Saturday–”The Folly of Fools is Deception”

Off

My first vacation since beginning my new job. Of course, I was off for 10 months before starting this job so I can’t say I haven’t had a few days off over the last year.

212 Degrees 

The president of the college where I work has launched an email campaign titled 212 Degrees. Nothing to introduce this campaign, no statement of purpose, no meeting in the auditorium to get it started. Rather, one day we have no emails titled 212 Degrees and the next day we did.  And on and on since then.

So, what is this thing?

Looking through Internet resources I find it to be one of these management motivation schemes created by a couple of entrepreneurs and sold to a bunch of corporate management types as a, you know, pre-packaged  program guaranteed to empower employees without having to really do anything. Here is an example of their copy:

 

One extra degree can make all the difference

At 211 degrees, water is hot. At 212 degrees, it boils.
And with boiling water, comes steam. And with steam, you can power a train.

One extra degree = Exponential results

Join hundreds of thousands of people around the world now being inspired by 212 to give more 
and, ultimately, enjoy more.

 

Well, this doesn’t seem so bad. All good things: try harder and get better results.

What Else?

There’s stuff to buy, naturally. Books and decals for a certain price

Books for $12.95, the video for $200, pullovers for $39, gear bags for $23.  Takes gear to get to 212 degrees. If you are not sure of where to go with this you can call Tina at this merchandising site    for “tips on creating a 212 culture.”

Gosh, is that all it takes — a couple of tips from a salesperson?  

The Upshot

Evidently our campus president attended one of these merchandising events and decided to change our culture by sending out emails.  They consist of a couple of personal words and then a quote or two. Anchoring the emails is this:

“We can do no great things — only small things with great love.”

Mother Theresa

So what is wrong with this? First of all, this isn’t how Mother Teresa spells her name. OK. anything else?  Searching legitimate Teresa sites the quote attributed to Mother Teresa can’t be found. I found that many of the quotes the president uses in her 212 degree emails can’t be found in the books of those quoted.

Conclusion

Succumbing to the promise of effortless culture climate change, our president thinks casual and careless emails can do what legions of experts usually cannot pull off — effectively changing the culture of an organization. Even worse, her message transmits precisely the opposite message she intended. She spends a couple of minutes trolling the internet for quotes that seem apt but actually are bogus. She passes them off as quotes from writers she knows. But she knows them not at all since she misattributes quotes from them. 

So she touts going the extra mile to make a difference (only one extra degree to get the water boiling) but takes the easiest path possible to distribute this message.

While I am only tangentially associated with this institution I find this effort wan  and terribly dishonest.  Didn’t expect that in an academic institution.

 

Proverbs 14:8

The wisdom of the prudent is to give thought to their ways, 
       but the folly of fools is deception.