Accounting 101 For Puppets

Last week found me jetting to the Windy City of Chicago for two days of corporate puppetry. The late, super-great puppeteer Bil Baird once said, "you can make puppets out of anything, you can make puppets out of meat." Here at Grey Seal we like to think that not only can you make 'em out of anything, but they can handle almost any kind of material as well.

My trip to Chicago is proof of that. The Reznick Group P.C. is a national accounting firm with a 90-employee office in Chi-town. They held a retreat last week to cultivate teamwork and good customer satisfaction. Dean Sellers is the Director in Charge at that office and he understands the power of puppetry. Dean had the idea to bring in a puppet character not only for a little levity, but also to convey some sensitive material to the participants too.

So, there I was manipulating our puppet Steve Sticklewood, crack investigative reporter, who was on the trail of good customer service and satisfaction. I learned a long time ago that puppets can get away with things that people cannot. This lesson works perfectly in complex corporate climates such as this. There is information that members of the team want to know, but are afraid to ask. There's also information that the leaders want to convey to the team but aren't sure of the best vehicle to do so. Our formula with Reznick was to have Steve Sticklewood appear "live" on a projection screen located to one side of the speaker's podium. The puppet would interrupt the speaker and ask the tough questions. The back and forth dialogue between speaker and puppet was light-hearted and fun, but all the necessary information got through to the participants. Mission accomplished!

The way the puppet was presented was neat, too. Appearing on the screen somehow legitimized the puppet more than just having him pop up behind a puppet stage. But having the "live" interaction was paramount as well. We achieved this by setting me up in a separate room, nearby the meeting room. I had two monitors to work off of; one monitor showed me the camera on the puppet, the other showed me a camera on the speaker and the projection screen. This way I could have the puppet react to not only what the speaker was saying, but I could also respond to any non-verbal body language, which was really funny too.

I will say this though. Accountants work too much. I didn't get to see anything of Chicago, those folks barely stopped to eat for pete's sake. Aside from a few swell games of Bocce Ball the first night when the meeting finally broke, the trip was all business. Fun business, but business all the same.