ON SWAPPING CULTURES

IN THEIR SHOES

The Wall Street Journal has a terrific article today describing an out-of-the-box job swapping arrangement between Google and P&G employees, reminiscent of Mark Twain's "Prince and the Pauper".  Here's the context:

"At Procter & Gamble Co., the corporate culture is so rigid, employees jokingly call themselves "Proctoids." In contrast, Google Inc. staffers are urged to wander the halls on company-provided scooters and brainstorm on public whiteboards.

Now, this odd couple thinks they have something to gain from one another -- so they've started swapping employees.

So far, about two-dozen staffers from the two companies have spent weeks dipping into each other's staff training programs and sitting in on meetings where business plans get hammered out.

The initiative has drawn little notice. Previously, neither company had granted this kind of access to outsiders."

The experiment has lead to some amusing moments:

"As the two companies started working together, the gulf between them quickly became apparent. In April, when actress Salma Hayek unveiled an ambitious promotion for P&G's Pampers brand, the Google team was stunned to learn that Pampers hadn't invited any "motherhood" bloggers -- women who run popular Web sites about child-rearing -- to attend the press conference.

"Where are the bloggers?" asked a Google staffer in disbelief, according one person present.

For their part, P&G employees gasped in surprise during a Tide brand meeting when a Google job-swapper apparently didn't realize that Tide's signature orange-colored packaging is a key part of the brand's image."

Happily, the two groups are quickly learning from each other:

"Google job-swappers have started adopting P&G's lingo. During a session on evaluating in-store displays, a P&G marketer described the company's standard method, known as "stop, hold, close": Product packaging first needs to "stop" a shopper, Mr. Lichtig said. "Hold" is a pause to read the label, and "close" is when a shopper puts the product in the cart.

Google's Ms. Chudy gasped. "This is just like our text ads," she said. The headline is the "stop," its description is the "hold" and the "close" is clicking through to the Web site.

"This is going to get so much easier, now that I'm learning their language," she said."

That's it..."learning their language".

Now what if we had a group of U.S. Senators and Congressmen swap jobs for a few days let's say at an investment bank, or a commercial bank? 

Or given the current focus on the $25 billion "bailout" of the auto industry, say swap jobs at an auto company?

Of course at the end of their session at those companies, it'd be imperative that the government folks be laid off, for that right authentic flavor of living in the other party's shoes.