Leash Your Potential - How To Be A Successful ‘Do-Nothing’

Ryan Gunther’s mock seminar on how to keep a job and do as little as possible, while getting good pay was certainly thorough with a pile of silly statistics, funny strategies, and satiric corporate anecdotes. He makes it clear that business in Fortune 500 companies is like a group of ferrets, which, incidentally, is exactly what a group of ferrets is called, a ‘business of ferrets’ (no kidding) like bosses, oops, ‘crows’ who are called a ‘murder of crows’.

Yes, I did laugh here and there at his advice about how to do effective emails that record your real message ‘can’t finish this project by the deadline’ but bury it in the fifth paragraph so no one bothers to read it, but at least you’ve covered your ass if called to accountant. He has humorous advice about how to infiltrate an office clique, take fake sick days, and sabotage your computer so you don’t have to do anything for hours but play on your phone.

There is definitely some funny material in this show. But ‘show’ it isn’t. It’s more of a ‘tell’ than a ‘show’. If he was trying to poke fun at boring seminars, he verged on the edge of boring us after a while. I began glancing at my watch 25 minutes into the lecture because Gunther stood in his business suit behind his podium and seemed to be reading, in a rather monotone voice, his entire lecture with amusing powerpoint slides. Perhaps he is used to a 15 or 20-minute stand-up comedy routine but for a 60-minute show, the overload of info and the lack of movement and engagement undermined the effectiveness.

Perhaps a take-off on one of the super slick self-help gurus who use all the vocal, emotional ploys to entice you in, would have been funnier since it would have been livelier, and more ironic to have a seminar leader who was all cheery enthusiasm while delivering a message about how to be a do-nothing corporate survivor. The other alternative would be to play some of the characters from the bad boss, the good bad boss, the office prankster etc.  This would have given some variety, pace, and drawn the audience into the corporate environment far more effectively.

One fascinating part was when, near the end, Gunther leaves the stage and a robotic email appears on the screen and makes us think about how far robots can replace us all except, of course, robots don’t know how to do ‘meetings’ or be effectively ineffective, as Gunther points out. So maybe we slackers are safe.

Unfortunately, the delivery didn’t live up to the potential of the material. However, if you’ve worked in any bureaucracy, you’ll smile.

By Beth Coleman