The Business Leader Association Handbook (BLAH) famously divided employees of the entire world into 2 types – those who can talk comfortably about things they have no idea about (the talker) and those who can’t (the doer). According to the Association, talkers are generally better for the managerial positions because “the unlimited supply of the seemingly useless speech is, in some rare cases, able to disorient the minds of their customers, and even more likely, able to trick the minds of their own management.”
Interestingly, due to their intrinsic inability to listen and observe, talkers are more likely to be attracted to their own kind, thus gradually and inevitably turning the whole management into a tons of colorful PowerPoints. “The expansion of talkers in the management positions around the globe”, as the Handbook pointed out in its 2011 Edition, “drastically expedited the development of Voice of Internet Protocol, which in turn made it financially even more possible to convert more talkers into managers”. (trivia of the day: the 2011 Edition is probably the second most sought-after copy throughout the history of BLAH publication, second only to the 2014 Edition which featured Sam Nablah as the new Macrosoft CEO on its cover)
While most of the inspired talker-to-be have to spend many years of their professional career perfecting their skills, some are simply born with it. The best talker I’ve personally worked with was so good at it that when he talks, his words form an invisible bubble which shelled him not only from the outside world but also from himself. He only needed 1 or 2 minutes to warm himself up before becoming completely free from any technical, commercial, physical and mathematical constraints to do business with. The only time I needed to wake him up was when we’re about to commit to things illegal.
With him, it had been extremely efficient for the company to pin-point to that 1% of the “target customer”, who are almost certainly another group of talkers and, with whom we could easily secure at least 20 more conference calls in the next 3 months without actually doing anything. That’s when I started to believe the Handbook, the VoIP technology that many of us take for granted nowadays, had been indeed fostered by the unsung talkers.
It was quite sad that 2 years later he chose to leave us to join a bigger MNC after realising that our company plans only to do business on Earth. I can’t imagine how disappointing he must have felt.
GNAIX的巢穴 