How a Rowing Team's Reorganization Led to Disaster
Beware Management Consultants
A humorous parable from Iceland supermarket's website illustrates the absurdity of over-management. After losing a race, a team hires consultants who recommend restructuring the losing team with more captains and managers. The next year, they lose by an even larger margin, fire the rower, and outsource the rowing to India. The story satirizes corporate reorganization and the consulting industry.
The consulting company prepared a new analysis of the restructuring activity, which showed that the strategy was good, the motivation was great, the restructuring was executed correctly, but the tool used (which was not included in the original data) was sub-standard and had to be improved.