It takes all kinds of multi-generational morons to achieve successful business outcomes
A Corporate Moron© is not a total moron, but pretty close.
A Corporate Moron© is an individual who has spent their entire career within a corporate environment. Due to their sole reliance on internal service departments such as IT, HR and Finance to do stuff for them and random colleagues’ unsolicited advice to make important life decisions, a Corporate Moron© often struggles to function outside of its native habitat.
I am a Corporate Moron© and if you’ve ever worked in a large to medium-sized corporation, you probably are too.
Here is a quick checklist to help identify if you are a Corporate Moron©
Once you confirm that you are a Corporate Moron©, you need to identify what type of moron you are. There are 5 types of Corporate Morons©: Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Power and Expert. I am a Power Moron.
The key characteristics of each moron type are summarized here:
Notably, each moron type is grouped based on the stereotypes of their generation. In corporate offices all over the world, each moron type spends an awful lot of time pointing out the less attractive attributes of each of the other moron types. This is not helpful.
By understanding all moron types, and the experiences that shaped them, organizations can leverage each group’s strengths to develop a competitive advantage and achieve optimal workplace performance. And have more fun.
Let’s take a deeper dive into each of the moron types, starting with the experts.
Expert Moron
An Expert Moron is a Boomer who joined the corporate grind before computers, photocopiers and fax machines were a big deal. General technology skills are non-existent and while they demanded personal printers be placed on their desks in the early 2000s, they didn’t know how to use them. Expert Morons love to work hard and have lots of corporate friends who know how to do stuff. However, most of their corporate friends are now playing pickleball in Arizona and they have outsourced any technology support or financial advice requirements to their grandkids. As a result, the Expert Moron’s support network is rapidly diminishing.
Power Moron
Power Morons are Gen Xers who grew up watching MTV, playing rudimentary video games and transitioned from training their younger siblings on how to be a good remote control to mastering the use of one. Computers came on the scene in their high school and university days and printers were scarce, housed only in computer labs and campus print shops.
Submitting university papers on time became an exercise in speed and ingenuity. Inevitably, the sole printer in the university computer lab would crap out because fifty or so procrastinators were printing to it at the same time. Upon hearing the initial rumblings that the lab printer was about to have a technical meltdown, only the more perceptive and fast Power Morons would reach the campus print shop in time to re-format, print, hole punch and wrangle their paper into a duo-tang folder and submit before the deadline.
Having worked at two to three companies in their careers, Power Morons have lots of friends from different departments and other companies. This results in Power Morons having the strongest support network as most of their friends are still in the workforce. This group of morons are also most likely to partake in after-work happy hour activities that inexplicably involve running.
Advanced Moron
An Older Millennial falls into the Advanced Moron category. These guys helped the Boomers and Gen Xers through the ‘how to use your printer’ wars of the early 2000s.
I suspect the scarcity of printers and multiple printer-related traumas experienced by Power Morons in their university days, led to them viewing their proximity to a printer in the workplace as a status symbol.
In the 2000s, corporations put printers everywhere and we were all busy printing off reams of trees to pass out and read aloud to each other around boardroom tables. The number of steps between you and the closest printer correlated to your importance in the office. If you had a desktop printer, you were officially a big deal. This was before we all started obsessively counting our steps on our Fitbit, Garmin and Apple watches.
Now, the primary issue with all of the printers was that most of the more experienced Corporate Morons© didn’t know how to use them, never mind troubleshooting the inevitable paper jam. Here is where Advanced Morons leveraged their technological prowess to change the way we work today.
While helping other Corporate Morons© track down which printer they were printing to, they also began switching the print settings from single to double-sided and from colour to black and white — simultaneously saving the rainforests and their companies millions in toner costs.
In summary, the Advanced Moron is basically the same as a Power Moron but is better at video games and fixing printer jams. With quite a few friends, the Advanced Moron is the most relatable of the morons as they value collaboration and feedback.
Intermediate Moron
Younger millennials are the Intermediate Morons. This group of socially aware, agile and tech-fluent folks grew up on the internet, mastered texting, and have no idea what ‘dial-up’ is. They likely cannot identify or use the more rudimentary methods of communication such as a rotary phone, but it doesn’t matter. This group can seamlessly adopt new technologies and can often be found around the office and on Teams calls explaining the ins and outs of cloud computing to the other morons.
Basic Moron
Ironically a Basic Moron isn’t really a Corporate Moron© at all. They are an oxymoron. Characterized as ‘digital natives,’ a Basic Moron’s advanced technology and social media skills are rendered useless in large corporations as they are slow to adopt new technology. Essentially Basic Morons are so smart, they’re stupid.
For example, they probably can’t identify or use a fax machine or a standard-issue desk phone. With only 0–5 years of experience, this crew of Gen Z’s has not had much time to make friends with other Corporate Morons© to prove their value. The more experienced morons need help understanding that their wireless mouse isn’t working because the batteries need to be replaced, not how to replace a meeting with a DM (Direct Message).
Ultimately, most teams in our workplaces are now comprised of all of the Corporate Moron© types. The top-performing teams are the ones that connect in a meaningful way and leverage each other’s strengths to achieve shared business outcomes. They are also the teams most likely to have had fun while doing it.
At the end of the day, and what I know with absolute certainty, is that we’d reach our business outcomes a lot faster if the Basic Moron who caught me staring at my dead mouse would just replace the batteries for me and advise that it is not, indeed, solar-powered.
What kind of Corporate Moron© are you?
Want to know more? Find out what your Corporate Moron© IT Competency Level is by using the chart included in my previous article:
Originally published in Psychology of Workplaces on Medium: The Five Types of Corporate Morons© at Work on July 21, 2024.
Have you ever been traumatized by a printer? Here are are The BOSS OF ME blog’s favourite memes on the topic: Funny Memes: Printers
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