Corporate Verbal Hamster Bane of Commerce

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By Jason Menard

Navigating the murky waters of corporate communications can be an eventful journey – creatures once thought to be extinct in the real world continue to thrive. In fact, there is one creature that does not just ignore Darwinian teaching – it literally defies evolutionary theory by its existence: the Corporate Verbal Hamster.

Those who suffer from Corporate Verbal Hamster Syndrome (heretofore known as CVHS) are amazingly adept at grinding the wheels of commerce to a halt. While the condition is not contagious and – unfortunately – not fatal, it does impact the lives and attitudes of those who are subjected to the corporate denizen infected with this condition.

The Corporate Verbal Hamster is so named because it continuously spews forth a stream of words, regardless of whether or not their opinion has been solicited or is even warranted. In meetings, this is the one person who must insert their commentary – I refrain from saying two cents, because I don’t want to overvalue their input – not just into each and every discussion, but into each and every phrase.

Like a human punctuation mark, one’s sentence apparently isn’t complete without the Corporate Verbal Hamster adding his or her words.

The sad thing about the Corporate Verbal Hamster is that they rarely add anything new or interesting to the conversation. Most often, the recycle or summarize statements that were able to stand up quite nicely on their own, thank you. Due to the fact that their mouths are constantly moving, their brains do not have the opportunity to engage in free and original thought, occupied instead by the need to focus on parroting back what is said.

Although perhaps that statement is not exactly fair. To the parrot.

You see, the average parrot has a little more common courtesy and social grace than the Corporate Verbal Hamster. To parrot is to repeat what someone else has said – thereby inferring that the parrot has at least allowed the original speaker (with the original thought) to finish the statement. The Corporate Verbal Hamster begins the repetition often in the middle of the original speaker’s sentence, preferring to complete it for him or her – and usually getting the idea or concept wrong, due to the fact that CVHS does not include premonitions or psychic ability as a side effect.

So frustrations mount, those who are easily dominated in speech sit back preferring not to engage in a war of uttering words with the Hamster, and nothing gets done. Because the Hamster has no original ideas and continues to utter the same things, pausing only briefly for half-breaths (taking a full one is too long), nothing new gets discussed and hours of potentially lucrative and innovative work time gets sacrificed at the feet of the Hamster’s affliction.

Unfortunately, management is often blind to CVHS, or unwilling to get involved. Putting it out of its – or more likely our own – misery is not an option either. Not for any moral or legal reasons, but rather simply physiological ones. Nay, one cannot starve this vile creature into submission as it feeds upon its own ego. Much as a flower uses photosynthesis to convert light energy into life-sustaining chemical energy like glucose, the Corporate Verbal Hamster is able to appropriate other people’s ideas and words and rehash them, making them their own and sustaining their very livelihood at the expense of others.

Like the Colgate Flip-Top Kids, this nefarious corporate beast suffers from a jaw seemingly on a hinge, unable to stay closed of its own volition. As such, it continues to open and shut, uttering inanities and filling the air with unwanted air pollution.

Yet, instead of simply filtering into the background like ambient noise, the Corporate Verbal Hamster’s words hang heavily around the meeting table, like the Sword of Damocles, weighing people down into submission.

So is there a solution? Should not the Hamster’s aura of intelligence be pierced by those realizing that the ideas and thoughts spewed forth are appropriated and not originated? Sadly, no. That’s not the way corporations work. The work gets done, often in spite of these people. They become isolated from the group, which only serves to feed the beast as the resentment of being ostracized only causes the Hamster to increase its sense of superiority.

Thankfully, with e-mail and new technologies, the Corporate Verbal Hamster is often restricted in its environment – its reach stunted by turn-based communications devices. And in today’s increasingly global and technologically based economy, that’s all we can hope for.

Corporations will survive in spite of themselves. And like groundhogs on a golf course, the Corporate Verbal Hamster is just one rodent that we’ve grown to work around. Until there’s a cure for CVHS, that’s the best we can do.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Unwilling to Pay the Price for Empathy

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By Jason Menard

Sometimes no matter how badly we want to feel – or think that we should – we just don’t have the emotional or intellectual wherewithal to do so. And for that, selfishly, I’m thankful.

Recently, every time I turn on the news, log onto the Web, pick up a paper, or listen to the radio I’m bombarded by the horrors of what’s happening in Lebanon. To add my wife has a friend in the area, and another of our friends was to have a wedding ceremony in Lebanon this summer.

Obviously, we have more than a passing interest and we watch the news with interest. Yet, while the idea of rockets passing over my head and threatening my very existence is terrifying, the magnitude of the horror just doesn’t resonate with me.

I don’t know where to stand on the Israeli-Palestinian issue – we have friends on both sides, and most commentators, while professing neutrality, display a bias – but I do stand firm on my revulsion for the fact that it’s the average citizen that’s bearing the brunt of this ideological war.

These are battles designed in backrooms and boardrooms, but played out on the streets of Israel and Lebanon. As North Americans, we’re familiar with the concept of war, but foreign to its realities – a reality that’s all too present for too many of our counterparts throughout the Middle East and in other places around the world.

Absence doesn’t just make the heart grow fonder – it smoothes out the rough edges and romanticizes things. Living in Canada, we’re so far removed from the horror of any conflict. A car backfires and we jump – for many in other less-stable countries, the sound of gunfire is part of the ambient soundtrack of their lives.

How can we relate? How do I, who feels safe in all parts of this wonderful country of ours, empathize with people who live with the knowledge that today could be their last day – that their lives could be cut short by a rogue missile, a suicide bomber, or some other implement of destruction deployed by unseen leaders standing at the back lines of the conflict. The front isn’t a line on the map – it’s a real area that can, at times, run through a village street or residential neighbourhood.

I have never had to evacuate my home. The closest thing to a hardship we endured was living through the Ice Storm in Montreal. But even then we were lucky in that we didn’t lose power. We welcomed some friends into our home as they lost power, but it was more of a festive atmosphere filled with wonder than anything resembling fear.

How am I to relate to our friends who will be packing up a few belongings for a ship that will bear them to a strange land, until they can be flown back to Canada? When we see them in Montreal, where they once lived, it will seem like old times, not war time.

What must it feel like to leave your home, not knowing whether or not you’ll return – or even whether there will be anything to return to? How does one deal with the waiting for a passage to safety – the worry that anything can happen in a day?

The fact is that we don’t live in a country that’s torn asunder by war. Our petty political and social squabbles pale in comparison to the real-life drama that’s playing out overseas, not just in Lebanon and Israel, but also in Iraq, Afghanistan, and countless other strife-ridden regions. But each and every one of us can step outside our homes and feel safe that missiles, bullets, and bombs aren’t going to be a part of our Canadian experience. In fact, the idea is completely foreign to us.

A popular target for those who like to assign blame is that the media, whether it be video games, television, or film, is responsible for our desensitization towards war and violence. However, that’s wrong. It isn’t overexposure to war, but rather an underexposure to its reality that dulls our emotional response. Watching a firefight on TV will not send shivers up your spine and send you cowering in fear like being physically caught in the cross fire.

It’s hard to feel with the appropriate depth of feeling without relevant experience. Before I would watch televised vehicle accidents with nary a flinch. But now, over three years after a horrific head-on collision, I recoil involuntarily to a screech of tires or the sound of popping glass. And televised representations of accidents bring back the sights, sounds, feelings, and smells of that day behind the wheel.

We can be told fire is hot, but it doesn’t register until we get burned. Pain is a concept that can only be measured by experience. Happiness, joy, excitement can only be appreciated once they’ve been experienced — and so too is fear.

As much as I want to empathize with the innocents who are plagued by the fear and terror that war brings, the fact is that I’m deliriously happy that I can’t. And that’s one deficiency, as Canadians, we should be forever grateful for having.

The price for empathy is experience – and that’s a cost I’m not willing to bear.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Familiar Path Leads to Dead End

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By Jason Menard

Where’s the public outcry? Where’s the mass condemnations? Or does Israel get a free pass when it comes to international relations.

Interesting how a country that’s in the process of developing nuclear capabilities, like North Korea, is met with swift and decisive condemnation and American sabre-rattling for just lobbing a few missiles, based on antiquated technology, into the ocean.

Yet Israel, a country with nuclear capabilities, is in the process of bombarding a sovereign neighbouring country as I type. In fact, our Prime Minister has gone on record supporting Israel’s actions, stating that questions regarding whether Israel has used excessive force are just questions of nuance.

I’m sorry, missiles landing on public property aren’t matters of nuance. They’re pretty much black and white – oh, and red from the innocent blood that inevitably gets spilled from actions of this sort.

South of the border, the Americans have used their veto power in the very United Nations that they’ve worked so hard to discredit to squelch an Arab-backed resolution condemning Israel for a disproportionate use of force, and which would have called for Israel to halt its offensive.

Navigating through the murky waters of Middle East politics is a treacherous endeavour at best. Criticism of Israel is often cast as anti-Semitism, regardless of whether or not the criticism is valid, reasoned, and substantiated. On the other side, it’s hard to feel sympathy for a people – the Palestinians – who choose as their elected representatives parties built upon terror and violence.

In fact, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one that many North American prefer to turn a blind towards. There are so many issues, so much history, and so much misinformation out there that the average person feels overwhelmed by the magnitude of this conflict.

For me, the best way to look at the issue is to acknowledge that both sides are right and both sides are wrong at the same time. Israelis have a right to defend their homeland in an area where many of its neighbours would like nothing more than to wipe her off the map. On the other side, Palestinians have a right to feel slighted by an international community that appropriated their land to create the nation of Israel. Both groups have valid claims to the territory, and neither can be considered wrong in their desires.

However, both sides can be considered wrong in the means they use to reach their desired ends. Kidnappings, terror, and launching of missiles that kill civilians and destroy civic infrastructure are tactics that only serve to further inflame the conflict, not work towards a solution.

After all, might doesn’t necessarily make right.

So what is the solution? How do we solve the conflict? How do you answer a question that seemingly has no answer amenable to either side? I don’t have the answer – and it certainly doesn’t seem that the powers-that-be in the region do either?

But what I, and many others around the world, can agree on is that this type of violence is not the answer. It’s inevitable that, no matter how well-intended or well-targeted the strikes may be, civilians will be the ones that bear the brunt of the attack’s force. By attacking Lebanon’s airport and civic infrastructure, it’s not Hezbollah that gets hurt – it’s the average Lebanese citizen who is simply trying to make do on a day-to-day basis.

Conversely, while suicide bombers are rampant in the Middle East, it’s rarely the political movers and shakers who are targeted, but rather the average citizen that’s trying to live a life with a semblance of normalcy, in spite of the conflict.

Whether you’re a supporter of Israel or Palestine, I think all can agree that there has to be a better solution. In the end, we’re not supporting an ideal or a nation – we’re supporting the people who are represented by those concepts. And people aren’t concepts – they’re living, breathing, entities who are just like us, regardless of their political or religious leanings.

Well, they’re living and breathing up until the point when they become collateral damage.

In the end, I can’t say that I’m on the Israeli or the Palestinian side of the debate. In fact, the only side I’m on is that of the people on both sides of the border who, like me, are just trying to live their lives. Unlike me, though, they have to do it under the daily threat of violence, terror, and the potential for paying the ultimate price for the folly of their leaders.

At this point, we don’t have the answer. But while there’s no road map to resolution, it’s safe to say that this road of violence has been well-travelled. And we’ve seen where it leads, time and time again – a dead end.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

Marshall Plan Needs a Second Chance

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By Jason Menard

In a game filled with second, third, and even fourth chances, let’s hope that deposed Hamilton Tiger-Cats head coach Greg Marshall gets another shot at the big time sooner rather than later. After all, his success, or lack thereof, will go a long way in determining whether a Canuck will take the reins of a Canadian squad in our nation’s football league.

In replacing Marshall, at least in the interim, with a hall-of-fame legend in Ron Lancaster, the Tiger-Cats gave up on the great Canadian experiment – and may put the idea of a Canadian coach back on the sidelines for the foreseeable future.

Marshall worked his way up the ranks, serving as an assistant for the powerhouse University of Western Ontario Mustangs football squad before getting the chance to helm his own ship with the McMaster Marauders. It was there that Marshall proved his coaching prowess, taking the Hamilton squad from also-ran status to perennial power – usurping his former employer in the process.

Back in 2004, the Tiger-Cats took a flyer on a coach who had proven himself in the Canadian collegiate ranks and they were rewarded with a Coach-of-the-Year performance as Marshall led the Tabbies to a 9-8-1 record. Unfortunately, last year didn’t go as well as the Tiger-Cats fumbled their way to a 5-13-0 record. And this year wasn’t looking much better as the boys from Hamilton were staring up at a goose egg in the win column after four games.

There are few better representative of the Canadian game than Greg Marshall. The boy from Guelph enjoyed a stellar career with Western, winning the Hec Creighton trophy in 1980 as the league’s outstanding player. Marshall graduated to the Edmonton Eskimos, earning a Grey Cup as a player, before returning to the Forest City and joining the Mustangs’ coaching ranks. There he won a pair of Vanier Cups before leaving for McMaster and padding his resume with four consecutive Yates Cup championships, representing Ontario collegiate supremacy, before becoming the first coach to make the jump directly from the Canadian university ranks to a CFL head coaching gig.

But that dream rapidly turned into a nightmare. Poor personnel decisions play a part, but the fact of the matter is that Marshall, despite his early promise, wasn’t able to get things done. And now he finds himself unemployed – although presumably not for long – and Canadian coaching prospects find themselves at a crossroads in the wake of Marshall’s dismissal.

The pervasive view is that Canadian coaching staffs are inferior to those south of the border. While Canadian players are welcomed along the offensive and defensive lines in the CFL, the ranks of skill position players are dominated by American imports. Essentially, Canadians are second-class citizens in their own game.

Marshall had a chance to change that perception as coach of the Tiger-Cats. As a home-grown talent, Marshall had the opportunity to open the doors a crack for future coaching prospects in the CIS. Had he succeeded in his two-plus years patrolling the sidelines, then more attention would be paid to those pacing the sidelines in the Canadian collegiate ranks.

After all, there’s no reason that Canadian coaches can’t make the grade. The sidelines are the ideal leveling field, as physicality isn’t the key ingredient for success – intelligence, strategy, and creativity are. Nationality doesn’t define one’s intellect, so Canadian coaches should have a chance.

The only thing holding Canadians back from penetrating the coaching ranks is credibility. Many of the CFL’s players have come from Division 1-A schools, coached by legends in the football universe, and they may not react well to coming north of the border and being coached by some Canuck. Like it or not, football is largely an American-driven game, and respect for Canadians must be earned – it’s not given as it is for a U.S.-born coach.

That’s Marshall’s true test: to show that a Canadian can make it on the biggest stage that our national league has to offer; to prove that a local product can command the respect and passion of a team and direct it to the playoffs. But to do that he needs another chance. Although he’s been kicked to the curb by one squad, to open doors for others to follow through, Marshall has to get back up and start knocking.

The one advantage that Marshall has is that the CFL, like most professional sporting leagues, is one based on recycling. Rather than give an unproven young buck a chance, most owners and General Managers are content to believe that somebody else’s problem can be their salvation – after all, recent Canadian citizen Don Matthews has been with six CFL squads and only is the CFL’s all-time regular season win leader.

It’s unfair to expect one person to shoulder the burden for an entire Canadian coaching industry, but Marshall’s shown that, as a player and a coach, he’s been able to successfully carry the ball for his franchise. And there’s no reason to expect he won’t do so again – as long as he gets a chance.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved

An Immunity to World Cup Fever

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By Jason Menard

With the World Cup final upon us and dozens of games in the books, I can comfortably state one thing – soccer fever may be rampant, but try as I might, I appear to be immune to its effects.

I have watched several of the World Cup contests to date. Sorry, let me change that. I have attempted to watch several of the World Cup contests and I have been successful at enduring several consecutive minutes of action on a semi-regular basis.

Note I said enduring, not enjoying.

I have seen great feats of individual skill. I have viewed displays of dexterity and footwork that are so beyond my ability to perform that I stumbled off the couch just thinking about how they were done.

I have seen crisp and beautiful displays of passing and teamwork. I have witnessed elation and utter dejection.

And still I don’t care.

In addition to all of that, I’ve seen long stretches of nothing. Back and forth play in the midfield with nothing resembling a chance. I’ve heard announcers work themselves into an apoplectic lather praising a shot that ended up 13 rows in the stands. I’ve seen grown men drop to the ground like they were shot by a sniper, rolling around in apparent death throes after being gently brushed by an opposing defender.

It’s safe to say I’ve seen the best and the worst that soccer has to offer. And still it doesn’t move me.

The sad thing is that I really, really wanted to be affected by this sport. After all, this is not just a game – it’s a veritable religion for millions, if not billions, of people all around the world. There has to be a reason that this sport incites such a passion – I just can’t find it. Try as I might.

I have posed this question to others and, inevitably, I receive the answer, “Well, you’re Canadian.” This coming from second and third-generation Canadians themselves who suddenly have felt the tug of the motherland’s apron strings. Those same second and third-generation people are ignoring the travails of the Italian team and wrapping themselves in the red and white when Olympic hockey is on. But I digress.

Apparently soccer is a birthright and if you’re not born into the culture, then you can’t appreciate the sport. And there are two problems with that. One, I was somewhat born into the culture. My grandfather played soccer and was an avid fan. Secondly, if that truly is the case, then soccer has a huge marketing and branding problem and will probably never penetrate the North American market.

Successful sports continue to grow and attract new fans. The survival of a sport is based upon its appeal to a wide variety of sports enthusiasts. I wasn’t born into a football culture. I watched the CFL with varying degrees of interest, but I didn’t consider myself passionate about the sport. Now I do. I learned to love it. I quickly became enamoured with its intricacies and ground-level challenges. And, for a long-time hockey fan, I learned to love a sport played on grass almost as much as the one played on ice.

So why couldn’t I learn to love soccer? There’s no field on my birth certificate that indicates which sports I’m genetically or ethnically predisposed to, and I enjoy all sorts of sports – those that I was brought up with and those that I acquired a taste for later. So why is soccer different? Or are the fans simply elitist?

Even playing the sport doesn’t necessarily incite a long-term passion for the game. Since the 1970s we’ve heard how soccer is the Next Big Thing in Canada. Generations of Canadian youth have taken to the pitch to engage in a low-cost alternative to hockey and baseball. They’ve played the game and, by all rights, should be fans of the game on the professional level. But that’s just not the case. Most kids aren’t watching Premier League soccer on their off hours. They’re enamoured with the same sports: hockey, basketball, baseball, and football.

In the end, I’ll just have to face the fact that I’m not a soccer fan and never will be. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I still feel that there’s a big party out there – I just don’t understand what the celebration’s about.

Of course, every four years I’ll get another invitation to the party – but I don’t know how willing I’ll be to attend the festivities in the future.

2006© Menard Communications – Jason Menard All Rights Reserved