Not Geek Squad Smarts

There is a new advertisement on the radio for something called "The Geek Squad," a hugely successful group of nerds and nebbishes across the country who read software and computer manuals, then have an uncanny knack of getting things to work (like wi-fi routers, high-def. TV's and surround-sound stereos). What power! What value!

Yet, this is NOT the power and influence discussed in Mr. Dilenscheider's book. The power here is moving men (and women) to perform at their highest levels, as inspired and led by your personal inspiration and style. This is long-term power, prestigious power, power that sustains and builds and organzation's core business.

In the ad, The Geek Squad promises to get things working again. “We’re on call to use our intellectual power, not to rule your electronic products, but to own them,” they claim, mysteriously. The implication being that when you know how things work, you “own it,” in a sense, in the long run. (Actually, it's the reverse, they own it in the short-term, while it works, and no longer.)

The power and influence under review in this book senses this sort of limited power generation, but bases it’s solutions on a foundation, the substance of technology itself (not how things work, but what can be done with the things when they’re working). The theory, one supposes, is that you can pay a drone (or Geek) to get technology to work. What you can’t find is anyone who understands what it all MEANS once's it's going again. How will it save time, build a customer base, retain customers already buying your products, restrain competitor actions, build an empire.

One ominous note in the ad might be worth a thought: “We Geeks know that the Internet is JUST STARTING!” The implication: We ain’t seen nothing yet! Heaven help us, especially those who have not already fully embraced today's robust Internet search engines, downloads and interfaces.

Numerous references in the book hint at some of these emerging synergies (technologies, he calls them): Cellphones becoming recipients of text messages, taking pictures and organizing your schedules, playing your favorite songs, updating blogs, even, making phone calls, wireless, through the wi-fi connection on your computer (free - - don’t tell the phone company).

What does this single example mean in the workplace? WHO will grasp the emerging nature of the way it will break traditional molds of job functions in the workplace? The powerful and the influential, for starters, who may soon be the bosses driving these new methodologies!