Canoe Race Toyota vs GM
 

A friend just sent me this joke:

A Japanese company ( Toyota ) and an American company (GM) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.

The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat. A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.

Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion.

They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing.

Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents, and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager.

They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners, and free pens for the rower.. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India .

Sadly.............. The End.

Here's something else to think about:
GM has spent the last thirty years moving all its factories out of the US , claiming they can't make money paying American wages.

TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US . The last quarter's results:

TOYOTA makes 4 billion in profits while GM racked up 9 billion in losses.

GM folks are still scratching their heads.

IF THIS WEREN'T TRUE, IT MIGHT BE FUNNY.

'Cept that's not the way it really happened. You see, they've been having these canoe races for years. Back in the beginning, the canoes were pretty much the same - the Japanese one was kind of dinky, the American one had a better paint job and some chrome trim - and the Americans won by a good distance.

So the Japanese started working on hydrodynamics, while the Americans figured that they needed room for a bigger beer cooler, and the next year the race was closer. The Japanese worked on training their paddlers, the Americans added club seats, a GPS navigation unit, and a DVD player...

And to cut the story short, the efficient Japanese canoe won the race, because the Americans' fancy bass boat ran out of gas and left them stranded in the middle of the lake, with a storm coming on.

stories
 

Need to get you all on Prairie Home Companion radio show! It would help us all make it through this winter.

I copied the first post of this as a quote over to another forum that I'm a member of: Redpepperracing.com

I hope this doesn't offend anyone, but I thought, since we had a similar Big3 discussion over there, they'd like to see it as well.

Proper credit has been given in that thread, located here:http://www.redpepperracing.com/forum...dpost&p=420245

Jez, I wouldnt worry about the plagiarisms... I just noticed someone else had posted this on cleanmpg a couple of days before me....

I like to make sure everyone is cool with it, though.