A Modern Parable
I recently received this funny story in an email from a friend:
A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (Ford Motors) 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 managementwas 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 7 people steering and 2 people 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, of course, 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, 2 area steering superintendents and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.
They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 2 people 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 rowers. There was discussion of getting new paddles,
canoes and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses. The pension program was trimmed to ‘equal the competition’ and some of the resultant savings were channeled into morale boosting programs and teamwork posters.
The next year the Japanese won by two miles.
Humiliated, the American management laid-off one rower, halted development of a new canoe, sold all the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses. The next year, try as he might, the lone designated rower was unable to even finish the race (having no paddles,) so he was laid off for unacceptable performance, all canoe equipment was sold and the next year’s racing team was out-sourced to India.
Sadly, the End.
Here’s something else to think about: Ford has spent the last thirty years moving 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, and collecting bonuses… and now they want a bail out!
IF THIS WEREN’T SO TRUE IT MIGHT BE FUNNY
Revised Header Design
We’ve revised the top header for all pages and changed the color scheme a bit.
First, the “Survivor of the Day” feature is going bye-bye. While it was cool, it didn’t really say a whole lot. Now, we’re going to feature a new Survivor who is active in the community, about once a week.
Second, we’re putting the top community stock picks, and the best trade from yesterday in the top header.
Lastly, we’re emphasized how many people have actually won a lot of money on the site! In a little over a year, we’ve given away over $152,000 to 441 winners. We might as well emphasize that we do PAY OUT and we’re not a scam.
Here’s how the new top header will look throughout the site, around August 1st:
New Video Channels
We are now offering 3 new free video channels to watch:
Let us know if you’d like to watch other types of video content like Technology news, Health news, etc.
Happy Birthday Big Guy
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This past week marked our CEO’s birthday. “The Big Guy” doesn’t like to make a big deal about these things and even tried to let this one slip under the radar. Sorry Rory, no such luck. For those of you who don’t know, our CEO’s rock and roll roots run deep. The picture above is from a recent performance with his band Who Cares at the Maimonides: Battle of the Bands held at the Metropolis. The event was part of an annual charity fund raising effort which raised over $300,000 for Maimonides, a local eldercare facility. Happy Birthday Rory. Keep it real.
