Sunday Funnies: Big business & recession fatigue support cynicism


Hampton School crew team The following story came to me this week from a reader who's sentiments may be shared by a lot folks. If I am the last one on the planet to have seen it and it has been circulating around the web for a long time, please excuse my redundancy.

The story pokes fun at business bureaucracy, mismanagement, corporate fairness, employee relations and more. Finding this type of story more often in your in-box displays a kind of recession fatigue and growing cynicism.

A foreign company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the foreign company won by a mile. The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the foreign team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised that too many people were steering the boat while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the foreigners, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the "Rowing Team Quality First Program," with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the foreign team won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, eliminated the rower's past entitlements, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, canceled all capital investments for new equipment and closed canoe plants. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.

This story reminds me more of government everywhere than big business, except for the bonuses, which might be an understatement. Does this remind you of any company you know of, or management team? Are you working somewhere you think just does not get it? Seems this would be equally true in a socialist dominated economy.

Sheldon Liber is the CEO of a small private investment company and the principal for design and research at an architecture & planning firm. He writes the columns Chasing Value and Serious Money.

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Last updated: February 13, 2012: 04:13 AM

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