Management van het onderwijs, een parabel

Once upon a time, Company A and Company B decided to inaugurate an annual boat race. Despite practising hard, Company A team lost by a mile. The management of Team A decided to set up a project to find out why. Their conclusion: Team B had eight people rowing and one steering, while team A had one person rowing and eight steering. Consultants were hired to study the team structure. After millions of guilders, thousands of pages, and hundreds of hours spent discussing the issue, they announced their findings: too many people steering and not enough rowing. The following year the team structure was changed to four steering managers, three senior steering managers and one executive steering manager. A performance appraisal system was also introduced. This gave the person rowing the boat an incentive to work harder. This time, team B won by two miles. Team A sacked the rower for poor performance, sold the paddles, cancelled the budget for a new boat, awarded high performance bonuses to the consultants and distributed the money saved to the senior management.

Ik denk dat het onderwijs een zinkend schip is met de managers die als ratten het zinkende schip nog net op tijd weten te verlaten….