A Fable for Adults …

Every day, a worker bee awoke early and started work immediately.  What she did was personally rewarding and for the benefit of the community. She was productive and she was happy. Her boss, an elderly forager bee, was surprised to see that the worker bee was so responsible without supervision. She thought if one bee can produce so much without oversight, how much more might she produce if she had an administrator.

So the boss recruited a new forager bee who had extensive experience as a supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The supervisor’s first decision was to set up a clocking-in attendance system. She also needed a secretary to help her write and type the reports, so she recruited a drone who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.The boss was delighted with the new reports and asked the supervisor to produce graphs to describe production rates and analyze trends so that she could use them for presentations at meetings with the Queen. So the supervisor bought a new computer and a laser printer and recruited another worker bee to manage the IT department. 

The original enthusiastic worker bee, who had once been so productive, responsible  and relaxed, begrudged this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time.  She missed her independence and the feelings of trust that came with it. 

The boss came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a Person-In-Charge of the department where the bee worked. The position was given to an experienced forager whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for her office. She also needed a computer and a personal assistant, whom she brought from another colony, to help prepare budgets and a strategic optimization plan.

The department became a sad place, where nobody laughed anymore and everybody was easily upset. Everyone felt confined by all the rules and that personal initiative was neither encouraged nor rewarded. So the supervisor bee convinced the boss to start a climatic study of the office environment. Having reviewed the study, the boss found out that production had declined so she recruited a queen-in-waiting, a prestigious and renowned consultant, to carry out an audit and to suggest solutions. The QIW spent 3 months in the department and came out with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded “The Colony is overstaffed.”