Retreat, Indeed

Blake, Vanessa, and I had just finished our spontaneity exercise at the corporate retreat. It was day one of the retreat, and the moderator…trainer…guru, hell, whatever she was, had us all in groups of three at separate tables. For the first 90 minutes of the morning, she’d coached us all on Pivot Power, full of corporate-speak use of “pivot” and how capable executives are good at pivoting, how the best companies can pivot, how being able to pivot strategically can make or break a company, and on and on and on.

Bored as I usually am at these things, I had asked at one point how what she was talking about was any different from good ol’ contingency theory that we all learned in MBA school decades ago and why mere “flexibility” or “adaptability” wouldn’t work just as well as a label. Clearly, I’d stuck my foot in it based on the way she blushed and glared at me, but half of my fellow retreat victims congratulated me on daring to speak up. Well, not at the moment, they didn’t; they politely waited until the first half-hour break. I mean, few of my colleagues are as rude as I am.

Encouraged, I spent the last 20 minutes of the break quickly putting together a betting pool sheet for how many minutes into the remainder of the crap on pivoting would elapse before she connected “pivot” to “resiliency,” another hotly chic business-babble word making the rounds of trade magazines, conferences and training courses, and—after the typical two- to three-year delay—academic research. Madelynn Bennis from our Montreal office won the betting pool, raking in $390. She’d bought the squares for 35 minutes, 50 minutes, and 60 minutes for the required $5 each, and the moderator delivered up “resiliency” at 37 minutes into the segment.

Anyway, now it was afternoon, and we were all predictably logy from the lunch break, and the moderator had droned on about spontaneity’s role in resiliency for about an hour. Then she had us randomly pick numbers from 1 to 5 on these little slips in a green, plastic bowler hat from some Mardi Gras drunkfest. Shining five prompts on the overhead display, she assigned us the task of writing a story about the prompt matching our drawn number in the next 30 minutes, promising fun with the stories after the time expired.

Sounds of mad keying on tablets and laptop computers filled the air for the half-hour, interspersed with giggles and a few comments like “what a load of crap” and “Jones, this is exactly how I write your annual performance review.” The time expired, and each table’s members were directed to swap and read each other’s stories. I handed my tablet to my right for Vanessa’s entertainment, and Blake handed me his. Mind you, Blake is our systems and information director, a guy as ultra-tech nerdy as anyone could ever imagine and, sadly, never, ever destined to become chief information officer at our firm or any other firm because, well, communication just isn’t his thing.

Blake’s prompt was “Write a story about the best way this afternoon’s session could end.” I shouldn’t have been surprised, really, when I found that Blake had written paragraphs—paragraphs!—on how the day would be a winner if only everyone in the room could be taught how to use Microsoft Excel to generate their random pick among the five prompts still shining on the screen. After criticizing the whole drawing-from-the-hat method as inherently illegitimate due to no one having actually seen the number slips of paper created, he launched into advocating “the power of technology” (his words, not mine) for the random assignment of story prompts, explaining in excruciating detail how Excel’s “RANDBETWEEN” function could instantly do the job, explaining why the command would be RANDBETWEEN(1,5) and not RANDBETWEEN(0,5) because the formula might generate zero and zero wasn’t a valid choice and user confusion must be minimized with correct application of the technology and on and on and on and ohmygodIwantedtoscreamandbarfbutIdidn’t. No, I politely smiled to Blake and said, “Neat!” as cheerfully as I could feign. Blake smiled weakly to me, looking oddly nervous or something, and murmured, “Thanks.”

We rotated devices again to read the other person’s story in our group of three, and Vanessa said in a low voice, “Jim, please don’t get the wrong idea. I was just trying to be funny. I couldn’t think of anything…” Her voice trailed off as I read her prompt (“Write a story about what a really lousy boss is like”), and I immediately realized why Blake was acting so oddly. I spent several minutes reading exactly how much Vanessa despised working with me in headquarters marketing and how, if anyone wanted to know just how horrifically awful a boss could be, they should simply contemplate…me! Oh, it was delightful. My arrogance. My devotion to last decade’s methods. My jowly chin (yes, my jowly chin; everything was fair game!). My boring stories about how awesome my daughter and her husband are. My bragging about my beach house and making everyone see the latest photographs from my oceanfront deck. My breath. My accent. My balding. My ties and shoes. Positively everything about me was absolutely, positively, entirely repugnant.

I finished, handed back her device to her, and simply said to her and Blake, “Well, I guess she nailed me, right? Good job, Vanessa.” Vanessa began sputtering apologies and Blake assured me he didn’t read the whole thing, and it was all very awkward until the moderator called out, “OK, gang, now you’ve all read each other’s spontaneous stories. We’ll go around the room now and have one person from each table summarize their story and describe how spontaneity came into play in writing it. Just to control for power effects, the senior executive or manager at each table cannot speak. Let’s let more junior members speak, OK?”

Blake, Vanessa, and I just stared at each other. Vanessa’s eyes brimmed with tears while Blake’s darted back and forth between her and me. Blake stammered, “Well, it’s either her or me, and I doubt that the room wants to hear mine.”

I squeezed Blake’s wrist and said, “Oh, I definitely agree, Blake. No, we need Vanessa to share for our table. Right, Vanessa?”