Successories: Meet Suck-Lessories

I have nothing against motivation. But I’m not sure it how effectively it can be delivered with a wall poster. I had this sneaky feeling that that poster with the soaring eagle in a blue mist sky and the word “Excellence” floating on a black border had more of a negative effect than the HR department had planned on.

I thought maybe we can could ask people to think about what motivates them, instead of telling them what should. I took a look at the 500-pound gorilla of the motivational material business, Successories, and thought, there’s got to be another way to look at this.

Then it occurred to me, maybe there’s room in the HR art market for an anti-motivational line. A self-aware series of messages that will crack a smile, and get people to put their work lives in perspective. We started developing the concepts you see here. Images and messages that say, “In most of what you do at work, OK is good.

First, I thought, let’s call it “Suck Less-ories”, but then thought, no, probably will get a cease-and-desist before you can say “optimism.” Then I thought, what exactly are we asking of our employees: to care about what your doing here at work, but not to sacrifice your life your us.

As I looked for a suitable name, the idea that being mediocre, being OK, was not a bad thing in many aspects of life. It was just meant to be that, while mediocre.com was not available, medioker.com was… and, wait a minute, it has OK right in there!