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Jokes

At the beginning of the Conflict Management and Negotiations classes last Fall MBA term at GWSB professor often had a short musical intermission with some comments, or a humorous YouTube video to set the positive tone for the lecture. At one point there was a brief comment about the humor and its effect on increasing workplace productivity. This lead me to think more about the role of humor in the workplace and its effect on improving the overall work atmosphere and increasing productivity.

I did some quick search on the topic and it appears that there is a body of scholarly research on the subject. There is empirical evidence on correlation between humor and creativity, work performance, and even employee retention. It is a well-established notion that humor creates positive emotions, but most of the time humor is relegated to personal entertainment domain.

I have long intuitively suspected that there is value in humor not only for personal entertainment, but also for educational purposes, see my posts: Macroeconomics Fun – Notes from the Classroom, My Favorite MBA Jokes, Macroeconomics – Funny Joke of the Day, as well as for work environment: MBA Joke – FedEx Commercial. These studies that I found during the search have mostly confirmed my intuitive guesses.

I think the organizational leaders need to systematically incorporate humor into their organizational culture, not just let happen it haphazardly. Some of the most envied companies in the USA have this culture engrained into their organizations. Immediate examples that come to mind would be Google and Facebook. They are some of the most creative companies and they are also known for their loose and somewhat goofy atmosphere. They drive their employees hard, but they also let them play hard. To me it appears that there is no coincidence there, and humor (positive emotions in general) goes hand in hand with work creativity and productivity.

There are also other examples of companies that drive their workers hard, but do not create the environment where the stress can be naturally diffused trough positive emotions, including the ones induced by humor. One such company that comes to mind is Zynga – online games developer. There has been a series of publications lately on the work environment where many employees are extremely unhappy with the company and are ready to leave it as soon as they get their stock options at the IPO. Not a very good recipe for continuous growth and work force retention in the world where creative technical talent is quite scarce and the competition is waiting to snatch them at any opportunity.

In my company in the future I will establish a 10-minute humor recess before the boring business meetings. Or maybe, I will replace those meetings with stand-up comedian competitions altogether. Just kidding ;-)

By the way, here is one of the videos we watched in the Conflict Management and Negotiations class. You can find more of them on youtube by searching for Terry Tate Office Linebacker. Get a good cheer, cancel the meeting :-)

 

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I know that everyone who watches TV has already seen this FedEx MBA commercial long ago. But I hardly watch any TV, which has been especially true ever since I started my part-time MBA program at GWU a year ago. I found this video (dated ~ 2005-06) on YouTube incidentally just recently and I think it’s a great addition to my favorite MBA jokes list that I posted back in January.


Speaking of  TV watching habits. Do you remember even some 15 years ago the educators on all levels were clamoring about students not reading enough books, newspapers, and other printed media?  The culprit of this unfortunate trend was TV. Kids were watching too much TV at the time. Guess what? My professor in Business and Public Policy class this summer was frequently expressing his disappointment with the fact that nowadays students (college and grad) don’t even watch TV for news and information. Now the culprit is internet, of course. The idea is that internet has way too many biased and unverified sources of information, especially bloggers of all kinds and shapes (yours truly is one of them), so that TV with more stringent framework for collecting and verifying their information and sources is appearing now as the lesser of the evils.

I would not be surprised, if in a few years the public outcry is that the students use their smart phones and other mobile devices for getting information from the internet, instead of the standard notebooks or netbooks. The stance could be that they rob themselves of the richness of the established internet technologies not available or not as effectively rendered through the mobile devices due to their size/technology or whatever other conceivable constraints. The funny thing is not even how the standards change over time, but how rapidly it’s all happening.

So, for those of you who, like myself, don’t watch TV and may have missed this commercial from four years ago, here is the video. If not for the internet, we would never have a chance to enjoy this great clip from the dinosaur TV era :-)

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I have been reviewing the material for Global Perspectives final exam on Wednesday (tomorrow), when I incidentally found out that the final is actually on Friday. I was not planning to post anything until after my both exams, but now as I am getting a little breather, I decided to place these funny exam answers just to vent out the pressure of exams.


I received these pictures from one of my MBA classmates. They are apparently not from the MBA students, but they are related to the exams, and I found them appropriate for the occasion. (You can also check out some of my favorite jokes related to MBA) The pictures are going by a title “Let’s face it, we’ve all been frustrated in exams…” They have been circulated on the web for quite a while, it  seems, but I was not able to figure out the original source to give proper credit. So take them as they are. To see a bigger picture, to be able to actually to read the question and the answer, click on the images to enlarge:

Exam Frustration-Sex by Color

Exam Frustration-Sex by Color

Exam Frustration-hangman

Exam Frustration-hangman

Exam Frustration-Graphing

Exam Frustration-Graphing

Exam Frustration-Batman in Calculus

Exam Frustration-Batman in Calculus

Exam Frustration-elephant

Exam Frustration-elephant

Exam Frustration-expand

Exam Frustration-expand

Exam Frustration-fired

Exam Frustration-fired

My personal favorite is the last one: simple, naive, and innocent. Something I would expect from a fifth grader.

Exam Frustration-find_X

Exam Frustration-find X

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Some people would argue that MBA students and MBA degree holders think to much of themselves.

It might as well be true, I don’t know for sure :-)   But I heard some time ago that one of the distinct human traits is being able to poke fun at yourself. It kinda stuck in my head, alas I don’t remember who is the author of this statement.
Nevertherless, my classes for the week are all attended. And since the finals are not in for another four weeks, I will just have enjoyable time doing my homework: solving problems on Managerial Accounting, writing up a case on Global Perspectives,  reading textbooks and additional materials. That’s going to be fun. Actually, I am going to a party tomorrow night. Maybe I will even report on it later in my blog.

Now speaking of different kind of fun.  Over time I ran in quite a few jokes about MBA. Some of them are actually funny. Here are just a few of my favorites:


You know you are an MBA when:

You think it is actually efficient to write a ten-page paper with six other people you do not know.
You believe you never have any problems in your life, just ‘issues’ and ‘improvement opportunities’.
You refer to your previous life as ‘my sunk costs.’
Your favorite artist is the one who does the dot drawings for the Wall Street Journal.
You decided the only way to afford a house is to call your fellow alumni and offer to name a room after them if they help with the down payment.
Your ‘deliverable’ for Sunday evening is clean laundry and paid bills.
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And since I am in part-time MBA program myself, I find these two YouTube videos particularly funny:

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Management Parable:
A turkey was chatting with a bull. “I would love to be able to get to the top of that tree,” sighed the turkey, “but I haven’t got the energy.” “Well, why don’t you nibble on some of my droppings?” replied the bull. They’re packed with nutrients.” The turkey pecked at a lump of dung and found that it actually gave him enough strength to reach the first branch of the tree.
The next day, after eating some more dung, he reached the second branch.
Finally after a fourth night, there he was proudly perched at the top of the tree. Soon he was promptly spotted by a farmer, who shot the turkey out of the tree.

Management Lesson:
Bullshit might get you to the top, but it won’t keep you there.
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Some more of these jokes could be found here.

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A cowboy walks into a cafe with a shotgun in one hand and a bucket of buffalo manure in the other. He says to the waiter, “Bring me some coffee.” The waiter says, “Sure, coming right up.” He gets the cowboy a big  mug of coffee, and the cowboy drinks it down in one gulp, picks up the bucket of manure, throws it into the air, blasts it with the shotgun, then just walks out. The next morning the cowboy returns, with a bucket of manure and a shortgun again. He walks up to the counter and asks for coffee. The waiter says, “Whoa, Dude! We’re still cleaning up your mess from yesterday. What the heck was all that about, anyway?” The cowboy answers: ”I am getting ready to go for my MBA, so after that I could qualify for an executive position: Come in, drink coffee, shoot shit, leave mess for others to clean up, disappear for rest of day.”

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An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, “Only a little while, senor.”
The American then asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?”
The Mexican said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.
The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, senor.”
The American scoffed, “I am a Harvard MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats, eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”
“But what then, senor?”
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”
“Millions, senor? Then what?”
The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos.”

Other non-MBA jokes could be found here.

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