Social Commentary

For John, BLUF:  Managers and workers.

This was sent to me by my youngest Brother, with the title "Workplace Diversity", but it may be about organizational structure.

DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE

Recently, a large corporation hired several cannibals to increase their diversity.  "You are all part of our team now," said the Human Resources rep. during the welcoming briefing.  "You get all the usual benefits and you can go to the cafeteria for something to eat, but please don't eat any employees." The cannibals promised they would not.

Four weeks later their boss remarked, "You're all working very hard and I'm satisfied with your work.  We have noticed a marked increase in the whole company's performance. However, one of our administrative assistants has disappeared.  Do any of you know what happened to her?"

The cannibals all shook their heads "No."

After the boss had left, the leader of the cannibals said to the others, "Which one of you idiots ate the administrative assistant?"  A hand rose hesitantly.  "You fool!" the leader continued.  "For four weeks we've been eating managers and no one noticed anything.  But NOOOOO, you had to go and eat someone who actually does something."

I liked it.

This is the Brother who complained to me, a couple of decades ago, about having to go to a diversity training session where the instructor made the point that we had to learn how to work as a culturally diverse population, so we could compete with the Japanese—the Japanese, which is one of the least diverse populations on the face of this earth.  Actually, having a culturally diverse population might be a strength, if we can learn to take advantage of the alternative ideas in such a population, but on the face off it, it doesn't seem like a good way to compete with a monolith such as Japan.  Success in such a situation does require a certain commonality of goals.

Regards  —  Cliff