A Modern American Fairy Tale

Once upon a time, a Japanese car company and an American car 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.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. They formed an ad hoc committee comprised of members of Senior Management to investigate and recommend appropriate action. They issued a 546 page report, noting the Japanese used 8 people to row the canoe and 1 person to steer the canoe. The American team used 8 people to steer their canoe and 1 person, with extraordinary credentials, to row.

Upon reviewing the 546 page report with accompanying power point slides, the American Senior Management team recommended the services of a Consulting Firm recommended by the United States Government comprised completely of Six Sigma Black Belts. They paid the consulting firm a large amount of money for their expertise.

Six months later, after reviewing all available information collected by sub-committees, the consultants advised that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. The American company thanked them for their services during a celebration and re-engineering kickoff broadcast across the company.

The American company announced they had arrived at an aggressive solution to defeating the Japanese company in the upcoming rematch, now less than 5 months away. The CEO of the American company announced the following: to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure had been reorganized into 3 steering supervisors, 1 area steering superintendent, 1 publicity manager, 1 Human Resource diversity coordinator, 1 union representative (per the union contract), and 1 rower.

Additionally, he announced the implementation of a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to achieve greater productivity called the "Rowing Team Quality First Program" (RTQFP). This included a lunch with the CEO and a free company pen for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and performance-tied bonuses, but that decision was held up in committee.

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 from all sales and all forecasted moneys saved from further competition was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.

The End.

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