1. The Race! A simple story about a race , A mirror on business And perhaps something to AVOID doing &

2. Some time ago, a boat race was organized between two competing organizations. One was a Swiss company lets name it Cow Co. Ltd, and the other one was Sempuma from Malaysia

3.

• Both teams worked very hard to get to top level

• When the day finally came where they could measure their strength, both were very optimistic

4. But the race was short and came to a surprising end , where the team from Malaysia won by more than one kilometer !!!

5. The morale was low at the Headquarters of Cow & Co in Switzerland. Nobody understood such a huge difference.

6. Top Management decided that the causes MUST be identified

7. A project team was set up, to identify the cause and to suggest corrective measures if needed

8. After weeks of discussions, the project team came to the following findings:

• The Malaysian team included seven rowing officers and one steering executive

• In the Swiss team there was one single rowing officer and seven steering executives

9. The top Management reacted immediately and hired external Consultants to conduct an in-depth analysis on the Swiss teams structure

10. Some months and many 10000 Swiss Francs later, the Consultants came to following conclusion:

• Too many team-members had been steering

• Too few of them had been involved in moving the boat

11. The Top Mangement reacted in a radical way and restructured the whole team as follows:

• ... Four steering executives

• Two senior steering managers

• One steering directors

• One rowing officer

12. Additionally, they implemented a sophisticated Performance evaluation system to motivate the one rower . The top Management said :

• We must enrich his responsibilities to make his job more interesting and therefore get the best out of him

13. The next year came and a second race was organized

• The result was cruel. The Asian team won again This time by TWO Kilometers

14. The consequence of such a heavy blow:

15.

• The top management sacked the one rower because of bad performance !!!

• The equipment was all sold and all new related investments were frozen

• The Consultants were praised for doing a great job

• The money that was not invested was distributed among the top management and the steering committee

16. A metaphoric presentation by The mirror of the economic world Visit us @ www.prasena.com and ask for our change management audit with risk analysis and concrete suggestions for solutions based on the concept of the eMatrix [email_address]