Dealing With A “Tower of Babel”
Electrical engineer Ed Schilling worked for GE for 35 years at a television picture tube manufacturing facility in Syracuse, New York. As a manager he and colleagues sat through many business meetings, both internally and externally, in which a fellow engineer would inevitably turn off his hearing aid the moment “corporate voodoo-speak” began.
But Schilling and the rest of his colleagues had no choice, they would listen, defenseless, as their eyes glossed over, dizziness and disbelief set in and they wondered if the “talking heads” in front of them had made a deal with Mephistopheles (The Devil).
Cutting Through “Corporate Speak”
The problem is engineers live in reality while most of the corporate world including sales, marketing and business managers think in terms of increasing sales, brand loyalty and promoting “intangible assets” without an inkling of what engineers do.
In the following video, based on a short story “The Expert” by Alexey Berezin, the typical scenario encountered by engineers dealing with “business types” is lampooned.
Following are credits for the video:
- Actors:
- Orion Lee
- James Marlowe
- Abdiel LeRoy
- Ewa Wojcik
- Tatjana Sendzimir
- Written & Directed by Lauris Beinerts
- Based on a short story “The Meeting” by Alexey Berezin
- Produced by Connor Snedecor & Lauris Beinerts
- Director of Photography: Matthew Riley
- Sound Recordist: Simon Oldham
- Production Designer: Karina Beinerte
- 1st Assistant Director: James Hanline
- Make-up Artist: Emily Russell
- Editor: Connor Snedecor
- Sound Designer: James Bryant
- Colourist: Janis Stals
- Animator: Benjamin Charles
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References and related links:
- Let’s talk about Quality: “The Expert” by Lauris Beinerts
- Mephistopheles « Studio Berezin Film
- The Expert, A Hilarious Sketch Comedy Video About the Pain of Being the Only Engineer in a Business Meeting
