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8. Non-Fiction Other
Cherie Kerr. Build To
Laugh: How to Construct Sketch Comedy with the Fast and Funny Formula.
“So George Washington is Standing there in the Boat and He says…”
Reviewed by: Joe Petrulionis
_Build to Laugh: How to Construct Sketch Comedy with the Fast and Funny Formula_ is no recent release. Still in print and readily available, the book has already encouraged a decade of emerging comedy writers to think about their material in deeper ways. Its long shelf life came from its clarity and its playful explanations. It actually helps writers learn to be funny. My own reasons for reading Kerr’s book may be unique, however. I am no comedy writer, nor am I a comic, really. I teach history and philosophy, mostly to students who want to be CEO’s, rock stars, millionaires, and Special Forces operatives. Lucky for us all, a course or two in the humanities is still required for the bachelor’s degree. So in trying to reach people with little genuine interest in history and philosophy, I have discovered an important tradeoff. While sleeping students may seem more civil and polite, they retain much less of the lecture materials than do conscious students. What I have learned from teaching is that giggling students—even when laughing at the silly teacher’s antics—come to more classes and retain more of the serious stuff between the laughable. And what have I learned from Kerr’s excellent little book? [Drum roll, please!] I have learned the source of “the funny.” Hilarious stuff happens right in front of us every day. It is in the newspapers, at the parking lots, in our personal tragedies, and yes, even in history and philosophy books. And you can learn how to find it and to use it.
So can ANYONE really learn to be funny? Kerr offers no guarantees with her advice gleaned from her own experience as a comic, especially not for history teachers. But her “formula” is rather easy to follow. Most of the “eight steps” empower a reader to “see” the material in new ways, find the joke, understand why it is funny, and to toy with perspective. Much of this advice can be found in any good writing textbook. But who wants to actually read a writing textbook? Kerr’s book, about comedy, is a fun read. You will find yourself bracketing moments, thoughts, and situations that burst with levity, and they just need your help to let out the laughter. And here, I can provide a guarantee if Kerr does not. If you will look for funny things you will find them, even in textbooks, ancient archives, and philosophy lectures. Anyone standing in front of groups of people (teachers, politicians, bosses, drill sergeants, pan handlers) will benefit from a close reading of _Build to Laugh_.
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Rusty Rueff and Hank Stringer. Talent Force: a New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. 2006: Upper Saddle River, NJ, 2006. (168 pages) Hard back. US$24.99. ISBN 0-13-185523-9
It’s People! Everything Depends on Recruiting, Mobilizing, and Retaining People.
By Joe Petrulionis
Back in the olden days of “B school,” several--ahem--decades ago anyway, we were all economists and sports writers. To determine the business value of an enterprise, we learned to “line up” the last five years of audited financial reports, calculate “batting averages” and financial ratios, project historical performance into the future, and then “call a huddle” to determine the present value of the future cash flows. This approach is how we made our merger decisions, it was how we purchased capital equipment, and it was how we decided on new product lines. Only as a second thought did we make any attempt to evaluate the management team, or to delve into the important staffing strengths and weaknesses. Those personnel questions would have been too subjective, too qualitative, for our valuation models. The professors would explain, “Quality of the management team is already discounted into the historical performance of the firm, and hence the stock price.” We took this to mean we could ignore these issues because good managers generate good numbers. So we followed the numbers.
Predictably, we emerged from school with monetarist attitudes about the power of capital, the amazing quality of market information, and a resulting suspicion of “marketing types,” flashy people with pinky rings who advocated controlling our firm’s public perception. We were never troubled by the nagging doubts that should have made us wonder, “so how’s come none of my models ever determines, with any accuracy, the value of a stock, or the selling price of a company?” We were sure that these discrepancies happen because the market, with its perfect knowledge, knew something about the industry that we didn’t know. And too often, we would later learn that we had overlooked an important personnel issue; a looming retirement, a shortage of specialists, an obsolete benefits package, a drinking problem. We should have known. But comforting ourselves with a truism about the focal acuity of “hindsight,” we would “get back out there and step back up to the plate.”
So it is no wonder that most of my generation still hires, retains, and plans for its workforce in some rough imitation of the way our boss’ generation hired. When we have a need for a new person, we concoct a job description, get our bosses approvals, and post the “vacancy” on line. When the hundred thousand resumes arrive, we form a team to winnow the pile down to a manageable fifty. Then we spend the evening with those fifty resumes and in the morning we have ten candidates. After some uncomfortable phone calls, we schedule two or three interviews. Unhappy with the selection, we send the job description out to a small group of “contingency” head hunters. And the same hundred resumes begin filling our inboxes and tying up the fax machine again. But this time, each resume comes with a head hunter advocate, pushing us to meet with this one candidate. By now, everyone in the industry knows that you are hiring, including your own employees, many of whom feel this job would be the next logical stepping stone in their own career track.
If you recognize yourself at all in this short description, you would certainly benefit from a close reading of Rueff and Stringer’s Talent Force: a New Manifesto for the Human Side of Business. In the time it will take to meet with a heartbroken and valuable employee who feels “passed over” in your staffing program, you can be reintroduced to the latest tools for maintaining and building the people force that IS your company. More than a motivating “locker room talk,” you will learn how to find resources and strategies that you may have overlooked. The most helpful insights may be in the sections on “Emerging Recruitment Practices” and “Strategic Integration Point Person,” in which the processes of recruiting, outsourcing, and retaining talent are integrated into a marketing approach prioritized at the top of your organization. Specific advice is offered on how to find qualified talent consultants and specialists. And this is all packaged in an easy to read book that steers clear of theoretical approaches and industry-specific solutions. A copy of this book should be placed in the reading bin of every first class seat on commercial airlines.
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Cherie Kerr. Funny
Business: How to Make You Laugh on the Job Every Day. Jim Doody, illust. ExecuProv Press: Santa Ana,
CA, 2007. Paperback, 150 pages, $14.95.
You’ve Tried ‘Excellence?’ Now try Exuberance
By Joe Petrulionis
Cherie Kerr teaches professionals how to “lighten up.” But for those of us unable to attend a seminar, Funny Business, summarizes her approach to maintaining peace of mind by offsetting daily and unavoidable stress with good doses of healthy laughter. A more elegant phrasing is--in the author’s words-- “For every down experience on the job, we need an up one to achieve balance.”
And Kerr should know how to create these “up” experiences. She worked as professional comedian, actor, writer, and director. She teaches other actors and writers how to improvise, how to be extemporaneously funny. An entrepreneur, owner/founder of a west coast public relations firm, and a mother of three, Kerr even finds time to teach industrial, governmental, and academic leaders how to incorporate humor into their workplaces.
So when this board-level comedy consultant explains the nuts and bolts of applying humor as a motivational and communicative tool she does so in a narrative voice that is both easy to read, and hilarious. Several of the chapters have been tested on live audiences. Early in her quest for balance, Kerr sought answers from science. A “highly-renowned and noted professor of pathology, psychiatry, and psychology” describes humor as an activity that suppresses the “paraventricular nucleus (PVN) of the hypothalamus, and the locus coercleus.” Winking at the reader, the narrator responds “Wow. It’s that easy!” Then the vocabulary slips back into more comfortable zones with references to “happy hormones,” the “humor muscle,” and the “lockdown lever.”
The delivery, quite often in the voice of a smooth stand up comic, keeps the reader alert and lubricates the transfer of a deadly serious message. A practiced sense of humor can regulate a person’s vital signs, make concentration easier, and soothe stressful workplace relations. But senior managers, eager to coax or cajole subordinates toward exertions beyond last fiscal quarter’s performance, should also take note. When employees are laughing, their stress levels come down. As stress levels abate, more nervous energy can be channeled into creative solutions including highly profitable innovations and improvements to long term productivity.
So your hard working subordinates have planned, organized, and fretted over their next major sales presentation. Everyone knows their part, and everything that can be foreseen has its own contingency plan. Perhaps a quick trip to the bookstore--or a visit to the company supplies locker—would be in order. Make Funny Business a priority read. But before you distribute this delightful book to your officemates, you may want to read it yourself, preserving the punch lines for your own routines.