Once upon a time
there was an apple grower who had acres and acres of apple orchards.
In all, he had 10,000 acres of apple orchards.
One day he went to
the nearby town. There, he hired 1,000 apple pickers. He told them,
"Go to my orchards. Harvest the ripe apples, and build storage
buildings for them so that they will not spoil. I need to be gone for
a while, but I will provide all you will need to complete the task.
When I return, I will reward you for your work.
"I'll set up a
Society for the Picking of Apples. The Society -- to which you will
all belong -- will be responsible for the entire operation.
Naturally, in addition to those of you doing the actual harvesting,
some will carry supplies, others will care for the physical needs of
the group, and still others will have administrative responsibilities."
As he set up the
Society structure he made some of them pickers, and others packers,
and others truck drivers, cooks, and accountants, and storehouse
builders, and apple inspectors and even a few administrators. Every
one of them, of course, could have picked apples. In the end,
however, only 100 of the 1,000 people he hired wound up designated as
full-time pickers.
The 100 pickers
started harvesting immediately. Ninety-four of them began picking
around the homestead. As to the remaining six, looking out toward the
horizon they decided to head out to the far-away orchards.
Before long, the
storehouses in the 800 acres immediately surrounding the homestead
were filled with beautiful, delicious apples.
The orchards on the
800 acres around the homestead had thousands of apple trees. But with
almost all of the pickers concentrating on them, those trees were
soon picked nearly bare. In fact, the ninety-four apple pickers
working around the homestead began having difficulty finding apples
to pick.
As the apple
picking slowed down around the homestead, Society members began
channelling some of their effort into building even larger
storehouses and developing better equipment for picking and packing.
They even started some schools to train prospective apple pickers to
replace those who one day would be too old to pick apples.
Sadly, those
ninety-four pickers working around the homestead even began fighting
among themselves. Some began stealing apples that had already been
picked. Although there should have been enough trees on the 10,000
acres to keep all the available workers busy, those working nearest
the homestead failed to move into unharvested areas. Some on the
northern edge of the homestead simply sent their trucks to get apples
on the southern side. And those on the south side sent their trucks
to gather on the east side.
At the same time,
the harvest on the remaining 9,200 acres was left to six pickers.
There were, of course, far too few pickers to gather all the ripe
fruit in those thousands of acres. So, by the hundreds of thousands,
apples began rotting on the trees and falling to the ground.
One of the students
at the apple-picking school showed a special talent for picking
apples quickly and effectively. When he heard about the thousands of
acres of untouched faraway orchards, he started talking about going there.
His friends
discouraged him. They said: "Your talents and abilities make you
very valuable around the homestead. You'd be wasting your talents out
there. Your gifts can help us harvest apples from the trees on our
central 800 acres more rapidly. That will give us more time to build
bigger and better storehouses. Perhaps you could even help us devise
better ways to use our big storehouses since we have wound up with
more space than we need for the present crop of apples."
With so many
workers and so few trees, the pickers and packers and truck drivers
-- and all the rest of the Society for the Picking of Apples living
around the homestead -- had time for things other than just picking apples.
They built nice
houses and raised their standard of living. Some became very
conscious of clothing styles. Thus, when the six pickers from the
far-off orchards returned to the homestead for a visit, it was
apparent to all that they were not keeping up with the styles in
vogue with the other apple pickers and packers.
To be sure, those
on the homestead were always good to those six who worked in the far
away orchards. When any of those six returned, they were given the
red carpet treatment. Nonetheless, those six did have a difficult
time understanding why the Society of the Picking of Apples
designated 96 percent of its budget for bigger and better
apple-picking methods and equipment and personnel for the 800 acres
around the homestead and only spent 4 percent of its budget on the
really ripe orchards out in the distance.
To be sure, those
six pickers knew that an apple is an apple wherever it may be picked.
They knew that the apples around the homestead were just as important
as apples far away. Still, they could not erase from their minds the
thousands of trees they had seen out there which had not yet been
touched by pickers.
They longed for
more pickers to come help them along with some packers, and truck
drivers, and supervisors, and equipment-maintenance men, and ladder
builders. They wondered if some of the professionals working back
around the homestead could teach them better apple-picking methods to
use out where they worked so that fewer apples would rot and fall to
the ground.
Those six sometimes
wondered to themselves whether or not the Society for the Picking of
Apples was really focusing on the task assigned to it by the orchard owner.
Several Society
members were convinced that proper apple picking requires the best
equipment. So, the Society kept many of its members busy developing
bigger and better ladders and even nicer boxes in which to store the
apples. The Society prided itself in being able to raise the
qualification level for full-time apple pickers.
But when the owner
returns and sees the acres of untouched apples, one wonders how happy
he will be when Society members crowd around and begin proudly
showing him the bigger and better ladders they've built and the nice
apple boxes they've designed and made.
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Makes you think ?
.... (Posted 23 August 2002)
