Corporate Governance: Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs...

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs "may be the funniest animated film of the year," said Roger Moore in the Orlando Sentinel. Produced by Sony Pictures Animation and based on the popular children's book about a man who invents a machine that causes clouds to rain food.

Grab your plates! In the land of Chewandswallow, meals - rather than rain or snow - fall from the sky. But something goes awry: the food falling from the sky gets larger and larger, causing the residents to make an escape before being squashed by giant pancakes or rolls. Will they cope with the natural disaster or be forced to make a run for it?


With this in mind, I was just thinking, that a lot of the 9-5 work world, reminds me of this scenario. Chewandswallow. That's a great name for this effort. I used to feel that way too in a place called Chewandswallow. A giant pancake. Mentally obese, with little to say.

Recently however, the residents have begun to cope with it all. We see many more signs of independent thinkers, not content with the work world as it was laid out for them in high school or college. You were taught the assembly line is a good line.
Place the square peg in the square hole, and from here to there you go...from 9-5. Up the ladder you progress. How nice of you to join us.

Then you finally realize that you've become a giant pancake. Waiting and hoping for more that doesn't come. A day filled with Tums, and your voice remains mum. Up the ladder you go in the land of Chewandswallow.

What's happening out there today is truly amazing. A growing intelligent corp of independent thinkers with business acumen that is not an IBM look-e-loo. Part human, part cyberspace, part avatar. No politics, no parochialism, no silos, no games, no cynicism, no arrogance. Renegades in the land of Chewandswallow. Competitors of 'me-too'isms and 9-5ers. How nice to see.Corporations with identity crisis brought on by a countless onslaught of emerging corporate change.

Alvin Toffler wrote: " What deepens the identity crisis of the corporation is the emergence, against an already unsettling backdrop, of a worldwide movement demanding not merely modest changes in corporate policy, but a deep redefinition of its purpose".

Growing numbers of people in the land of Chewandswallow are not simply disenchanted, irritated, or angry, but they hold today's corporate world increasingly responsible for the artificial divorce of economics from politics, morality, and the other important dimensions of life.

And so it goes today in the business of business: Cloudy with a chance of meatballs, brought to you by the inhabitants of the land of Chewandswallow. Today, in every sphere of social life; in our families, churches, schools, businesses, we are creating new forms of conduct; new ways to deal with issues and circumstances. New ways to view what a corporation is, and should be. And that is coming from these independent thinkers who are redefining the work ethnic, the 9-5 culture, the stoic corporate business strategies. The defined 'pecking order'. The corner office. The alienation. The rebels in the land of Chewandswallow.