Page 89 - Free the Idea Monkey

Leaders know how to laugh at themselves. Show us a person
who can stand up in front of his team and say, “Call me stupid, but
I have no idea how to do this,” and we will show you a person with
great leadership potential. Humble leaders create cultures that don’t
take themselves too seriously, cultures willing to take risks, cultures
capable of creating and supporting a greater number of ideas.

GENERAL SILLINESS
We don’t just talk about silliness.

We live it. We have the ping pong
table; we have a stage with a complete
set of rock band equipment ready to go.
In fact, one of the highest compliments we ever received was being
kindly called “daddy day care” by one of our team member’s kids.

As you can imagine, Maddock Douglas has a history of memorable
events designed to loosen people up, not take ourselves so seriously,
and, uh, have fun at work. For the sake of inspiration as well as the
betterment of idea circles everywhere, I’ll share a few of my favorites:

The Unmotivational Speaker
We assembled our entire company for a “full-day” meeting to

hear from a “World Famous Motivational Speaker.” The speaker was
actually John Wartinbee, the senior vice president of a local bank.
John is a naturally funny guy who was pushing 70. My only instruc-
tions to John: “Be the most ridiculously bad motivational speaker
you can be. Leave it all in the room.” So for over an hour, our folks
looked nervously at the partners in the company as John:

• called us the wrong names; Wes was “Russ,” Mike was “Mack” ...
• looked at the watch on his left hand and said he was running

incredibly late so he had to pick things up, then, moments
later, looked at the watch on his right hand that would cause
him to say he was way ahead of schedule.
• quoted convicted felons from books telling us to “think about
that, and try to live your life that way.”

74 L A U G H A L I T T L E , I N N O V A T E A L O T