Project management and management from the intercultural perspective
© Copyright Frank D. Kanu 2000-2008
This e-mail was forwarded to me today:
Technorati (All Links are external): acknowledgment author unknown boat race consulting company executive committees great day japanese company mail one person performance evaluation system project management rhine upper management business it leadership management something funny
This e-mail was forwarded to me today:
Author unknown - but it should be thoroughly read in the executive committees and from all managers…
BIG COMPANY AGAINST THE JAPANESE
Some time ago Big Company and a Japanese company arranged that each year they should have a boat race over 1000 meters on the Rhine. Both teams trained long and hard to reach their full efficiency. Finally the great day is there and both teams are topfit. The Japanese win clearly with a lead of 400 meters.
After this defeat the Big Company team was very depressed and the moral was on a never before seen low. The upper management decided that everything had to be done to find the reason for this destroying defeat. They created a project team to examine the problem and come up with solutions.
They came up with this: The problem was that the Japanese had one person steering and 8 people pulling, where Big Company had 8 people steering and one person pulling.
The upper management immediately reacted: A consulting company got hired to create a study of the structure of the team. After spending some millions and quite a few month they came up with their recommendations: To many are steering and not enough are pulling.
To avoid another loss against the Japanese the structure of the team was changed. Now they have 4 people to steer, 3 lead steerers and one director of steering.
A performance evaluation system was introduced to stimulate the man who has to pull more and become a major player in his field. — We have to extend his working field to give him more responsibility. This will do it!!
The next year the Japanese win with an 800 meter lead.
Big Company fired the puller for his bad work, sold the boat and stopped all investment in new equipment and the developments on the boat.
The consulting company got a praising acknowledgment for their work and the money saved was paid as bonus to the upper management.
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09:50 on Monday, July 25th, 2005