The Ant - A Fable ..... Or May be not .....

[Guest guest]

Every day a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately.

She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without

supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision,

would not she produce even more if she has a supervisor!

So he recruited a cockroach who had extensie experience as supervisor and who

was famous for writing excellent reports. The cockroach's first decision was to

set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him

write and type his reports and he recruited a spider, who managed the archives

and monitored all phone calls.

The lion was delighted with the cockroach's reports and asked him to produce

graphs to describe production rates and to analyse trends, so that he could use

them for presentations at Board's meetings.

So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruited a

fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of

paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time ...!

Thelion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in

charge of the department where the ant worked.

The position was given to the musquito, whose first decision was to buy a carpet

and an ergonomic chair for his office. The new person in charge, the musquite,

also needed a computer and a personal assistant, who he brought from his

previous department, to help him prepare Work and Budget Control Strategic

Optimisation Plan.

The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs

anymore and everybody has become upset ...

It was at that time that the musquito convinced the boss, the lion, of the

absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment.

Having reviewed the charges for running the ant's department, the lion found out

that the production was much less than before. She he recruited the owl, a

presitious and renowed consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions.

The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous

report, in several volumes, that concluded: " The department is overstaffed... "

Guess who the lion fires first?

The anot, of course, because she " showed lack of motivation and had a negative

attitude " .

NB: The characters in this fable are fictitious; any resemblance to real people

or facts within the Cororation is pure coincidence....

(Taken from Ideas Exchange, July 2009)