Friday, July 01, 2011

Generational Differences

I often use case examples in my management workshops and have tended to give the characters unusual names to avoid the possibility of having a person by that name sitting in the audience.

Charles Dickens novels are great resources if only because Dickens was a master of tagging a character with a memorable name. (Think of Ebenezer Scrooge.) What has been quietly amusing, however, is to see the audience reaction when the name "Uriah Heep" is used.

One group recognizes that it is taken from the vile character in "David Copperfield." [It was.]

One group thinks I'm making a sly reference to the rock band.

And a third group never heard of him at all.

No comments: