The Ant – A Tale About Micro-Management

Every morning the busy ant came to work happy and motivated, joyfully singing her song. She loved her job, and spend most of her days working hard. The ant continued being busy and working hard for years, but without anyone to supervise her or constantly tell her what to do.

a-bug-s-life-pixar-67315_1024_768A Bug’s Life Pixar

The general manager, a big fat bug, recognized soon that it could not continue with these unacceptable working conditions and hired a supervisor to enhance control and with it productivity. He hired the beetle with plenty of experience in the work field and excellent references. The first matter of business for the beetle was to standardize the working hours of the ant, and to accomplish this he started compiling reports that would keep track of the working hours of the ant. He purchased and installed a time clock to help monitoring the hours of the ant and to help him with the paper work.

Very soon it was clear that the beetle needed assistance compiling and filing all those reports, and the general manager quickly authorized to hire a secretary. An efficient and ambitious spider was hired to create an archive, handle the phone calls and get control of the administrative tasks that became so overwhelming for the beetle.

The ant continued to work hard, stay happy and motivated, singing her song, because she simply liked her work.

The general manager was amazed by the performance of the beetle, and asked him to add graphics to his reports and focus more on budgeting and forecasting. With the increasing workload for the beetle, it was necessary to hire a fly, to help the supervisor getting things done. To provide the fly with the necessary tools to increase her performance, they purchased a notebook so that the reports could be processed faster, and a color printer was needed as well to impress the general manager with fancy graphics and design.

The busy ant lost her motivation, started complaining, because she spent most of her time filling in reports for the fly, beetle, and spider, that she did not have time anymore to do her work the right way. She continued singing her song from time to time.

Therefore the general manager hired an administrator for the department in which the ant was working, and this important position was assigned to the grasshopper. The grasshopper negotiated during the interviewing process to get a special chair, a company car and a notebook to communicate more efficiently with her employees. Of course the grasshopper needed an assistant to meet the high expectations of the general manager, and hired a toad who already worked for him in his previous employment.

The ant lost her passion and enthusiasm for her work, and become more concerned and nervous about her job by the day.

The general manager noticed that the department of the ant did not meet expectations anymore and was not as profitable as in the previous years, so he turned to the owl for help, an expert in this industry. The owl in return asked for a fortune to identify the root cause of the problem and give proper recommendations. The owl searched and analyzed for a couple of months and came to the final conclusion that the general manager had no other option but to reduce the number of his employees to save his business.

The general manager listened to the owl, and fired the ant…

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