Saddest Cubicle, Most Fun, Worst Strategy

Wired Magazine's "Saddest Cubicle Competition" (see picture gallery at http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2007/11/gallery_saddest_cubicle?slide=1&slideView=2) is not only entertaining, it is also an important example of why strategic thinking is so important in communications.

Quite possibly the goal of the contest is just to have some fun, but if anyone hoped to shame companies into treating employees more humanely then they have done exactly the wrong thing.

Now when anyone complains about their cube the manager can say "You complain about your cubicle but compared to other places it is a palace!. Look at the proof!". It would be more effective to provide managers with a benchmark guide to humane cubicles. Then you could shame them by showing that yours is worse than the pictures in the magazine.

This is often the case. Sometimes you can score an own goal by having the right objective but the wrong strategy.

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