Thursday 21 February 2008

Motivations?

I read this in an email forward and found it funny... the best part of the humour below been at least there was some planning ;)

--------------***************----------------------
Once upon a time, a British company and a Japanese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the River Thames. The Japanese won by a mile.

The British firm became very discouraged and morale sagged. Senior Management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found and a project team was set up to investigate the problem and recommend the appropriate action.

Their conclusion: the Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering. The British team had one person rowing and eight people steering. Senior Management immediately hired a consultant company to do a study of the British team's structure. Millions of pounds and several months later they concluded that too many people were steering and not enough rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese next year, the team structure was changed to four 'Steering Managers', three 'Senior Steering Managers' and one 'Executive Steering Manager'. A performance and appraisal system was set up to give the person rowing the boat more incentive to work harder and become a key performer.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles. The Executive Steering Manager of the British companywas heard to say: "Next year that lazy SOB is going to have to row a lot harder!" But his underlings laid off the rower for poor performance, sold off the oars, cancelled all capital investment for new equipment and halted development of a new boat. They gave high performance awards to the consultants and distributed the money saved to Senior Management.

--------------***************----------------------

0 comments:

Post a Comment