Milking the Motivation

Political satirist Stephen Colbert, of Daily Show fame, recently dubbed his alter ego, a blustery, self-obsessed cable news pundit described as a "well-intentioned, poorly informed high-status idiot", Sir Dr Stephen T Colbert, DFA.

In all seriousness, a Singaporean called Peter Low, or rather Sir Dr Peter Low, God-fearing choirmaster of the Cathedral Choir of the Risen Christ, styles himself in the same fashion. And you have the chance to listen to the good Sir Doctor, as he's coming to Hong Kong to strut his stuff at a series of Edward de Bono seminars offered by the Hong Kong Management Association, wearing his hat as Executive Director of Edward de Bono Training Pte Ltd, as opposed to the silly hat he dons when he's conducting his choir.

The knighthood, Knight Commander of St. Gregory the Great to give it its full title, was conferred not by the Queen but by the Pope (the Polish one, not the German one) who also thus ennobled Bob Hope, Roy Disney and Rupert Murdoch – which just goes to prove how catholic Catholics can be, given that all three of them were non-Catholics. Very rich and munificent non-Catholics, but non-Catholics nonetheless.

Returning to more mundane matters - the upcoming de Bono programme - one of the seminars is called "Simplicity", which is interesting, as a testimonial in the HKMA blurb merits any number of descriptions, but "simplicity" is probably the last that comes to mind:

"One can try to escape from the original basin by means of a random perturbation – for example Edward de Bono recommends trying to apply to a problem, whatever it is, the last noun on the front page of today's newspaper."

Another devotee makes a valiant effort to salvage the transparency of the method, only to find his grammar buckling under the strain of handing out all that praise:

"It is a function of clarity of de Bono's approach that thinking course works well with school children or executives."

Even our old friend Tom Peters gets in on the act, even if he inadvertently makes himself redundant in the process:

"These are time tested techniques for milking people's wackier ideas ... invest heavily in using such techniques to solve all problems."

Meanwhile ... over at the University of Hong Kong, still desperately clinging to its vision of becoming one of the top twenty universities in the world, yet another motivational speaker is about to sally forth. Not your usual run-of-the-mill bloke, naturally, but, in terms of motivational speakers, pretty much par for the course: "exceptionally gifted communicator ... one of the world's top motivational speakers ...".

This fellow, whose claim to fame is that he has walked to both Poles (but not, I assume, on the same trip), has, the poster proudly tells us, "inspired audiences from Fortune 500 CEOs to schools children (sic)".

As I walk on towards the library, I hear the faint ringing of a bell – a discordant, ungrammatical bell, perhaps, even a strange and wacky one, but one that chimes with the sound of a particularly hungry cash register.