Once upon a not so long time ago a farmer had a few good cows. They provided him with milk and ploughed his fields. He got a good harvest year after year, grew richer, bought more cows, bought more land and was the happiest man around. The cows got a good share of the harvest, grew healthier, worked harder and were the envy of the bovine kingdom.
Then one year the monsoons failed and the harvest was bad. The farmer then decided to introduce a few “processes and policies to optimize his service offering and ensure that his profits remained the same”. He reasoned that land was his asset and the cows his liability so he decided on the obvious course of action. He organized cow races and the slowest ones were taken to the slaughter house while the ones that remained were now burdened with extra work. The cows had no option, they worked harder for fear of the slaughtering house and the farmer was happy.
A few years later, the market price of his crops dropped. He still wanted the same profits. Land was still his asset and the cows his liability. The solution was again obvious. Over the years the cows had become used to running the annual race so most of them were running equally well. So he classified the cows on
a) Milk producing ability
b) Amount of hay consumed
c) Amount of cow dung produced and
d) Amount of time spent on the field
This time however, he couldn’t slaughter them so he decided that since he needed the best cows he gave them a bigger share of the harvest compared to the other cows. The relatively poor performing cows had to do the same work with less food and hence they became worse and slowly wandered off to other fields. The farmer was happy. He had the best cows and he had the same profit.
The following year a fairly large percentage of his crops were destroyed by pests. Land =asset, cows =liability. Logic still holds. So he reasoned that if the poorer performing cows had been able to work with a lesser quantity of food a year ago then the best cows could do the same. So the best cows were given a lesser share of the harvest and still expected to perform equally well. These cows also slowly wandered off to greener pastures. The farmer decided that he didn’t really need so many cows so he went to the market and got a few pigs, donkeys and camels.
The donkeys could work a lot but couldn’t really give good milk. The pigs could be sold for meat but were useless in all other areas. The camels could take a lot of heat but they just stood tall over the others and just stared. However, the farmer judged all these animals on the same parameters.
The cows couldn’t work as hard as the donkeys, couldn’t be sold regularly for meat and neither were they as tall as the camels and they figured out that no matter how hard they tried they would never be able to do those things so they too moved away. The farmer was now left with just the pigs, donkeys and camels and he made the donkeys plough the field, the camel give milk and the pigs provided the manure but none of them could plough the field as well as the cows which was his most basic need. So he went to the market and bought a few new cows. These new cows learned by looking at the donkeys, the pigs and the camel who themselves were not doing what they did best. So the farmer ended up with a lot of cows, pigs, donkeys and camels but no animal was doing what it was meant to.
If only the farmer had looked at the cows as his assets and if only the solution had not been so “obvious” and if only he had not tried to keep his profits the same during the hard years he may have still had a lot of the older good cows…..
Moooooo……………………
