A Management Story of an Ant and the Lion

   A Management Story of an Ant and the Lion

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Once upon a time Mr. Ant used to work in an office of Mr. Lion. Every day, as soon as an Ant reached the office, he used to get engaged with work without wasting time. He enjoyed doing so and remained cheerful as always and happy. This in turn lead to good production level.

The CEO, Mr. Lion was surprised to see the dedication of Ant and felt very happy within him. One day he thought, if Mr. Ant by himself can do such good work, he will be excelling more in performance under proper supervision. So the boss appointed Mr. Cicada as supervisor. Cicada was experienced and famous for supervising and had the capability of writing good reports.

Happy with the new opportunity, Cicada immediately introduced the time-sheet and attendance process which was lacking till then. With the increasing number of thought plans, Cicada himself unable to handle, appointed Mr. Spider as his personal secretary, whose work is to take notes from Cicada and organize them in good visual format for reports. Spider was also responsible for managing phone calls for Cicada.

Seeing the Reports, Lion appreciated much and asked Cicada to provide graphical reports on production and trend analysis, which Lion can display in the next Board meeting. Based on the new requirements, Cicada processed an order for purchasing a computer and a laser printer, and appointed Mr. Fly in charge of the IT department.

Meanwhile, Ant, who used to do a lot of work delightfully earlier, now had to spend more time in meetings and paper works. In turn Ant started losing the enthusiasm for work and the cheerfulness he had started to diminish slowly.

Lion looking into the work pressure of Cicada, thought that it would be wise to have a manager to control the whole department where Mr. Ant worked and appointed Mr. Cockroach. Cockroach in his new office was surprised to see the uncomfortable infrastructure in the department and hence ordered purchasing of ergonomic chair for himself and a good carpet for his cabin.

Along with that Cockroach also got his PA from the previous company to his new one and gave emphasis on Budget Control and Strategic Optimization Plan.

Surprisingly the Department in which the Ant worked, no one seemed to enjoy work anymore and where no more cheerful. At this juncture, Cockroach explained to Lion that a Climatic Study has become necessary for improving production.

Based on the analysis Lion found that the production level has gone down in the Ant’s department by considerable amount. So Lion hired a part-time consultant Mr. Owl to provide a solution to the problem.

Mr. Owl is a leading consultant in the world and is famous for providing solutions for increasing production.

Owl took three months to analyze and finally prepared a report of multiple pages broken up into modular sections. In short the analysis stated that the department was over-staffed.

Based on the report, Lion along with Cockroach call on a meeting and took an immediate decision to sack Mr. Ant due to lack in motivation and negative attitude in work.

Who do you think is responsible for the ant’s poor condition or its being fired? Is it lion, owl or ant itself? And what do you learn from this story? Was the step taken by lion correct when it decided to keep a supervisor? Share your views regarding this story in the comments section below!