Really?...no, from the lighter side...

"Spirit in the Workplace developments, Atlanta"

A not well known, private, employee owned Midwest company was challenged by a famous multibillion Wall Street conglomerate to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. At stake was the smaller company's reputation and its product quality image given a marketing public relations campaign set in place by the Madison Avenue goliath.

Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the little known Midwest team won by a mile!.

The Wall Street team, very discouraged and full of ire, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of strictly inner circle senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. After less than 1 hour of deep discussion and deliberation, their conclusion was the competition had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while their team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. Not happy with such a ridiculous and slighting recommendation, the Wall Street Board got involved and hired a top notch consulting company owned by one of its most respectable members, and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. After a long and protracted period of time during which the consulting company was assembling its consulting team, The Board saw the need of rescheduling the competition for the upcoming year, so as to provide the time necessary for the consultants to do the appropriate analysis and recommendations.

The consultants' Executive Summary also warned that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing!.

So, to prevent another humiliating loss, the rowing team's structure was totally reorganized to 4 Strategic Steering EVP's, 3 Area Steering Directors, and 1 Superintendent of Steering Operations. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the "Rowing Team Quality First Program", "Row - T QFP" for short. with motivational training meetings, an exhaustive 2 week program management certification training, and dinners with the Board and the CEO respectively, with free pens in a company mug - so as to meet the no tax liability rule - for the rower. The HR group, a close partner to management and intent on getting closer to the Board, recommended a strategy discussion of getting new carbon fiber paddles, a recent NASA research foam for its canoes and other equipment, and were able to allot extra vacation days to be used solely for practices and team training.

The next year the Midwest team won, not by one, but by two miles!

Humiliated, the Board started a Management shake up, but first laid off the rower for poor performance, started a self-defense lawsuit process to prevent any forthcoming grievance suits, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and cancelled all capital investments for new equipment. The money thus saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as performance bonuses and the next year's racing team, already under intense training, was - given that time was of essence - outsourced to India.