Me, myself and Alvin

November 2, 2004

Hey I just read this, quite interesting :) Cheers

Singapore and China agreed to hold an annual Dragon Boat race to reflect good ties of both nation. A Dragon Boat team is being created by two nations specifically for this annual event. Each team should contain 21 men. Both teams worked really hard to get in the best shape.On the day of the first race, both teams were in similar condition. The Chinese team won by 1 mile. The mood in the Singapore team was really close to freezing point.


The top management decided to win the race next year. So they established a team of analysts to observe the situation and recommend an appropriate solution.After several weeks of detailed analysis, the team found out that Chinese had 20 rowers and only one captain. And the Singapore team had 20 captains and only one rower. Facing such critical scenario the management showed an unexpected wisdom: they hired a consulting company to restructure the Singapore team.

After several months the consultants came to the conclusion that there were too many captains and too few rowers in the Singapore team.A solution was proposed based on this analysis: the structure of the Singapore team has to be changed! As of today, beside the 1 rower, there will be only 17 captains in the team now and to be led by 1 prime captain, who will be consult by 1 senior captain, and be advise by 1 mentor captain. Besides that, they suggested to improve the rower’s working environment and offer a reward and recognition scheme. They also emphasized the training program more on the rower to increase his productivity.

The next year, the Chinese team won by 2 miles. The Singapore team management immediately sacked the rower from the team based on his unsatisfactory performance. But a bonus was paid to the management for the strong leadership and motivation the team showed during the preparation phase. The consulting company prepared a new analysis, which showed that the strategy was good, the motivation was O.K. but the problem is that Singapore don't produce good and cheap rower like China, and the equipment used was sub-standard and had to be improved.

Currently the Singapore team management is having a new boat designed and has advertised in China to try import a new rower from there.

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