Have you heard the story of ” The Washer man and the Foolish Donkey” ?

To refresh your memory, and for the benefit of those who have not grown up listening to this moral story, it goes like this…

There was once a washer man who had a donkey and a dog. One night when the whole world was sleeping, a thief broke into the house, the washer man was fast asleep but the donkey and the dog were awake. The dog decided not to bark since the master did not take good care of him and wanted to teach him a lesson. The donkey got worried and said to the dog that if he doesn’t bark, the donkey will have to do something himself. The dog did not change his mind and the donkey started braying loudly. Hearing the donkey bray, the thief ran away, the master woke up and started beating the donkey for braying in the middle of the night for no reason.

Moral of the story ” One must not engage in duties other than his own”

Now take a new look at the same story…

The washer man () was a well educated man from a premier management institute. He had the fundas of looking at the bigger picture and thinking out of the box. He was convinced that there must be some reason for the donkey to bray in the night. He walked outside a little and did some fact finding, applied a bottom up approach, figured out from the ground realities that there was a thief who broke in and the donkey only wanted to alert him about it. Looking at the donkey’s extra initiative and going beyond the call of the duty, he rewarded him with lot of hay and other perks and became his favorite pet. The dog’s life didn’t change much, except that now the donkey was more motivated in doing the dogs duties as well. In the annual appraisal the dog managed a ” meets requirement” . Soon the dog realized that the donkey is taking care of his duties and he can enjoy his life sleeping and lazing around. The donkey was rated as ” star performer”. The donkey had to live up to his already high performance standards. Soon he was over burdened with work and always under pressure and now is looking for a job rotation…

This is an excerpt of the conversation between a tech support guy and a customer.

Tech Support : “I need you to right-click on the Open Desktop.”
Customer : “Ok.”
Tech Support : “Did you get a pop-up menu?”
Customer : “No.”
Tech Support : “Ok. Right click again. Do you see a pop-up menu?”
Customer : “No.”
Tech Support : “Ok, sir. Can you tell me what you have done up until this point?”
Customer : “Sure, you told me to write ‘click’ and I wrote ‘click’.”

Our office was a five storey building with an express lift in it. I would often find myself running for the lift because the doors would just be closing as I approach it. I would normally run in and put my foot forward to prevent the doors from closing. My office was on the 5th floor and I parked my car in the 3rd basement. So it meant that I had to travel about 8 floors to reach my office on the 5th floor and waiting for the lift if I miss one is a pain, more so if the other lift is broke down.

That Tuesday was like normal and as I parked my car and moved to the lift I found the door closing. So i ran hard to reach the lift and the doors were almost closed. I saw that the other lift was down for maintenance and knew my last resort was to do what I was good at – showing my foot into the gap of the door.

I did it and the door stopped and gradually opened. As the door opened I found there were 2 passengers in the lift – my Operations Manager(my BOSS) and the AVP-Operations (his BOSS). They gave me a grim look as if asking what was I doing being in such a responsible position.

They got down at the 1st floor but couldn’t stop turning and giving me a sarcastic last look. As the door of the lift closed and it moved I felt that the express lift was a local train. Those 4 floors were the longest I had ever travelled.