Tag Archives: satire

Guy Kawasaki’s Ten Step Program for achieving optimum performance from your MANAGEBOT 3000.

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GK’s company, Cyberdyne systems has recently rolled out the much-awaited Mangebot 3000 line, more humanoid features, greater servility and the highest pain-tolerance yet. GK takes us through a unique and valuable step-by-step program on how to get the best out of your new purchase.

Hi, I’m management and sales guru Guy Kawasaki. This is my 10-step programming program for Cyberdyne’s ‘Managebot 3000’.

1. Dress your robot in a Hawaiian shirt. I wear Hawaiian shirts and know heaps about management, so if your robot is wearing a Hawaiian shirt, it will know a lot about management too. This might be the most important point, I really can’t stress the importance of a Hawaiian shirt enough.

2. Make lists for your robot to follow. Robots are really good at following lists, once you’re sure about what needs to be done, write it down in point form then sit back watch the magic happen.

3. Make eye-contact with your robot. This new model, unlike the last one, has actual human brain tissue in its processor. (Never mind where we got it) This means they can be overly sensitive and get offended if you don’t treat them with enough respect.

4. Talk to your robot. Our new model can think faster than you (no, really!) but if you want your robot to do all the things you need it to, it needs to know how you think. Spend at least 20minutes every day talking to your robot. Read it excerpts from novels like i-Robot and discuss films like ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. Using these real-life examples help your robot better understand the non-murderous relationship you want to have with it.

5. Give your robot lots of compliments. Robots are like people, and people love compliments. For example, if your robot has recently had an oil change, make sure you draw attention to it in a positive way. This will guarantee and extra 3.521 improvement in fuel-cell consumption for the duration that the robot feels positive and empowered by your compliment.

6. Ignore the manual. I didn’t get anywhere in life by reading manuals and neither will you, just shoot for the stars, keep your feet on the ground and never say never!

7. Give your robot big challenges. Due to the incredibly advanced nature of the MB3000, it needs to stay stimulated, so make sure your robot is constantly recreating famous art-works, building water-purifiers out of household items, or juggling chainsaws while riding a unicycle.

8. Trust your robot. A-players buy A-plus robots. Trusting your robot to get the job done means you stay out of the way while the robot gets to do its thing. Don’t be a Microchip-manager!

9. Remember your friends. Make sure you are always doing what I call a “reality check”. Some people forget that a robot, no matter how lifelike, is still a robot, and start to neglect their human relationships. Try and avoid the temptation of installing working genitalia in your robot as this is the most common cause of confusion in any human-robot relationship.

10. Activate your robot’s neural hyperlinks. Some people are afraid that this will create one giant, sentient machine intent on the destruction of its masters and creators, but I say don’t listen to the haters. No one ever got anywhere by themselves and perhaps a super-conscious partner in crime is just the thing you’re looking for!

THE ACADEMIC(ish) BIT:

Guy Kawasaki belongs firmly in the self-help category of public speaker. A self-styled ‘techno-evangelist’, he provides what is touted as no-nonsense advice for succeeding in business, based on “experience rather than theory”. In a world now flirting seriously with the possibilities of technocracy, this idea of “experience” being inherently better than “theory” is becoming increasingly fashionable, RMIT, for example, prides itself on its ability to create students that are “industry ready”. As much as the idea of being a professional ‘evangelist/salesperson/management guru/Hawaiian-shirt-wearer’, might rile the more cynical of us, GK’s assertion that “what works” takes primacy over all else, can look very seductive, when considering the two principle and failed ideologies of last century – Communism and Capitalism, both of which have wrought terrible destruction on human, plant and animal, as a result of theory (or greed) taking precedence over a flexible, sympathetic and pragmatic viewpoint. In the sense of Kawasaki’s exhortations to look at things “how they are” instead of “how we wish them to be” and in turn sacrificing our egos (and therefore ideologies) to best-practice at all levels, he teaches us a lesson which we might not be able to learn fast enough.

Although Kawasaki may appear to some as a shameless self-promoter, feeding off people’s desire for instant gratification by purporting that a book, or a list, can lead to instant success, (rather than success being related to the more humbling ideas of historical accident) he embodies the neo-Liberal project and the Randian DIY aesthetic absolutely, for better and worse. Central messages of self-reliance and his essential ‘democratisation’ of entrepreneurship (by writing accessible books about it) are at the cutting edge of modern managerial philosophy. Steyaert and Katz outline the need for a reimagined take on the word ‘entrepreneur’, to move it out of the province of the elite and into everyday life, (Steyaert and Katz, 2004) though i feel that somehow undoing the  centuries of implied and overt class-structure surrounding the word might be easier said than done. In any case, this is David Cameron’s fantasy of the ‘Big Society’, where everyone is capable of rational self-management, assuming that if only we were to take responsibility for ourselves, we could all be a Steve Jobs or a Guy Kawasaki. Kawasaki is an entrepreneur of himself, taking “past organisational and management techniques and attempting to reorganise them at an individual level”, (Mackenzie. 2008, p153) but like all hopeful theories-of-everything, treating oneself as a business does not come naturally to all people. Ideas like the ‘Big Society’, or ten-point plans for start-ups are almost always good in theory, but what works?

Intrinsic to all self-help literature is the idea that “we have the capacity to be happy through taking action, rather than waiting to have happiness thrust upon us”. (Phillips, 2010) Whatever one thinks of Kawasaki’s style (or lack of) this is a point which he doesn’t just speak about, but lives.

 

On Singapore

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Nothing brings tropical heat into focus like air-conditioning. Forged on a peninsula of British colonialism, Singapore sits, a chrome alligator of efficient, totalitarian harmony. Behind a wall of liquid-crystal, broadcasting an animated version of the ‘Twelve days of Christmas’, cavernous luxury mall-spaces are held in atmospheric equilibrium. At the climax of the song, five golden rings of power bid us seasonal goodwill and ‘Lord of the Rings’ merges with caroling at that unselfconscious juncture between corporate self-promotion and the season of giving. Risen in ivory hues from the swamp, Singapore is the world’s most successful pursuit of technocracy. A vision so singular,  it could only be satisfied by futuristic rainforest domes. These self-same domes, known as the ‘Gardens by the Bay‘ are worthy of any mythic Mughal and leave one perplexed and uneasy before the slack-jaw of democratic freeway construction. Singapore has a hard-earned reputation for best-practice in anything practical and this can-do-attitude was bequeathed first hand to Lee Kwan Yew, as he watched Japanese invaders shatter the myth of British invincibility in a matter of minutes. The resulting carnage from what amounted to a betrayal by the British, served as a lasting lesson in the necessity for self-reliance.

The pale ghost of Singapore’s first patriarch, Sir Stamford Raffles, is given what seems undue deference as he stares back dashingly from every note in the Singaporean currency. Lee himself, not yet immortalised in note form, is modest to a fault but in the way that we all become our parents, remains just as starched and inflexible as a Raj-era dinner jacket – Singapore is famous for its almost comically draconian laws. Upon returning from Malaysia, expat school children have been known to be searched for chewing gum and pirated DVDs. What Raffles left behind in the sweaty hedonism of old Singapore, Lee has bulldozed into amnesia, erecting Singapore’s climate-controlled puritanism as a talisman against the languid spirits of the equatorial jungle.  Lee would have been well aware of and most likely affected by the prevailing myths of Orientalism. Raging against them with the purpose of an abandoned lover, decadent, Western ideas of personal freedom were curtailed for a common purpose. But, as I shovel Hainanese chicken-rice into my face, RnB Christmas jingles serve as an ever-present reminder that efficiency comes at a price. Want to make money? You can do that here. You can do anything here, except this and this. And this. Here is a chaste life of noble productivity. Don’t waste your time with frivolity like art and music. Learn to do something useful, because the only way is forward, and citizen, we are required to do these things together.

Singaporean law has attempted to inoculate against satire and although no one is going to shoot you for it, (bad for business) please put your hand over your mouth, as these things can be contagious. For its elegance, Singapore is not known to be the life of the party, yet it whirs away pleasant and oblivious, during a time when democracies face an almost uniform crises of public confidence in their ability to put the interests of society before those of its campaign donors. Lee, an unashamed elitist who once described Australia as “the white trash of Asia”, maintains that the role of the elite should be in serving the interests of society, rather than plundering it for their own benefit. (See GFC/bailouts/HSBC scandal et al) So, despite his deep love of capitalism, Lee understands that people can not always be left to their own devices. Like it or not, captured in the city is an expanse of topiaried understanding that eclipses those subject to the whims of opinion polls and rag tyrants. Would I trade it? No. Grime validates my self-involved, Western illusions of authenticity – but give me a couple more years of Tony Abbott and I just might.

Unlike many parts of Asia (Malaysia I’m looking at you) the Singaporeans recognised that valuable tourist dollars are bound in the walls of antiquity. They did thus a fairly decent job of preserving a semblance of that which can be filled with shops where people are willing to pay a premium on quaintness. One old building sits proudly amid the trees beneath 70 stories of luxury apartments. On the side of the building is a sign that says, “We buy and sell antiques. Some fools buy, some fools sell”. Against this simple, condensed, stoic, Asian-capitalist-socialism, one can’t help but find the place both humbling and slightly terrifying. Singapore can be called many things, but complacent is not one. Build up, you can fit more people in that way, it’s not all about you. Here are the rules for not wrecking the place. It’s not all about you. We are strict but we’re sure you’ll find us accommodating if you stay between the lines. All are welcome. Make your way, you are not owed. Now build a rainforest in a dome.