A MODERN PARABLE! A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (Ford) 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.
The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. 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 1 person rowing.
Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.
They advised, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.
Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the 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. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.
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 cancelled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India .
Here's something else to think about:
Ford has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages.
TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US. The last quarter's results:
TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while Ford racked up 9 billion in losses.
Ford folks are still scratching their heads.
IF THIS WEREN'T TRUE, IT MIGHT BE FUNNY !
__________________
Daisy and Disco Duck
Adelaide South Australia
Gotta Think Outside the Square!
Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my own pants.
If at First You Don't Succeed.......Redefine Success !!
It's a tragic demonstration of top-heavy executives gobbling up the profits instead of re-investing into the business. The customers spend their money to keep the cats fat. The shareholding cats get the milk and the executive cats pay themselves huge bonuses to take all the cream, as a reward for their efforts in making profits. The staff who take the money at the front counter and the customers who hand their money over to the staff at the front counter are only "the little people" who will never see reward for grass-roots effort at the shop front. The banks do it, Developers do it, and all the corporations do it. The label you see on the product may give no clue to the actual corporation which owns the label. What happened to reward for effort. Interest for our savings. Who made this world so crazy? We see it but we can't fix it.
__________________
20ft Roma caravan - Mercedes Benz Sprinter - SA-based at the moment. Transport has no borders.
Management makes the decisions, but is not affected by the decisions it makes.
It isn't always that these executives get bonuses for making profits. How many of them lately are getting huge payouts when they leave after making a big losses.?? Like I said in the thread title............Beats me??
-- Edited by Disco Duck on Thursday 1st of October 2009 12:15:39 PM
__________________
Daisy and Disco Duck
Adelaide South Australia
Gotta Think Outside the Square!
Now that food has replaced sex in my life, I can't even get into my own pants.
If at First You Don't Succeed.......Redefine Success !!
Maybe....but at least the American (and Australian) corporations at the end of the day created best fit synegetic strategies to benefit all the stakeholders going forward
