Canoe Race

A Japanese 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 Japanese won by a mile. Afterward, the American team became every discouraged and morally depressed. The American management decided the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found.

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 American team had 8 people steering
and one person rowing.

So American management hired a consulting company and paid them an incredible amount of money. They advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the American 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. Even new paddles and medical benefit incentives were promised for a winner. We must give the rower the empowerment and enrichments through this quality program.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment.

The money saved was distributed to the senior executives as bonuses

Ha Ha Ha Ha, that's so flamin ridiculous! Of course no company would do anything so silly.... or would they? Unfortunately a look around Australia sees many of the large companies doing this sort of stuff, and it's not just the big companies.

Years ago I was screenprinting Tshirts, made OK money as I insisted on getting either a commission per shirt or piece rate. Went to work for one mob who had previously subbed everything out to another company, however profits were slipping and they decided they would print in house. They got me in to get things rolling, with the promise of more staff as orders grew. They had almost no materials so I ordered in a few thousand dollars worth of ink and other neccesities and got to work, churning out prints (and a few dollars for me along the way). I had a part time printer helping me about 15 hrs per week but for the first few weeks I was it.

Got a memo one day, A memo? , first time I ever saw one of those! It was to inform me that there was to be a staff meeting that afternoon(they could've told me, but no, I got a memo and a folder to keep all the "interoffice" correspondence in) Anyway, I went to the meeting and there were seven other people there, SEVEN! These seven people were managing, writing memos, despatching product, recieving stock, etc etc all that very neccesary but non income producing work. Then the meeting was called to order and I was informed that the purpose of the meeting was to explore ways in which productivity could be increased. My first thought was, well maybe we could sack most of you and get a few printers in and actually make some more money, but I bit my tongue and figured that this was not what they wanted to hear. So we went around and everybody put in their 2c worth (actually I think that was overvalueing it) on how they could improve their area. When they got around to me I was still so absolutely dumbfounded that I mumbled something pretty inane, as I thought , "hell if they can't see the problem they won't want to hear it from me."

I was there for a few months got another 2 printers and we were really churning the shirts out. Then I wandered up to the office/stock area one day and found that we'd been churning out thousands of shirts without actually having orders for them. There they all were, neatly folded and bagged, catalogued, sitting on shelves all sorted as to types of print, colours, sizes etc. We were producing ten times more than we were selling! Of course this couldn't last long and it didn't, I bailed out as I found another gig and the whole lot went belly up not much later. Sorry about the long winded rave, hadn't thought about it for years, but your joke just reminded me.:)

Mick

In my business, unfortunately that sort of thing is common place.

I was contracted to a certain financial institution about 4 years ago to help build a new system for managing one of their products. They had this old system that all the operators had been using for years and that they were quite happy with - it had problems but they knew it inside out.

Management had employed a consulting company to redesign their business from the ground up - this old system was one of the first things they got on their radar. One of their reasons for picking on it was because the consultants convinced them they could not only improve their own processes but they could also sell the resulting system to other companies.

They set to work, initially with a handful of employees who knew the old system. They redesigned it and then starting hiring for their project team. I came along near the beginning of the project (it had been running about 3 months by then). Every day, they hired someone new. At it's peak, there were 100 plus staff, including about 12 managers.

It started to run into problems, people were working 12 hours a day plus weekends. They employed more managers. The managers wanted to have meetings. Sometimes you'd get called to 2 or 3 meetings a day with different managers trying to sort out their own particular problems.

I started refusing to go:
"Why wont you come?".
"Because if I spend all my time in meetings, no work will get done, we'll be even further behind".
"You have to come".
"Fine but I'm not working on weekends to catch up and I wont ask anyone else to, either".

After nearly 3 years, the people for whom the system was being built decided that it was costing too much, wasn't what they wanted, and they preferred the old system anyway. The consulting company did their best to put a positive slant on it, but basically it was over budget, over schedule and not what the client had wanted. It was canned, all the contractors were laid off (I'd already left 6 months earlier) and it was never heard of again.

This was one of about 5 major projects running at the same time. This particular company has been in financial difficulties in recent years and they probably wonder why.

!@#$%^ Meetings!

At the end of 2001, I was sitting in a meeting listening to my boss rave on about the great things he was going to do in 2002, and it all got too much, knowing it would never happen, or if it did, we'd do the work & he'd grab any glory.

Walked out, booked into Sturt School for Wood in 2002.

Came back, none of the wonderful things had happened. Surprise!

After I came back, the first few times I was supposed to go to meetings, I said "Sorry, I don't do meetings", so they stopped inviting me. (you can get away when you've been there long enough to know where the bodies are buried).

Roll on August (& retirement), or VRs, whichever comes first!

Gentlemen ( and Others). Never get bored in meetings again..

go HERE :
http://www.perkigoth.com/home/kermit...bullshitbingo/


and experience the thrill of the meeting!

Kev

In a previous life in the public service we had meetings on a daily basis to try to resolve productivity of staff who spent too much time in meetings.
I found it somewhat difficult to contribute................
(I also received regular kickings when I did contribute, I found it difficult to be serious. These AK's took place at head office which was another half day wasted).
The joys of working for ones self.