Chopping their damn legs off ....
There was a large telephonic company in the Midwest. After Korean war they developed a great program for training supervisors of telephonic operators. Graduates of the program were absolutely top-notch and the program was awarded many commendations, written up in magazines & studies by other organizations.
But there was a problem. The graduates were so good dat as soon as a class graduated, most of them were contracted by other companies & hired away. There was a very high demand for these graduates as they were having excellent communication skills.
The telephone company tried everything to keep its graduates - it gave them more money & fancy titles, it erected an "Honour Wall", it send their spouses flowers on every anniversary etc etc.
The other companies simply gave them more money & even fancier titles !
As u can imagine the head of the telephone company had many meetings to figure out ways to keep graduates from leaving. In one of these meeting, so the story goes, one of the manager lost his temper & shouted: "I'd like to chop their damn legs off - then they couldn't leave."
Everybody laughed. Except one person who said" "Yes of course, that's it."
"Whats it?" said his boss.
"We il hire only handicapped people in wheelchairs for the program. We;ll redo all our entrance ways, our elevators, our toilets. We'll work with doctors and physical therapists to develop exercise programs. We'ill ... "
But there was a problem. The graduates were so good dat as soon as a class graduated, most of them were contracted by other companies & hired away. There was a very high demand for these graduates as they were having excellent communication skills.
The telephone company tried everything to keep its graduates - it gave them more money & fancy titles, it erected an "Honour Wall", it send their spouses flowers on every anniversary etc etc.
The other companies simply gave them more money & even fancier titles !
As u can imagine the head of the telephone company had many meetings to figure out ways to keep graduates from leaving. In one of these meeting, so the story goes, one of the manager lost his temper & shouted: "I'd like to chop their damn legs off - then they couldn't leave."
Everybody laughed. Except one person who said" "Yes of course, that's it."
"Whats it?" said his boss.
"We il hire only handicapped people in wheelchairs for the program. We;ll redo all our entrance ways, our elevators, our toilets. We'll work with doctors and physical therapists to develop exercise programs. We'ill ... "
And that's wat the did. And other companies no longer tried to hire graduates away because they knew they had to redo all their entrance, elevators, toilets and so on.
And it is started because somebody suggested chopping "their damn legs off" - a very illogical solution.
That's Lateral Thinking !
-----
This piece was shared by Nikhil Dandekar on my Engineering college alumni yahoo group !
Really!!!!!
ReplyDeleteThis is what came to my mind after reading this. Out of the box thinking was never meant to be out of the mind....but a good read I must say.