TO:              The Management Team

FROM:         Ronald Blather, Director of Human Resources

SUBJECT:     The Millennium Mediocrity Lab

In a recent letter to all employees, the Chairman expressed his concern that staff morale may have "declined noticeably in recent months."  The Chairman's letter candidly acknowledges the lack of empirical data to support this conclusion, but cites powerful anecdotal evidence, such as the recent wet toilet paper attack on the personnel office, and the sharp increase in employee visits to the Web site:  www.mybossmustdie.now.

In response to the Chairman's observations, the Human Resources Department has acquired the services of the leading firm in the employee motivation field:  Blue Smoke, Inc.  Today, we proudly implement Blue Smoke's principal recommendation by announcing:  the Millennium Mediocrity Lab.

Blue Smoke's in-depth, multi-disciplinary study of the Corporation's work force, which consumed the better part of yesterday afternoon, revealed that the most corrosive and divisive force at work in the Corporation is a powerful tide of resentment against so-called "top performing employees."  Again and again, employees expressed rage, frustration, and jealousy, labelling top performers as "golden boys," "God's Gift to Millennium;" or "that f_____ a___-k_____ s____ h_____."   We have reluctantly concluded that top performers' fine efforts are overshadowed by the negative and destructive reactions they engender.

Effective immediately, the Mediocrity Lab concept will be tested for at least 180 days in the Accounting and Finance Department. The key elements of this concept are:

• The Department's mission statement--To provide all members of the Millennium Family with fast, efficient, world-class accounting and finance services--will be changed to:  To avoid really big screw-ups.



• Every six months, the top five percent of the Department's employees, as measured by their performance evaluations, will be transferred to other Departments, and replaced by recent junior college graduates who attained not-greater-than C averages.



• The Department's pay-for-performance plan (PFP) will be reconfigured as a pay-for-conformance plan (PFC).



• Supervisors will be retrained to reduce their expectations, and to avoid indulging employees with excessive praise.  For example, instead of saying "You did a really great job on that report, Adolf," a supervisor should say, "That's quite adequate."

We will evaluate the success of the Mediocrity Lab after 6 months of operation, at which time we hope to expand it to other departments.    In the meantime, please give our Blue Smoke advisors and the employees participating in the Mediocrity Lab some cooperation.    In the near future, I will write to you again in our continuing quest to modestly improve the management of the Corporation's human resources.

©  2002--- John P. Cahill

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