What does the boss say?
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The folks in Systems & Procedures at Mayo Clinic are innovators and problem solvers. So it's no surprise that when faced with the challenge of properly recognizing the division's "80-some" staff for the work they do, its leaders felt the need for more than your average "thank you."
As S&P Unit Head Julie Yost tells us, "We thought, 'How do we even begin to talk about all that they've accomplished? So we said, 'You know, let's just do something crazy.'"
Mission … accomplished.
That "something crazy" took the form of a very entertaining video parody of the YouTube sensation "What does the fox say?" The appropriately titled, "What does the boss say?" was created by Yost and her fellow unit heads on their own time (read: nights and weekends; also read: without the use of any Mayo resources) as a way to say "thank you" to employees for the "ton of work" that gets piled on them throughout the year. "Nicole Blegen said it best: 'The hardest thing we do is try to recognize our employees, and we can never do it well enough,'" Yost tells us.
To make it all happen, Yost says she took to the halls of the S&P offices with her husband's video camera and asked those lucky enough to be in her path to say random words without telling them why or what she was doing. And they did , although Yost says they did so somewhat cautiously. "They'd say, 'Julie, what am I'm getting myself into?' And I'd just say, 'Oh, don't worry about that.' So really, no one knew what was going on."
That is until they saw the finished video at the division meeting. Then everyone had a laugh, according to Yost. "It was their own bosses, so they were like, 'Okay, just how insane are these people?' But I think it's nice when managers can show their human side."
Along with Yost's cinematography, Blegen was musical director (she found a $1.99 karaoke version of the song to use for their parody), Carrie Macken gets credit for lyrical styling, and Yost edited the video. "This was our own little project." The only outside resources they did use, Yost says, were the services of a Rochester recording studio to make it all sound, well, nice. "We all chipped in $10 and went over there and recorded our voices on the karaoke version of the song," she says. The final result … well, you can see it for yourself here or watch the embedded video below.
This isn't S&P's first foray into viral videos. You may recall the I've Been Everywhere, Man parody the S&P "house band" premiered during a meeting back in 2012 that made it all the way to Mayo's Board of Trustees. (Man, we're in the wrong meetings)
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