From the New Yorker
The first time I saw this cartoon I fell in love with it. So much so that I went out of pocket to license it from the New Yorker for this course (don’t worry it wasn’t that expensive). For me it captures the true essence of the corporate life – the excitement, belief and addiction. The blindness too.
How does the blindness happen? Well the first thing to understand is that it’s not exactly blindness.
In the boardroom the phrases can come at you fast. “Best Interests of the Company”. “Best Interests of the Shareholders”. “Principles of Good Governance”. “Best Practices”. And yes, “Shareholder Value”. And yes, all the words always sound capitalized – that’s why they appear that way here.
You take it all in and you know somewhere in your addled brain they all probably just mean whatever will put two extra cents in the jeans of the speaker. But you can’t prove motive – and never on the time frame you actually have.
Kurt Vonnegut once said “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
jon
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