What Does it Take to Motivate a Power Plant Man?

My friends will tell you that I tend to not take things too seriously.  It seems that the more serious the situation, the more I joke around about it.  I know that this drives some people up the wall sometimes.  Bill Bennett, our A Foreman, used to call me “rascal” and maybe that was because I was one.  That was the way life seemed to be for the majority of the people at the Power Plant.  One of the funniest days in my life happened when Corporate Headquarters learned a thing or two about not taking things too seriously.

Eight (or was it 9?) Power Plant Men had been assigned to work in Corporate Headquarters for a ten week period.  I wrote about the reason for this in the post: “Do Power Plant Men and Corporate Headquarters Mix?”  I also wrote a post about how the Power Plant Men played one joke after the other on Kent Norris the entire time.  See the post:  “Corporate Executive Kent Norris Meets Power Plant Men“.  We know that the entire floor of corporate headquarters was kept in a slightly disturbed state as they were constantly hearing the “hee-hawing” coming from our over-sized cube where they had put us in a corner of the building hoping to isolate the ruckus we were making constantly.

We didn’t make enemies of our victi… uh.. I mean “our friends” when we played jokes.  We tried to do them in such a way that they would appreciate the thought and ingenuity that went into each joke we played on them.  On the other hand, passerby’s and those that worked within earshot had to endure the constant uproar of laughter.  They were missing out on all the fun, and we were just being a bother.

I think that’s why we received the initial reaction we did when we arrived at an SAP banquet during the last week we were going to be at Corporate Headquarters.  The banquet was being held in a banquet room in a hotel on the west side of Oklahoma City.  We had all carpooled in a couple of cars and arrived at the same time.

When we walked into the banquet room, we could see right away that we didn’t fit in.  No one had told us that we were supposed to wear a suit…. well, it wouldn’t have mattered if they had, we still would have arrived in our blue jeans and tee shirts.  At least our clothes were clean.  I didn’t have one coal dust stain on my entire shirt.

Yeah. Just like this

We were told where we were supposed to sit.  The Power Plant Men were directed to a large circular table in the back middle of the room.  We figured they didn’t want us close to podium in case someone was going to be taking pictures of the speakers.  This was an appreciation lunch for the SAP project teams.  We were only a small group compared to the rest of the room.

During the lunch, recognition was given to the different SAP teams.  We were mentioned for having completed our tasks two weeks early and had been given additional work and had completed that as well.  All together, we had rewritten over 140,000 warehouse part descriptions so they would fit in SAP and would be easily “searchable”.  We stood up and bowed and everyone applauded.

SAP Logo

I think up to that point, the rest of the room had thought that the people sitting at our table was going to be providing the entertainment and that we were all “in costume”.  Once they realized that we were Power Plant Men, their gaze turned from “anticipation” to “curiosity”.  When a bunch of Power Plant Men are all sitting at one table and there is food involved, we can become quite a spectacle.

After the lunch was over and recognition and awards were given, an interesting man stood up and started to speak.  He seemed like a rather goofy person and while he spoke he kept playing with a paper cup.  Popping it up in the air and catching it… or accidentally not catching it and having to go pick it up.  I thought he was becoming rather annoying as he kept distracting us from his boring words of wisdom because he kept playing with this stupid paper cup.

After a minute, he mentioned that there are lots of things you can do with a paper cup to entertain yourself.  You can pop it up in the air and try to catch it.  You can turn it over on a desk and beat it like a drum.  You can put in over your mouth and suck in to create a suction and walk around with the cup stuck to your face in order to impress your coworkers.  You can talk into it and sound like Darth Vader.  You can tie a string between two paper cups to make a telephone.

Ok.  That was a little more interesting than the speech he had been making.  I began formulating in my mind how I might play a trick on Gene Day using a paper cup telephone when I returned back at the plant.

Phone made from paper cups

I borrowed this picture from a fellow WordPress blogger:  “The B.S. Report”

This person’s name turned out to be Stephen Kissell and he is a “motivational speaker”.  I had heard about Motivational Speakers by watching Chris Farley on Saturday Night Live as the Motivator who lived in a van down by the river.  See the following short YouTube loop for my conception of a Motivational Speaker:

for those who can’t view the video from the video above can click here:  “Matt Foley Down by the River”

Anyway, Steve Kissell was dressed about the same way as Chris Farley in that skit.  It was definitely mismatched clothing.  I wondered if he lived in a van down by the river as well.

Then Stephen said that he needed some people from the audience to come up and help him with something.  He had the names of some people he would like to help him.  Obviously, someone had given these names to him in order to make the next “skit” he was going to perform turn out best.  He called up three people, a couple of well dressed and prim and proper ladies and a man.  They looked like they were the upper class stuck up types which, as it turned out was essential for this to play out properly.

Then Steve explained that in projects, in order to complete large task, you just have each person do smaller tasks, and when you put them all together, you can actually perform something great.  So he asked each one to do one little task when he tapped on his paper cup.

I don’t remember the exact tasks, but they were simple like shrug your left shoulder, and then your right, or squat down and then stand back up.  Little things like that.

Then after he had instructed each person what they should do, he tapped out a tune on the paper cup and they each performed their simple tasks over and over until he stopped.

After trying that a few times, he added other little tasks to each person one at a time.  The result was that after a while he had each of them performing a real goofy dance that made them all look silly dressed up in their finest clothes dancing around like kids.

There was something so funny about the way Stephen Kissell had set this up that everyone was laughing their hearts out.  The laughter was so thunderous that it sounded like one loud roar.  I thought I was going to lose my lunch.   I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe.

This guy who had stood up and begun by annoying his audience (which was my philosophy as well… See the post:  “Power Plant Art of Making a Bad First Impression“) had turned them into driveling piles of laughter after 10 minutes.  Up to that point, I hadn’t laughed that hard since I had seen the movie “Gus” when I was a boy.

The movie Gus

Ok.  Here is a side story about the movie “Gus”.

In 1976, when I was 15 years old, my brother (who was 11) and I went to the movies to see a Disney movie called “Gus” about a donkey who can kick a football through the goal post and ends up on a football team.  It starred Don Knotts and Tim Conway, two comedians who were masters of slap stick comedy.  This was still back when the movie theaters were large and there was only one theater in the building.  — Yeah.  They would only show one movie at a time.  Amazing.  Huh?

Anyway, there is a scene in a grocery store where they are chasing the donkey down the aisles trying to catch him.  The comedy had built up so much that by that point the entire audience of children were laughing so hard that the sound was deafening.  You literally could not hear anything but a loud constant roar.  I remember that I could hardly breathe I was laughing so hard.

I suppose it is a little like the Kennedy/Nixon debate…  When you heard it on the radio, Nixon won the debate, but when you saw it on Television, Kennedy won the debate…  I say that because fast forwarding 10 years, in 1986, I had the opportunity to watch Gus on TV.  I couldn’t wait to relive the hilarious moment in the Grocery store.

When the moment finally arrived, it came and went and I didn’t really see much humor in it at all.  It was just Don Knotts and Tim Conway fumbling around acting goofy.  I couldn’t understand what had been so funny in the movie theater when the entire theater had erupted with such intense laughter.  I guess you just had to be there in the movie theater at the time.  Whatever it was didn’t translate to the TV.

I talked to my brother about it a few years later when he brought up the same topic.  He said he had rented the movie Gus and had insisted that his four children sit and watch it all together as they ate popcorn.  They all sat around and watched the movie and my brother Greg said, “it wasn’t funny at all.”  He couldn’t figure it out.

End of Side Story

I heard that same statement a few years later when I had said something at Dell and my manager thought it was so funny that she went and repeated it to our director.  When she did, she said it didn’t sound funny at all when she said it.  The truth is, it’s not always what you are saying… it’s how you say it.  The inflection in your voice and the expression on your face.  Pausing at just the right time.

When we had all been sufficiently slain in the spirit of Stephen’s humor, and the banquet was over, we were all given a copy of Stephen’s book “Surviving Life With Laughter”.

Surviving Life With Laughter by Steve Kissell

We were also given a copy of a second Steve Kissell book:

Never Take Comedy From a Stranger

In Steve Kissell’s books, he tells stories and jokes that you can use or modify to fit the type of job you may be in at the moment.  This was something that Power Plant Men already knew how to do well, but always appreciated a good joke.

I found that Stephen Kissell is still out there after 19 years spreading good humor to the corporate world and the rest of humanity.  If you’re in the need of a motivational speaker.  You may consider looking up Stephen.  Or…. you may find him living in a van down by the river!

Stephen Kissell — Learn more about him at http://kisselltalks.com

As my readers know, I have written a number of posts about Power Plant Humor, See the post:  “Power Plant Humor and Joking with Gene Day“.  Humor is the best motivator I have found to keep people on track and not get too carried away with details.  I have learned this by working with the Power Plant Men over the years.

The most solid advise I remember from the “Pre-Cana” sessions (a program you have to go through in order to be married in the Catholic Church) we had with the priest when my wife and I were preparing to be married was “Always keep your sense of humor”.  So, when the situation looks hopeless, and there doesn’t appear to be a viable solution available, that is the time to take a step back in your mind and look for the humor in the situation.

It has always been important that true Power Plant Men not play jokes on another person in a way that would end up hurting them.  Whenever that would inadvertently happen, then a sincere apology would definitely have to follow and some sort of retribution.  Usually, sharing your Squirrel Stew with them during lunch was an appropriate form of retribution for any joke gone awry.

Even though we played one joke after the other on Kent Norris, after 12 weeks of torment, he still remained friends with the Power Plant Men.  I heard from him a week after we left when Kent sent a letter to me through intra-company mail.  He returned my name tag to me….  I have kept this letter with the name tag since that day in 1996 as a reminder of the days we spent torturing Kent with humor:

Note I received from Kent after I returned home to our power plant