Companies put a great deal of focus on goals and strategies and often less effort goes into the tactics and guidance for how work actually gets done. If you’ve seen the viral video for the Harlem Shake, it illustrates what most companies look like under their corporate covers.
Doing the Harlem Shake
Enjoy this short video (you may want some sound):
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Doing your own thing
What makes the video so entertaining is that everyone is doing his or her own thing. Water cooler guy?…is that guy punching a giraffe? Some have great moves while others look like dancing isn’t really their ‘thing’. Just like the company logo, the beat is the only thing in common across the room full of people.
If the analogy works, its because companies haven’t figured out how to standardize the ‘simple moves’ that allow work to move efficiently from person from person and department to department. Like the crazy dancers, people are allowed to pick and choose how to do their work in the way that suits them but isn’t necessarily good for interaction and collaboration.
Now this doesn’t mean that everything must be prescribed like Gangnam Style (sorry, just couldn’t help it…it worked). There needs to be room for creativity but inside of a structure that allows the team to excel in a coordinated way. In business, we call it process management and it makes all of the difference in the world.
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Some fun parodies of the Harlem Shake video:
Solve for Interesting
Seth Godin Blog
Jeremiah Owyang
IT Redux
HBR Blog
Clay Shirky Blog
SocialMedia Today
Chris Dixon
Brian Solis
Chris Brogan
The TIBCO Blog
Venture Beat
Engadget
Wired
Lifehacker
Mashable
The Verge
GigaOM
TechCrunch
Harlem Shake office edition – 1st one in Germany: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3bTa_05o44
As fun as some of those are, sadly almost none of those videos use the ACTUAL Harlem Shake in the Harlem Shake video!
Proud to say that we nailed it at Freak’n Genius:
Yes…one of the most remarkable thinks about the whole viral craze around the Harlem Shake is the lack of the Harlem Shake. Good job!
Check out what we did…
Love it
Jumptap’s version is GREAT! http://youtu.be/TiNx3utSL5U
Funniest agency harlem shake yet! (With actual Harlem Shake) by Frankly Web.
The Best Hospitality School !!!
This is one of the best ones yet!