Slashdot Mirror
Why Every Office Needs an Outsider
Research has shown that having an oddball team member not only gives you someone to make fun of, but also leads to better decision making. Researcher Katie Liljenquist, says having "socially distinct newcomers" on a team can help it perform at a higher level. Team tension is crucial, and shaking up the same old crowd is the way to create it. "You can imagine if you work in an office and you've got this outsider like Dwight Schrute who walks in and a lot of his ideas resonate with you. Your fellow in-group members are hearing this and thinking, 'Wait, you agree with Dwight?' That can be really uncomfortable and socially threatening," she says.
To have another scapegoat that you can blame stuff on too :)
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
And there's more than enough of them!
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If you keep looking for the outsider and can't find one...it might be you.
Whoever was shooting that video, please... put down the camera and walk away. You clearly don't know what you are doing, and it sickens us to watch you. Either that or take your anti-spasmodics. I don't know how you managed to do it, but the most interesting bits - the stopping and starting - you managed to effectively miss. Did you even know what your subject was or why it would be interesting? Apparently not. Go home, please.
"You can imagine if you work in an office and you've got this outsider like Dwight Schrute who walks in and a lot of his ideas resonate with you. Your fellow in-group members are hearing this and thinking, 'Wait, you agree with Dwight?' That can be really uncomfortable and socially threatening."
Socially threatening because Dwight Schrute is a sociopathic cat killer who delights in blocking fire exits and pulling the alarm. A better choice could have been chosen. Michael, for instance.
Alright! Who put my stapler in the Jello again!
I agree that outsiders can shake an organization out of inbred complacency. However, Dwight Schrute is an anti-social asshole. The most effective outsiders don't need to be an asshole to have the positive effect this article is calling for.
Of all the characters on The Office, I'd always considered Dwight Schrute to be most like me...
Hell, he reads Tolkien, is decently armed, is a pretty good table tennis player, and has loads of esoteric knowledge. Once you grow up and get beyond immediate likability, you realize he's a pretty decent guy.
Now that guy Jim is just annoying.
Seems like we could make use of a well-groomed, outgoing 'people person' who can sell used cars and convince girls to go on dates just for fun. Imagine what we could blame on him.
Now stop misunderestimating me!
- George W.
As compared to the current President who thinks that Austrians speak Austrian, and is totally lost without a teleprompter?
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
But Austrians do speak Austrian. Just like americans don't actually speak real english.
This will of course get modded flamebait because american mods like to think they speak real english.
At least that's what we call them in my company!
He may need a teleprompter, but at least when he has one he can talk without sounding like a complete idiot.
IMO, that's still a major improvement.
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
I've always wondered: what exactly is the evidence that Obama is dependent on a teleprompter? Every president in recent memory has used one...
Also, the author of this Wikipedia entry seems to think Austrians speak Austrian as well. (Though I don't dispute that it is just a variant of German). If this even is a gaffe, it certainly doesn't hold up in a comparison with Bush's gems.
caritj.org
I bet all these companies really appreciate the input from the new guy, Barrack.
This has been evident in sports teams for ages. Great teams grow complaisant, new talent is brought in. It can be in the form of players, coaching staff, or upper management (GM) !news
insight through the mind
I too am sycce of ðe gecorrupeted Middle Anglice he spaeken in ðe Prydishen Isles!
no no no -- austrians come from australia and thus must speak australian -- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-480494/Bush-confuses-Austria-Australia-latest-gaffe.html
I can tell you it's hell.
Until you quit and then you get that "I've been released from prison" feeling.
It's especially nice when 6 to 12 months later you hear that your boss got fired due to all the problems you tried to warn him about destroying the project and or his general incompetence.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Actually TFA is too narrow. The real key is avoiding a hegemony. From the Stanford Business School:
In fact, the worst kind of group for an organization that wants to be innovative and creative is one in which everyone is alike and gets along too well," she says. And the key to making nearly any kind of diversity work is managing it well.
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/hr_neale_groupdiversity.shtml
My office has an outsider... in fact my office has the Outsider... from the The Outsider, by H. P. Lovecraft...
And not only that... it's me!
Thank you for putting things back in perspective.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Yes, George W. Bush was much more intelligent, poised and talented than Barack Obama. That anyone could think otherwise just proves the grip of extreme, hard-core, Obama-style Communism on their soul. There is no other explanation. It's frightening, really.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
As a Contract Developer, I find this is one of my useful roles. I've sometimes played to the outsider role on purpose to also ask the obvious questions to make sure they have thought everything through and to make sure things don't get missed. I often find assumptions that were being made that people just hadn't thought about because of the pace of the project or just being in the middle of it.
Perfect example of nonsense...no linguist (I'm sure you're not familiar with terms like AAVE, AE, or SAE. That would be African-American Vernacular ENGLISH, American ENGLISH, and Southern American ENGLISH. You may notice the keywords ENGLISH) or anyone else who wasn't blatantly trying to defend Obama would agree with you.
Just think of the urban legend about Dan Quayle and Latin in Latin America. Many people still actually believe that one. Obama makes a stupid comment and the chattering classes go crazy coming up with explanations to defend him.
If they weren't different they'd be called English and wouldn't require special names. The fact they have names that are SO special hints at the fact they've become much more than mere accents.
And that's saying a lot, since here in Europe we're used to accents being so different people from different regions of the same country can hardly understand each other. The fact your accents are so discrepant they need to be called something other than accents could well mean they've become a language in their own right.
And they should, a nation that big really deserves a language of its own.
What's "real english?"
If England (the root word of English) started speaking only a modified Latin, would that language be "english?"
Or maybe, American's speak "real english" because there's more people who speak American English than there are who speak any other type of English?
Or maybe, instead of inane nitpicking about "real english" we can just recognize it for what it is, a regional accent.
Besides, I think British English is more corrupt than American English, innit?
And the bait takes flame!
You might not have noticed, but each of your examples includes a qualifier, i.e. something that distinguishes the example from its base form. So you have ENGLISH -- to use your qualified form, that would be "English ENGLISH" -- which is the base, and then the variants that are based on it, such as "American ENGLISH".
Real English would be Old English spoken by the tribes of Angol that settled the British Isles before the Saxon invasion in whenever that was. Barely anyone is still able to understand it.
Since that english no longer exists we can safely assume its closest approximation is the english currently spoken by the people in southern regions of the main British Island. This is the English that spread to the rest of the world and was then simplified by American settlers due to them being largely non-native english speakers and english being the simplest of available languages to learn since it has some french, it has some whatever and so on.
With time English became lingua franca of the New World and continued to evolve from there into what is fast becoming more than just a regional accent since American English is starting to change grammatical structures and whatnot.
Of course I am no linguist, but the English language happens to be a hobby of mine.
Or maybe, instead of inane nitpicking about "real english" we can just recognize it for what it is, a regional accent.
It's not a "regional accent", it's a dialect. An "accent" is how you pronounce words. A "dialect" is a different version of a language, such as Castillian Spanish, used in Spain, compared to Mexican Spanish, used in Mexico. Accents and dialects frequently go together, but not always. Southern Americans speak standard American English (with a little regional variation in words, but not enough to be called a separate dialect), but with a Southern accent.
He may need a teleprompter, but at least when he has one he can talk without sounding like a complete idiot.
You forgot about the "thank you" speech, and "liberty, [looooong pause] egalitie, fraternite" .
The guy might be the smartest man in the known universe, but the guy, a politician no less, so smooth that people swooned over him, can't even memorize the basic outline of a speech (because otherwise he would have noticed that he wasn't reading his own speech).
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
that anyone could think otherwise
Except that I never said that W was smarter than B.O.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Besides, I think British English is more corrupt than American English, innit?
Eh, snooker or pool, it's all about the spin.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Someone has been reading really old science fiction. May be just old rerun of the movie.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...until you have read The Outsider.
Where's the Kaboom?
There's supposed to be an Earth-shattering Kaboom.
If they weren't different they'd be called English and wouldn't require special names
Nonsense again. One gets the feeling that when you're discussing this topic you're picking arbitrary word definitions to whatever standards you feel like, and acting as if they are the gospel truth. What, pray tell, is "English." Who speaks "English." The English? Somebody from London or somebody from County Durham? If I pronounce tomato differently than you do, are we speaking two languages?
These are all questions asked--and answered!--very ably by people who aren't just speaking off the cuff when trying to defend a politician's statement.
The fact your accents are so discrepant they need to be called something other than accents could well mean they've become a language in their own right.
Interesting, I never realized that in Europe they didn't use words to describe different accents. That's really interesting--how do people differentiate accents without descriptors? (tongue in cheek). Look, you're just missing the point. Americans speak English. If you are a linguist and want to get picky about it, we speak variants such as Southern English, non-rhotic Boston English, Midwestern English, African-American English, etc. Whether you're from Australia, Canada, England, Alabama, Rhode Island, New Zealand, South Africa, whever, chances are, you speak English. Yeah, it's possible that were it not for globalization one day the languages would branch and diverge, but that's really the opposite trend from whatl inguists notice. Anyway, this is way off-topic. Americans speak English, not "American," and Austrians speak German, not "Austrian." End of story. It was a dumb statement. Either a gaffe, a slip, or just an exclamation of ignorance/lack of knowledge--I don't know which, and I don't really care that much.
And they should, a nation that big really deserves a language of its own.
Tell that to the Dutch. Or the Swiss. Or Indians. etc. You're REALLY now promoting some outdated ethno-linguistic centered definition of nation? Ein volk, huh? I'm hoping you're just being sarcastic on this :)
Er, my last post went through anonymously for some reason (lapsus calami). It was me :)
They're not as durable as interns. If you accidentally kill an Outsider, they can't be resurrected. Ask me how I know. *snif*
And the bait takes flame!
The last resort of losers in online discussions is to smugly say things like this (especially when posting as AC pretending to be the GP)
My Boss is the outsider. See, the rest of us are the misfits. It gets quite amusing when he suggests some new 'protocol' and we all leap in to denounce it. He gets this strange glazed-eye look. He works from home quite a bit.
.
Dan Quayle? Don't get me started!
When he was George Bush Senior's VP, he made so many erroneous, drunken and otherwise laughable
statements that I was able to buy (someone was able to profit from selling) a 30-minute videotape
collection in the comedy section of the video store.
And that was before his most famous potato moment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTwAGmDLW4M (within the first 20 seconds)
I think the video producers were able to make a Volume II.
And yet, we English speakers can all enjoy an episode of Friends, followed up by Monty Python, then Road Warrior, finally ending in Terence and Philips to cap off a night. I suppose we need to study each language before we can understand the subtleties but I manage to enjoy it all.(of course I need to sleep the next day).
Well, I think someone from Northern Germany will probably not understand someone really speaking Austrian (as opposed to speaking standard German with a mere Austrian accent).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Austrians speak Austrian as much as Australians speak Australian. Hope your head hurts now.
There's no such thing as Austrian, only Austrian German, with a language code of de-AT often used. Note the de, which denotes Deutsch (German).
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
She annoys almost everyone in the office. She needs to be taught and retaught proper etiquette when dealing with our clients. She nods her head in understanding while eavesdropping on other conversations on technical topics of which she has not the first clue.
Probably not the type of outsider the article mentions. (Was there one? Not like I read the articles, or summaries for that matter.)
The are other team evaluation systems out there, but ultimately they all exist to make sure that your team has some sort of internal dynamic.
Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
I wish I had mod points to mod you up on this one.
Calling a dialect an accent is part of my regional dialect--err, accent--err, dialect--err... you insensitive clod!
Nah. It's all about the table size, pockets, and ball size.
Can someone please mark this as funny? This is the funniest thing I've read today so far.
The book Sway has an interesting article on this subject. In it, comparisons are drawn from the supreme court, flight crews on airplanes and the character Cameron in the movie Ferris Buelers Day Off. In all situations youâ(TM)ll find a âblockerâ(TM) or someone in the group that makes up an excuse to why something canâ(TM)t be done. The fact that someone has a dissenting opinion is insignificant. Whatâ(TM)s important is that _someone_ have a dissenting opinion. This causes the decision maker to reflect on their choice. I guess in retrospect itâ(TM)s all pretty obvious but itâ(TM)s interesting to see real world examples back up the ideaâ¦
Besides, I think British English is more corrupt than American English, innit?
Eh, snooker or pool, it's all about the spin.
Flamebait? Perhaps the joke was too subtle? Here's a definition list which should help with the many levels of humor (or humour) that was being attempted.
pool(2) 7. Any of several games played on a six-pocket billiards table usually with 15 object balls and a cue ball. Also called pocket billiards. snooker 1. a variety of pool played with 15 red balls and 6 balls of colors other than red, in which a player must shoot one of the red balls, each with a point value of 1, into a pocket before shooting at one of the other balls, with point values of from 2 to 7. 2. Slang. to deceive, cheat, or dupe: to be snookered by a mail order company. 1889, the game and the word said to have been invented in India by British officers as a diversion from billiards. The name is perhaps an allusion (with reference to the rawness of play by a fellow officer) to British slang snooker "newly joined cadet" (1872). Tradition ascribes the coinage to Col. Sir Neville Chamberlain (not the later prime minister of the same name), at the time subaltern in the Devonshire Regiment in Jubbulpore. The verb meaning "to cheat" is from early 1900s, probably because novices can be easily tricked in the game. English 4. the Germanic language of the British Isles, widespread and standard also in the U.S. and most of the British Commonwealth, historically termed Old English (c450-c1150), Middle English (c1150-c1475), and Modern English (after c1475). Abbreviation: E 8. Sports. (sometimes lowercase) a. a spinning motion imparted to a ball, esp. in billiards. spin 4. to cause to turn around rapidly, as on an axis; twirl; whirl: to spin a coin on a table. 11. Slang. to cause to have a particular bias; influence in a certain direction: His assignment was to spin the reporters after the president's speech.And lastly, to put english (spin) on a ball corrupts (alters) its course. Similarly, spinning a speech alters and corrupts its intended meaning.
Now where's the flamebait in that?
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If you want to go by numbers, there are more Indians who speak English than there are people in North America. (I mean Indians as in Apu, not indians as in Geronimo.)
Or maybe, instead of inane nitpicking about grammar we can just recognize it for what it is, insignificant.