sharing a joke...

Subject

Here is a joke from 1995 – at the height of Business Process Reengineering (BPR aka

Headcount cuts …) meant to bring a little smile in the otherwise serious world of BPR) ; as for me it is an evergreen joke.

“Ladies and Gents !

This is what can happen if BPR is done out of context, without a blueprint, and is performed by individuals that don’t know just what business they are in, who don’t know music! ….Wolfgang AM

A company chairman was given a ticket for a performance of Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony’. Being unable to go, he passed the invitation to the company’s TBM coordinator. The next morning, the chairman asked him how he enjoyed it and, instead of a few plausible observations, he was handed the reply in a memorandum which read as follows:

A) For considerable periods, the oboe players had nothing to do. Their number should be reduced, and their work spread over the whole orchestra, thus avoiding peaks of inactivity.

B) All twelve violins were playing identical notes. This seem unnecessary duplication and the staff of the section should be drastically cut. If a large volume of sound is really required, this could be obtained through the use of an amplifier.

C) Much effort was involved in playing the demi-semiquavers. This seems an excessive refinement, and it is recommended that all notes should be rounded up to the nearest semiquaver. If this were done , it should be possible to use trainees instead of craftsmen.

D) No useful purpose is served by repeating with horns the passage that has already been handled by the strings. If all such redundant passages were eliminated, the concert could be reduced from two hours to twenty minutes.

In the light of the above, one can only conclude that had Schubert given attention to

these matters , he would probably have had the time to finish his symphony.”

ramaa