Satirical reality of how we are (and being led by?)
Is Singapore being run in this way?
By Ravindra Rai♂
A Japanese company and a Singaporean company decided to have a dragon boat race on the Singapore River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.
On the big day, the Japanese won by 5 boat lengths. The Sinkies, 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 Sinkie team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing. So, the Sinkie 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.
To prevent another humiliation by 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 10 boat lengths.
Humiliated, the Sinkie management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments in new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year’s racing team was outsourced to India.
A committee of enquiry was formed to understand why, despite the sophisticated restructuring and subsequent outsourcing, Sinkie team keep getting worse. 6 months later the COI present their findings and the conclusion was: there is no evidence which suggest the decision to outsource was a wrong one. Winning and losing is part of life. Despite losing 15 boat length, we still rank 154, which puts us ahead of 45 other countries.The next year, the racing team which was outsourced to India was beaten by the Japanese team by 15 boat lengths.