May I Brag? IBM Liked Me. Cool.

IBM liked me. A lot. I did an All Managers Meeting in Austin, Texas. They sent me the comments about my part of their meeting. I’m feelin’ pretty good.   Looking for a comedian speaker?  If IBM is right, you found him. :)

The only thing weird to me was that 95% of my clients ask me to be a funny motivational speaker.  IBM asked me — for this meeting anyway — to hold off on much of my “message” and just make them laugh.  Of course, the client is always right, so I was happy to oblige.

But if I were making the investment, I would have followed my advice and asked me to make them laugh AND tie it in to a meaningful business message.  Yup, in this case I did a little of that.  But it seems to me they would have had a much greater bang-for-the-buck if they would have allowed me to follow my instincts and tie the laughter into their management goals.

Still, the client was happy, so I guess I am too.  (Still, it seems that, even with these nice comments from the evaluations, we left sooooo much on the table.  I’d love to have the same group for a 1/2 day and REALLY help them incorporate levity and humor into their management skills.

Here are the comments, right off the evaluations:

¨     Good meeting. Better than I expected. Comedian was great and had a very timely message.

¨     The comedian was fantastic.

¨     Good comedian. Thanks. Need more gifts to give away though.

¨     The comedian/magician was good, but I think we have more fundamental problems and just looking at our work/life balance problems from a different perspective is not the answer,

¨     All the information was very stimulating and applicable — even the comedian. Best afternoon so far in 2005.

¨     GREAT meeting and extremely good corporate comedian.

¨     the corporate comedian was funny

¨     The corporate comedian should be shared with employees as well as area meetings because those folks could definitely use a laugh as well and try to put some balance back in their daily lives.

¨     While the comedian was funny, I certainly hope that you don’t think simply saying “I feel great!” is going to provide a meaningful change in the corporate climate. I believe that the issues we face with our climate run much deeper than that. I understand that Heather brought up other points as well, but ask any of the managers that attended the key points from the discussion on climate, and I would be willing to wager that the replies would be related to the comedian. The items that Heather mentioned to do are good for improving our climate; however, they do nothing to solve the problem of working people too much (too many hours, for too long). Until that issue can be solved, along with solving the issue of having managers put more focus on helping develop and focus on their teams, I contend that the climate will continue suboptimal.

[Note from Brad:   Think this person has some morale issues? :)

¨     The HR team and managers did a great job organizing the content, flow and agenda. This was especially true with respect to the comedian/magician. His presentation really highlighted several key messages in an understandable manner.

¨     Kudos!!! The meeting was great and I LOVED the comedian!!

¨     The major benefit was the back to basics of management, supported by the message from the corporate comedian. It will be important to continue to push for strong management actions, and to properly evaluate the management (all levels) for how well we perform in this regard.

¨     I think the meeting was a bit long and dragged on too long. I think the comedian was great!

¨     I especially appreciated the message from the corporate comedian. I’m still looking for things in my day (and usually finding them) that fit the “HOW COOL IS THAT?!!!” criteria. It was a good reminder to keep things in perspective.

Thanks IBM. I was thrilled to be part of it.

Are YOU looking for a comedian speaker? Whether you want to use me like IBM (and mostly make ’em laugh) or if you want me to tie it into business as I normally do, I’d love to be your guy! Contact me here.

Brad Montgomery
Comedian Speaker (and so much more!), Texas Speaker, Fan of IBM

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