What A Teddy Bear Hostage Can Teach You About Corporate Culture
Last week, the writers behind Syfy’s Eureka went public on their blog about a bizarre hostage situation that had been going on in their office. Between random notes glued together with letters cut from magazines and threats of teddy bear torture, the Eureka staff managed to craft together a nearly perfect post illuminating the kind of corporate culture they have in their office.
As with many such situations, this one began with a puzzle – literally. See, the Eureka writers had taken to doing jigsaw puzzles when they needed to think about something else besides writing. While attempting a particularly daunting 1,500 piece map of the night sky, they discovered that a key piece, part of the galactic equator, had been kidnapped. This set in motion a sordid tale that involves both sides taking hostages – on one side, the aforementioned puzzle piece. On the other, two teddy bears that were blindfolded and threatened with execution unless the piece was returned.
The whole thing is documented on their blog, complete with pictures of the escalating ransom notes, and it’s worth a read, if only for a laugh. What I find most entertaining about this, though, is that it makes a pretty clear statement about their office culture without ever specifically talking about it.
Many people distrust declaratory statements about a company’s culture made by the company itself and, as it turns out, with good reason. According to much academic research, people tend to be pretty bad self-evaluators, often being more forgiving in their assessments of their own personalities. Discrepancies between self-perception and others’ perceptions are nothing new and psychological research has been discussing this for almost half a century. There’s even research specifically on self-presentational theory (that is, how we talk about ourselves) that suggests we present ourselves in ways designed to create a favorable impression and avoid looking foolish or inconsistent.
Admitting that there has been a standoff between two sects on your staff, one of which held a puzzle piece ransom and the other threatening harm to stuffed animals, may not seem to fit with that. I don’t know many public relations professionals that would recommend going public with the fact that your staff has been holding a toy hostage.
But maybe they should be doing that, at leas sometimest. Any reader of the Eureka blog has a pretty clear picture of how much fun it is to work there, in a way that a straight missive about the ideals they exemplify would have never communicated. And at least someone got to write, “We will torture tools last puzzle piece. No mercy.”
(Via the great Warren Ellis)
Tags: blogging, corporate culture, Social Media
This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 at 2:26 pm and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
