The Brilliance of Corporate America!

[liberalhistorian]

I finally received something in my work email that wasn't a wingnut rant, and thought you'd all get a kick out of it. My boss sure did!

An American automobile company and a Japanese auto company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Detroit River. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be.

The Japanese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became discouraged by the loss and their morale sagged. Corporate management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and to recommend appropriate corrective action.

Their conclusion: The problem was that the Japanese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the American team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. The American Corporate Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to do a study on the management structure.

After some time and billions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing." To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers, and 1 Staff Steering Manager", and a new performance system for the person rowing the boat to give more incentive to work harder and become a six sigma performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment." That ought to do it.

The next year, the Japanese team won by TWO miles.

The American Corporation laid off the rower for poor performance, sold all of the paddles, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded high performance awards to the consulting firm, and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives!!!

[Brucey]

1. I love it. Is it a true story?

[liberalhistorian]

2. I'm not sure, I just got it as

an email from a co-worker who'd gotten it from a friend. It sounds like a parody, but with corporations being what they are, who knows! If it isn't true, it sure is dead-on as to what happens in most corporations.

[JHB]

6. I doubt it...

...it sounds like a leftover "Japan does it better" management story from the 80's, before their "bubble economy" burst.

It probably survived because of its Dilbertesque particulars.

[Kat45]

7. I think I saw that story a long time ago

Either that or a very similar story--so I'm guessing it's probably a joke, but it's certainly a really good one.

[cprise]

3. Would have been better

...if it ended with outsourcing (and still loosing!).

[cosmicdot]

8. kinda on the lines of ... they outsourced everything to (i.e.,India) ...

and, the next year, the Japanese won by default ... the Americans were no-show ...

[DulceDecorum]

4. Ther is a fellow

who makes these very elaborate whirligig type of toys whereby you roll a crank and everything moves.
He has work in the Smithsonian.
In one model he made an entire assembly line and if memory serves, there were 138 figures in it. All but two appeared to be working nineteen to the dozen when the crank was moved. Two figures, however, remained absolutely still.
"That's management," he explained. "They never do any work."

[liberalhistorian]

5. LOL!

That pretty much describes most of the management I've ever endured-uh, excuse me, worked under. Except for my current boss, who's fantastic (gotta kiss a lot of toads to get to the prince, I guess).

[zbdent]

9. Reminds me of Schick - while your story must be a joke

it's not a joke that Schick decided, after a humongous amount of R & D money (I recall the figure being half a billion), they decided that you get a better shave with three blades instead of two.

(Funny, I feel that, with a single blade, if I miss a spot, I go over it again. I'm never in that big of a hurry when I have to shave to be there!)

Now, there's a patent/copyright infringement lawsuit (read: frivolous, but you'll never hear that when it's a corporation suing a single individual!) where X maker of razors is suing Y maker of razors because Y maker of razors decided that you'd get a better shave with four blades instead of three. Mind you, apparently X maker had already filed for that design.

(After hearing about this lawsuit, I remembered the SNL parody TV commercial with a razor with 27 blades - each blade snipped a tiny bit more off the beard left from the previous blade.)