Jeff Angus after describing catcher Mike Piazza talking to Tom Candiotti entirely in the voice of Beavis of Beavis & Butthead: “Big organizations usually hate contributors who act like Piazza. What they fail to understand is that that part of his personality is inseparable from the part they like -- as with any very successful hitter, he's going to make an out over 60% of the time, and so he chooses to make a joke out of adversity to maintain an even keel for himself. Here's he's trying to do the same for Candiotti. I've attended evaluation sessions with clients where the supervisor said something like, "Mike, we really like the way you contribute here, but you have to stop being such a clown". In four out of five cases, the day their employee stopped being a clown would be the day his contribution would go down. ΒΆ Co-workers who both perform and try to help are people perform better are assets.”
Being a goof is a big part of my offline personality and helps keep my stress level at a manageable level. I've been able to "get away" with it, because I've only ever worked for organizations of 20 people or less, so everybody gets to know me and I get to know everybody, and so personality expectations form quickly. I hope I can say I've been able to be a goof and still perform at work, and if not, then because of the small size of the companies and organizations, performing or not performing is visible to everybody and everybody is in a position to point it out and give me a push (or tell me to catch on sleep, as the case may be), which is the way I want it.
What Jeff describes, that is, large organizations not really understanding the need for the office clown to be silly but also make a positive difference, turns me further off from large organizations in general.
Typographical error!
"Co-workers who both perform and try to help are people perform better are assets."
I can sort of piece together what that's trying to say...
And it always seemed strange to me that being a clown was synonymous with being unprofessional - since when is professionalism dour? Shouldn't getting things done and getting along with others be the benchmarks? I guess it's easy to pigeonhole the guy who wears a particular suit and never smiles, but evaluating somebody's actual contribution takes effort.
Ah you're right. Since it's a direct quote, I'll correct it only if a corrrection appears in the original.
And you're also right about the disproportionate psychological response towards what looks like a contributor and what is actually a contributor. It was the main point about the book Moneyball, which while it looks like a book about baseball, is actually a book about looking at actual numbers of performance in evaluating an employee.
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