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A good friend and I found ourselves in a meeting just like that a few months ago.  Totally bored, she leaned over and asked me “If they made this meeting into a movie which actress would play you?”  I of course immediately thought of several attractive and oh so talented actresses.  As I was mulling over my choices, I guess I my friend got tired of waiting for an answer because she leaned over and said “I’d have Kathy Bates play you.”  Are you kidding me? Kathy Bates?!  I was really hoping for someone cute or sexy.   Okay, fine, I’ll admit it I probably look closer to a younger Kathy Bates (that even hurts to type that statement) than I do to say a Megan Fox and there’s no doubt that Kathy Bates has done some fine acting.  So who am I to complain?(rhetorical question only)

Once we decided on who would play us, we then proceed to assign an actor/actress to everyone in the meeting.  You might be surprised at the cast of characters you have in your office.  For some reason, probably my sense of humor, every time I’ve done this mental movie making it always winds up as a comedy.  A word of caution, do not sit there and smile or giggle to yourself while you’re “casting” the meeting.  It’s way too awkward to explain why you’re sitting there smiling like a Cheshire cat.

Go ahead,try this little technique next time you’re feeling a little bored in a meeting.  You might really be surprised at what you come up with.

And now, the Oscar for the best actress in a non-productive meeting goes to……..

If the purpose is speculation, I won’t say anything about it. However if it is for long term investment like 401k, I will say yes to that question. Why? Basic rule of market is so-called “random walk”, it never makes sense to guess how the market will behave tomorrow. So the best way to handle that is to do right asset allocation according to your age, risk tolerance and time frame, then implement dollar cost averaging. After the automatic contribution is set up, you just relax and forget it and waiting for retirement.

Remember, since we dont’ know what will happen tomorrow and we do expect in the future the economy will be better,  it is always good time to invest into a PORTFOLIO (not individual stock or bond) unless people have no faith in the future.

A pretty interesting article about how the businesses we work for will eventually, in the author’s opinion, control what we blog or tweet or discuss on the web.

I have definitely thought about how I would handle a situation in which I wanted to write an article, or twitter a sentence for that matter, with an opposing view to that of my employer.  I would hope that I would be able to approach the issue in a professional manner with an agree to disagree stance.  But truly I would be torn and here is why:  One of the things that we do as part of a “team” is to appreciate other view points.  We may not always agree with their platforms, actions, dispositions, etc.   But we also realize that a great customer service representative is probably a very social person, whereas a developer might see every phone call as an intrusion on their work.  If I am that developer I probably do not understand why anyone would want to sit on the phone all day, but I appreciate that difference none-the-less.   Better you than me I would be saying!

So back to my point – To me a company is a team of teams.  Many different types of people at many different points in their life all working toward common goals for the company(one would hope anyway).  Do I really want to discuss publicly company actions that may not only cause the company problems,  but could affect all of teams?  Understand I am not saying we should overlook discrimination or abuse.  And thank the founding fathers for our freedom of speech!  But I don’t think that it is such a bad idea that our writings reflect our company’s views or our company’s brand.  Not kowtow to them, but reflect them.  I mean isn’t this what working as a team is all about?

There is so much more to this discussion.  As more tools are created that blur our working world with our personal life, such as Facebook and LinkedIn have done, we will all have to find the balance between being true to ourselves/our own brand and remaining part of a team that blends and morphs us into something bigger than ourselves.