A Japanese company and a North American company decided to have a canoe race on the St. Lawrence River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.
On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile. The North 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 Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the North American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. So, North 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.
To prevent another loss to the Japanese, 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 Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the North American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments in new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to India.
6 replies (most recent on top)
Agree on the team sizes. The managers have focused on team size as a measure of self worth for a decade or more. Especially in shared services. Constantly creating new positions every time something comes up. There is sooo much fat every where, most people hang out more than produce. It's not the ICs fault it's the managers. RIF them.
No one attacked the messenger they pointed out that its a duplicate post. Redundant. Same with the "attacking the messenger" post. REDUNDANT.
There he goes again posting the same thing on multiple strings. He's just so polloi smart. Smh.
@bv -when you attack the messenger and not the message --it means the message is probably true. Stay away from commenting as it makes you look stupid.
Why are you posting the same thing again? And honestly it doesn't, nearly EVERYTHING is sc--wed here but too many managers vs not enough doers isn't one of them. Half our departments have entire teams that should be one person's side task, we have too many people in most places, not just at the top.
Yawn. You've posted this before.