In Pursuit of Balance: Innovation, or Simply Talking Too Much? by Arjun Gupta
As an intern who started at Dorrier Underwood in May, I found myself struggling to stay present at a June company retreat on Google+. Each day was eight continuous hours of talking about clients, sales projections, and a lot of consulting jargon. I tried to stay focused. I really, really did. But about every 15 minutes we would hit a topic that I could barely understand, much less contribute to. And so, despite my best efforts, I would check the scores of World Cup games or simply zone out. When it got really bad (though this only lasted 10 minutes, I swear), I started streaming the Nigeria-Argentina game from my laptop. Why did this happen? Part of the learning curve is that Dorrier Underwood is a very forward thinking company. They are management consultants, but rather than focusing on streamlining operations the way a McKinsey might, their specialty is corporate culture and the human dynamic within organizations. This lends itself to a lot of talking about empowerment,...