Ray Evans Harrell wrote:
>
> Sounds like all of those meetings I used to go to in the Army and mirrored
> in the civil service. Do you suppose it is a "dumb" virus that is caught
> when organizations get a certain size?
>
> What kind of animal could you imagine them turning into?
I really do wonder how sick they are with
a particular ethno-virus, and how much they
are pretending to be infected "for their own good",
since there are no jobs for one-eyed persons in the
land of the blind (no work no eat, etc.).
Maybe they are bourgeois economics' hypothetical perfectly
elastic rational self-interest calculating
monads -- I forget the precise epithet by which
they are called in free-marketese is it:
homoeconomicus ???
We do know that, in crowds, grasshoppers physiologically
mutate to become "locusts" ("plague of" constituents),
which not only behave differently than their
sparsely dwelling biological kin, but also
anatomically *are* different. Crowding has
more than "esthetic" effects.
But you are probably talking about the large
fur bearing animals that go through
long narrowing "funnels" in
livestock slaughterhouse lots (the design of
these has recently been optimized by
some famous autistic university professor
lady whose name i forget, but last week's
New York Timed Magazine feature stork on
the American beef industry has the details). I forget
these animals' name, too, but I don't think it
rhymes with Deming???
Cheers!
\brad mccormick
>
> REH
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Brad McCormick, Ed.D." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: "Thomas Lunde" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 8:34 PM
> Subject: A story (true or not)
>
> > Once upon a time there was a company that was all
> > gung ho and lean and mean to beat the competition
> > and make big profits and succeed, succeed, succeed!
> > Rah! Rah! Go us! Cut costs (including low level
> > employee salary costs, while staffing up
> > upper management!)! Maximize revenues! --You
> > know it all. Profits are the raison de etre for
> > business, right? And this company was all into it!
> >
> > Well, one day the company held an "all hands meeting".
> > (Actually, the company has several of these
> > each year, but this was only one of them, but
> > they are all indistinguishable from one another.)
> >
> > All the employees had to attend. And the top
> > executives droned on and on -- while
> > smiling and looking satisfiedly into each
> > other's eyes when they were not seriously
> > lecturing to the "all hands" -- about past successes and
> > future challenges to be met -- ever onward and
> > ever harder.... There must have been nnn employees
> > there, all getting increasingly bored, as the
> > top executives kept trying between themselves to
> > say something more so that the meeting would
> > never end. One person multiplied heads by
> > cost per person hour and figured the meeting
> > cost the company probably about $100 x nnn.
> >
> > Finally, came employee recognition
> > time! (No, the meeting was not
> > over yet!) A couple of the top managers got
> > special awards for exhibiting leadership
> > (or, although it was called leadership,
> > in one case it sounded more like martyrdom).
> > One lowly employee thought to him or herself
> > that giving special awards to the top leaders
> > for being top leaders really didn't accomplish
> > anything, since the people who need to be
> > motivated to lead are the lower level people, and
> > if the top leaders aren't leading, what use are they
> > any way, so why reward them for doing what
> > they are supposed to do?
> >
> > ....
> >
> > Of course, after more than an hour, the meeting finally
> > ended and everybody got to do what they had been
> > wanting to do for an hour -- anything else but
> > sitting there and wasting their time. Because,
> > of course, while on the one hand,
> > the information the executives told
> > them did not include the company tactical and
> > strategic secrets, on the other hand, it
> > does not contain the details which will
> > focus each employee's work, either. It's neither the
> > forest nor the trees -- just a kind of
> > fog or maybe underbrush....
> >
> > And one employee thought that this showed what
> > the real motivation of business is: "Profits" are
> > used as an excuse for the top managers to do
> > get opportunities to preen -- to do things
> > like get up in front of lots of employees and
> > have the employees worship their [the
> > execs'] golden words about being lean and mean
> > and making profits.
> >
> > Let's face it -- nobody sells anybody anything
> > by droning on and on and feeling smug in him or
> > herself about it. If profits were *really* the
> > goal, the executives would have boiled it all
> > down and presented "the net" to the employees,
> > in a really intersting "hard hitting"
> > key facts and what they mean in
> > 25 words or less meeting that would
> > have kept them on their seats' edge in rapt
> > attention, instead of staring off in space,
> > rolling their eyes, whispering to each other, etc.
> >
> > And all the other material would be available
> > in a hierarchically organized way (like the first
> > sentence of a news story tells you what it's all about,
> > and the first sentence of each paragraph summarizes
> > its paragraph, etc.), on the company
> > Intranet. And the leadership awards would
> > have gone to individuals in non-leadership
> > positions who took initiative far beyond their
> > tightly circumscribed job descriptions, and
> > thereby really did make money for the company
> > beyond what they got paid.
> >
> > --
> >
> > My father was a sales manager. He was pleased
> > when any of his selesmen earned *more* than
> > he did.
> >
> > \brad mccormick
> >
> > --
> > Let your light so shine before men,
> > that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
> >
> > Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
> >
> > <![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > -----------------------------------------------------------------
> > Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
