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Tel$tra, in their drive to become a competitive multi-national multi-media conglomerate, has replaced customer care with shareholder consideration. Along the way, their corporate management practises have become unhinged:

Sell$tra's Management Practises

Once upon a time, a very old and once respected Australian company and a new, progressive Chinese company decided to have a competitive boat race on the Parramatta River in Sydney. Both teams practiced hard and long to reach their peak performance. On the big day, they were as ready as they could be.

The Chinese team won by a mile.

Afterwards, the Australian team become discouraged by their loss and their morale sagged. Sell$tra management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A Continuous Measurable Improvement Team of "Executives" was set up to investigate the problem and recommend corrective action and a recovery programme.

Their conclusion: The problem was that the Chinese team had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, whereas the Australian team had 1 person rowing and 8 people steering. The Sell$tra Steering Committee immediately hired a consulting firm to study the management structure of the team.

After some time and tens of millions of dollars, the consulting firm concluded that "too many people were steering and not enough rowing". To prevent losing to the Chinese again the following year, the management structure was changed to "4 Steering Managers, 3 Area Steering Managers and 1 Staff Steering Manager" and a new performance reward system for the person rowing the boat to provide more incentive to work harder and become an "Excellent Rated" performer. "We must give him empowerment and enrichment". That ought to do it.

The next year the Chinese team won by two miles.

Sell$tra retrenched the rower for poor performance, sold all the oars, cancelled all capital investments for new equipment, halted development of a new canoe, awarded Special Recognition Awards to the consulting firm and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the Sell$tra senior executives.

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