The Human Resources head was instructed to recruit all sorts of management talent that they could find.
HR had recruited three candidates but did not know where to place them, so they asked the CEO to help decide the most suitable positions to place them in.
The Boss instructed them as follows.
Put about 100 bricks in a closed room. Then send the candidates into the room and close the door, leave them alone and come back after a few hours and analyse the situation:-
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If they are counting the bricks, Put them in the Accounts department.
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If they are re-counting the bricks, Put them in Auditing.
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If they have messed up the whole room with the bricks, Put them in Engineering.
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If they arrange the bricks in some strange order, Put them in Planning.
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If they are throwing the bricks at each other, Put them in Operations.
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If they are sleeping, Put them in Security.
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If they have broken the bricks into pieces, Put them in Information Technology.
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If they are sitting idle, Put them in Human Resources.
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If they say they have tried different combinations yet not a single brick has been moved, Put them in Sales.
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If they have already left for the day, Put them in Marketing.
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If they are staring out of the window, Put them in Strategic Planning.
And finally …….
If they are talking to each other and not a single brick has been touched, Congratulate them and put them in Top Management.
Note:
I am not in favour of large organisations, which raises the question, ‘How large should an organisation be?’
An organisation should be as large as it needs to be but no larger than it should be.
Driven by our ego we often seek to be as big and expansive as we can be, this is counterproductive. The larger the organisation the greater the risk of dehumanising the people involved and this corrodes the organisation from within. Eventually, the organisation collapses.
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