A Modern Story

A Japanese  company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford Motors) decided to have a paddling race on the most convenient big river near to them.  A huge amount of effort went into the preparation and both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performances before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a kilometer.

The Americans were very discouraged and depressed but were not about to give up. They decided to investigate the reason for their crushing defeat.  A special meeting was called where a unanimous decision determined that a management team made up of senior personnel needed to be formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

After much work the management team came to the conclusion that the reason for the overwhelming defeat was that the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 7 people steering and deciding on the course to be taken.  The rest of the crew, that is only 2 of the people, were rowing.

This result seemed to be inconclusive so the management team decided that a deeper study was in order. It was felt that all internal resources had been utilised and the obvious solution was the hiring of external consultants.   A management consulting company was hired and paid a large amount of money for a second opinion. The second opinion was duly presented by the management consultants. The findings were that there were far too many people steering the boat while not enough people were rowing.

The management team were not too sure what to do with this new information. Of course the main aim of this exercise was to prevent another large scale loss to the Japanese team. The management team puzzled around with the report presented by the consultants. Finally they decided to interpret the information in their own way.

The rowing team’s structure was totally reshuffled. Four members were appointed as steering supervisors, 2 became steering superintendents and 1 became assistant superintendent steering manager. There were still 2 people rowing. Over and above this a new performance system was put in place to provide greater incentive to the rowers to work harder. It became known as the ‘Rowing Team Quality First Program,’ with meetings, dinners and free T-shirts for the rowers.

The quality of the equipment was revisited. New paddles, canoes and training equipment was purchased. Extra vacation days were provided to allow for practices and bonuses were awarded against achieved targets. The pension program was trimmed to ‘equal the competition’ and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.

The next year the Japanese won by two kilometers.

Humiliated, the American management laid-off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investment for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the  Senior Executives as bonuses. The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even
finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India.

It seems the end is pretty close.

In real life Ford Motors has spent the last thirty years moving its factories out of the US, claiming they can’t make money paying American wages. During the same time Toyota has spent time building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The results: Toyota, although making less profits due to the economic climate, nevertheless managed to post $3.2b in net profits during August 2008 while Ford’s CEO is visiting Washington hoping to benefit from a US government bailout plan.

Ford folks are still scratching their heads, flying in private jets and collecting bonuses…

Thanks to the anonymous writer whose story was e-mailed to me. I hate not being able to acknowledge somebody else’s work. But I would imagine I was at least tenth down the line to receive this viral story.  And it was too good to not use it.  Subscribe to the RSS feed or my mailed newsletters. No spam though, promise.