Some good articles
Is this a bit exaggerated ?
8 February 2010 by James Hale - © Hellmail.co.uk
I apologise, with tongue in cheek, for what I can only describe as ‘plagiarism’, but thought that this was so, so apt that I had to remove it from the notice board I observed it on and just could not suppress the urge to reproduce and share it with one and all! I have inserted, changed , taken out some of the wording in an attempt to entertain, but really, ‘Who cares?’, read, laugh, cry or comment, so here goes : -
‘Following a challenge thrown out by Deutsche Poste to Royal Mail, it was agreed that both organisations take part in an annual canoe race on the river Thames. Both teams, having a great desire to prove that they were the best, practised long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.
On the big day the German team won by a mile. Following this humiliating defeat, the Royal Mail team became extremely discouraged and depressed. Royal Mail Management therefore decided, following some protracted meetings, that the reason for such a crushing defeat had to be found to avoid annihilation at the following year’s event.
A ‘Measurement team’ made up of senior management was formed with an instruction to investigate the obvious problems and recommend appropriate action. After several months, this team concluded that the reasons for defeat were simple; the Germans had 8 people rowing with only 1 steering, whilst Royal Mail had only 1 person rowing and 8 steering.
Groundbreaking revelations, so the Royal Mail Measurement Team hired, at tremendous cost, a consulting company to come up with a solution. They duly confirmed that in their opinion the Royal Mail team had too many people steering the boat and not enough people actually rowing.
To prevent losing to the Germans again, it was agreed that the teams structure be re-organised so that there were now only 4 steering supervisors. Regarding the remaining 4 steering personnel, 1 was re-graded to an Assistant Steering Superintendent and the other 3 promoted to Steering Superintendents. A further recommendation that was implemented was a new performance system that was envisaged would give the 1 person rowing the boat, under the direction of the others, greater incentive to work/row harder. This prestige incentive was entitled the ‘Rowing Team Quality First Programme’ with meetings, dinners, socials and free pens for the rower. The strap line for this imitative was ‘We must give the rower empowerment and enrichment through this quality programme.
The day of the race arrived. Guess what, the Germans won by 2 miles.
Humiliated, Royal Mail management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles and cancelled all capital investment for new projects. They then gave a ‘High Performance Award’ to the steering managers and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.’
Sound familiar?