Social Commentary - Commissioned

East Room Blog JULY 2023

WE’VE GOT BEER AND PIZZA

Workplace perks have come a long way since 1636 when the then township of Plymouth, Massachusetts created a pension plan for injured colonists. Now, Silicon Valley leads the way in offering the world’s most extravagant incentives – $500 weekly draws, ten tonnes of snow to play in, office slip ‘n’ slides, a custom painting of yourself as a dragon slayer, on-site massages, car washes, live concerts, and everything in-between. Even small upstarts are getting on-board with treats like ping-pong tables and pizza nights. But when start-ups rely too heavily on toys and home comforts, it could be a sign they’re missing the foundation of a solid company culture, begging the question: how did perks get so out of hand?

Is the Road to Hell Paved in Pizza?

Generally, start-ups are guided by a small team of directors or founders who create a work culture based on their personalities and professional values. In the same way a brand’s business strategy acts as a roadmap helping the company to reach its vision, work culture is a guide for team members, demonstrating both personal and professional practises that support the brand’s values and image. Unfortunately, executives often put the creation of a positive, and sustainable, culture on the backburner until problems or losses force them to make a shift. This is likely because of the time and effort involved in defining and creating a company-specific culture from the outset. But regardless, most founders know that workplace culture is important, and can impact their success. Even if a start-up attracts valuable talent, a toxic (or non-existent) workplace culture will likely increase the chance of high employee turnover, decreased motivation, and less than ideal financial results.

East Room Blog Feb 2024

A MACHINE THAT CAN

In November 2022, people working in sectors ranging from tech to marketing to education were suddenly able to write any genre or length of text using only a few short prompts. The game-changing technology is, of course, ChatGPT, created by Open AI, an Artificial Intelligence and research company. Described as a “natural” language tool, ChatGPT allows people to have “human-like” conversations with chatbots, answer questions, create or summarize text and write code.

Fittingly, many people are using ChatGPT as they would a human assistant. Some use it to avoid the drudgery of email writing, maintaining databases or creating repetitive code. Some see ChatGPT as a “thinking” companion that can expertly summarize complex texts, generate ideas or create business plans. It’s true, many of ChatGPT’s “abilities” feel like magic, in particular its ability to increase the ever-monetized Productivity and Efficiency. But according to Charlie Warzel writing for The Atlantic, ChatGPT “… has upended or outright killed high-school and college essay writing and thoroughly scrambled the brains of academics… it has flooded online marketplaces with computer-generated slop… [it’s] a way for machines to leech the remaining humanity out of our jobs.” The tool does suggest a tech breakthrough, one that has (re)opened heated debates about the necessity of human-led work in the present and the future.

east room blog oct 2023

POWERPOINTS, POST-ITS AND DISASTER

In 2003 people were freaking out about the life-changing impact of… Microsoft PowerPoint. As with the printing press, radio, TV, etc., many believed that PowerPoint would make us boring, sales-y, or “rot our brains”. On February 1st of the same year, the space shuttle Columbia prepared for re-entry into Earth. But something went wrong, and it disintegrated 16 minutes before landing. The cause of the disaster was declared by the NASA Accident Investigation Board as a piece of insulating foam that broke loose and damaged the shuttle’s left wing during lift-off. However, the report indicated another more surprising malefactor. A PowerPoint presentation. Engineers knew about the wing damage before the shuttle attempted re-entry, and drastically underestimated its impact. Why? Their analysis was based on a series of overstuffed PowerPoint (PP) slideshows. According to the NASA Report, “It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation...” Following Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan’s theory “the medium is the message”, the NASA PowerPoint presentation became the message itself, camouflaging information as less important than it was. Following the Columbia disaster, data visualization expert Edward Tufte reviewed NASA’s slides and commented that PP supports “breaking up narratives and data into … minimal fragments,” “a preoccupation with format not content,” and “a smirky commercialism that turns information into a sales pitch.” The consequence of foam hitting a shuttle wing was buried under bullet points, well-placed images, and transition effects.