of traditional employment. Moreover, here the deviants in your company can work at their own often accelerated pace.

Deviant employees don't respect chains of command or people who hide behind them. Authority isn't an entitlement. It has to be earned or it doesn't exist..........."
Unquote

Sounds familiar? Now I have a name to give to this restlessness, this resentment, this wanting-to-do-more-but-you're-pulling-me-down feeling that a lot of people around here live with. I'm deviant. And I'm feeling better about my work already!