I mean, - if you're not on facebook, - who are you?

Tim Horton's defines Canadian culture and makes a profit. The CBC was supposed to do that, but hasn't figured it out. Our government gives the CBC $1B a year, sort of a training budget, so eventually they will also learn how to define Canadian culture.

You and I know that Canadian culture is defined by Facebook, iPhones, and Tim Hortons. We don't know who the person is that thinks the CBC is involved but he's costing us a cool $1B. What we get for $1B is interviews with people who've volunteered to go without Facebook for a month. It's information we need more of in Canada.

A female university student being interviewed about the real trauma she endured on one of these one month no facebook experiments. She felt a complete outsider, suffered loneliness, had to deal with inner emptiness and loss of meaning, missed some parties, and felt a genuine disconnect from humanity. The damage was real, her pain was real and the tender CBC interviewer truly understood her.

Her best line, "I mean, if you're not on facebook, who are you?"

Our priorities in this first world haven are a bit special. Other parts of the world worry about not getting killed, starvation, and disease but in Canada we have a generation who feels the same pain by volunteering to go off facebook for a month. What's worse, the publicly funded CBC legitimizes the delusion by interviewing this person as if this was a story.

Somewhere there is a manager who will have to manage this facebook withdrawal victim.

1. Silliness needs your permission to thrive.
2. "Suck it up Princess" (Prince or Buttercup) is a useful phrase.
3. The follow-up punch from silly people often includes ideas like abuse, traumatized, stress leave, or "me-day."
4. Silly people expect you to put meaning into their work. You generally respond by providing pizza on Friday.

In truth, you can't help, or manage, and should never hire, anyone who thinks one month without Facebook is a personal trauma. Using words like "work ethic" or "sense of duty" will only make things worse. Don't try.

Oprah won and now she's retiring.

Let's build great organizations,
Wolfgang

p.s. Think Tank, - Oct. 24th, Terminal City Club, for senior managers. Small group. Almost full. Subject, - "How to Negotiate Agreement and Cooperation"

p.s. This is a true story. I was scanning radio stations and came across this CBC interview. You can't make this stuff up.