Nov. 10, 2008 — A colleague recently sent me a couple of sentences that were apparently cut and pasted out of a press release. Here is what my colleague sent: "...premier strategic branding firm announces the appointment of Lee Rafkin as Global Director of Simplification." The subject line of the email that my friend sent read: "Probably comes with a four-page job description."
After I picked myself up off the ground laughing about the subject line, I have to admit that my first thought was: 'wow, what a cool job title ... I wonder what it means.' Then, my second thought was: 'oh man, that person is going to be making a lot of enemies in their organization.' My third thought was: 'wait a minute. Global simplification — isn't that an oxymoron?'
The whole thing brought me back to a quote that I collected a few years ago from I don't know where (yes, I do have a collection, I guess you could say, of quotes that I have been compiling for more than 10 years in a Word document. It's simple, when I read something I like, I just cut and paste.). Anyway, here is the quote I was thinking of:
“I’m always amazed to watch organizations that have committed themselves to eliminating bureaucracy. The first thing they do is eliminate all the old procedures manuals, then you come back a year or two later and you see that in the name of documenting ‘best practices’ everyone’s busy writing new ones.” How true is that?
So then I did a quick Google (www.google.com) search and found a full press release about the new job of this Lee Rafkin fellow. I have long thought that there is great value in simplicity. There is evidence of it everywhere. I love the magazine Real Simple, the iPod , and the Lance Armstrong yellow rubber bracelet thing (although I've never actually owned one of those). This job of Global Director of Simplicity seems to support my long-held premise about simplicity.
Before If found this job title, my previous favorite job title was "Sandwich Artist." I laugh almost every time I see that at the sandwich shop.
...I'm in Chicago today and tomorrow attending the Society of National Association Publications (SNAP) board meeting. I'll be blogging if there are blog worthy things to blog about, otherwise back in Arizona on Wednesday.
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