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.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), the world's largest computer manufacturer, has launched the second phase of its "Happy People" campaign in its U.K. offices, according to the company. The program with the trite name has the goal of making its U.K. offices a happier and more productive place to work.

Well that's not a new concept, except for what I believe are CEO Mark Hurd's efforts to cut a bunch of fat from the decision-making layers and real-time information that has really helped HP ascend to the top of the tech world in the last 24 months. In fact, I'll go on record and say that Hurd's obsession with fine-tuning -- in every possible way -- the world's largest tech company is directly responsible for its recent success. Forget the recent "HP Way" -- it's "Hurd's Way," and it's something other companies should pay attention to, regardless of Six Sigma involvement and other business buzzphrases that grab headlines.

Under the Happy People campaign, the focus is to identify the consequences of inefficient paperwork and unnecessary administration. In other words, toss the red tape and enable your employees to be the professionals they are (or should be). In Hurd's mind, using technology to automate, simplify or reduce paperwork is his mantra -- one he's mentioned several times in recent quarterly conference calls as one of the top areas to attack for gaining competitive advantage. A nice side effect is that is leads to increases in employee morale and productivity, according to the company.

Of course it does! Nobody wants to work in an inefficient environment in the information age. The problem is that millions still do.

For 16 years I worked directly with French and British portfolio managers advising them on their U.S. stock portfolios. I visited Paris and London on more than 225 separate trips during that period. My mother was born and raised in France, her father, a captain in the French army was killed in World War II. My own father was educated at a French medical school and I had the privilege of spending several summers as a youth in Southern France. Through all this, I learned to adore the country and in another, sense feel sorry for it.

The French way of life is truly embodied in the joie de vivre. The work ethic in France has always been "do your job, but no more," and forget overtime work -- its not the money, its the infringement on free time. A person starts a new job and is instantly granted 5-6 weeks of vacation. The French medical and pension system is among the most generous in the world. My own mother worked exactly for three months in a temporary agency in 1954, left for the United States with my dad, a newly minted physician. She became an American citizen, and yet when she turned 65, she was informed that she qualified for a French pension. She was flabbergasted to learn that the French government was depositing $175 per month in her American checking account . She did not earn a cumulative total of $175 in her three-month temp career! When she inquired she was told that "you are entitled! You were born here!" She felt so guilty that her monthly deposit was immediately given to charity.

The months of July and August are renown for the French vacance -- vacation. I dealt with portfolio managers that took five weeks off in a row, which is great work if you can get it, but no one backed up or watched their portfolios. I remember asking several of them what if there was an emergency on one of the stocks they held? The common response was, it will have to wait.