Three Stories One Moral

Story 1: Fly

We all must have seen a fly trapped in a room ! If it reaches a glass window it continues to flutter at the glass, trying to escape. It does not think there can be other openings in the room to escape!

Story 2 : Salesman

Once there was a sales man whose sales ranged between 80% to 95% of his budget. Disheartened with the results, he took an appointment with a marketing consultant, to know where he was wrong. He reached the consultant’s office at the appointed time. After entering the office he saw two doors, instead of a receptionist. One door was marked “SALES LESS THAN 100%” and the other door was marked “SALES MORE THAN 100%”. Since his average sale was less than 100%, he entered to the Ist door. After entering the room he found two more doors – one was marked “EARN INCENTIVES” and the other door was marked “NOT EARN INCENTIVES”. Since he did not earn incentive on regular basis, he entered the 2nd door. He again found two doors, one was marked “HAPPY WITH YOUR SELF” and the other was marked “NOT HAPPY WITH YOUR SELF”. Since he was not an achiever, he was not happy and so entered the 2nd door. And surprisingly on entering it he found himself on the same street where he had entered.

Morale of these two stories

If we continue to work with same attitude and with same approach, if our style of functioning remains the same, if we take same steps then we will meet the same fate. Similar actions again and again will lead to similar results, again and again. To get different or desired results : we have to bring about a change in our attitude, in our approach towards our customer, bring about a change in our style of functioning, thus we must open different doors.

Story 3: Bees and Flies

If you put an equal number of bees and flies in a glass bottle and keep the bottle horizontally with the open end away from the light, the bees will not be able to get out of the bottle while the flies will. The reason being, bees are quite smart and know that opening must be the place from which light is visible. They do not understand the glass and hence keep banging against it. However, the flies are quite ignorant of all this intellectual reasoning and therefore fly hither and thither and discover the opening quite by chance and fly off to freedom.

The bees' own intelligence is its' undoing.

Are there too many bees doing Strategy formulation in Companies and not enough flies?

"In times of transitions, the question itself is the answer"