A Continuous Process Improvement Story
		--------------------------------------

	Once upon a time, Sandia National Laboratory (Sandia) and Los
Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) decided to have a boat race down the Rio
Grande.  Both teams practiced long and hard and on Race Day, they were as
ready as they could be.

	It was no contest... Sandia won by a mile!

	LANL was stunned and morale at Los Alamos fell to an all-time
low.  Senior management decreed that the reason for the crushing defeat
must be found.  So a Continuous Process Improvement (CPI) directorate was
formed, comprised of some of the wisest senior managers in LANL.  Their
charter was to determine the "As Is" and develop a "Should Be" which could
be implemented to win the next Sandia/LANL row-off.

	The As Is was completed after many meetings and much study.  It showed
that the Sandia team had eight (8) people rowing and one (1) person steering,
whereas the LANL team had one (1) person rowing and eight (8) steering
managers.  The CPI team immediately hired a consulting firm to study the LANL
management structure and help them develop the Should Be that, once
implemented, would assure that LANL would win the rematch with Sandia.

	The CPI spent many months and millions of dollars studying the As Is,
scatter-gramming, brainstorming, surveying, benchmarking, and networking.  It
was the team's consensus that the reason for the humiliating loss to Sandia
was that the LANL team had too many steering managers.  The Should Be that was
adopted for use in the next race with Sandia was to have only four (4) steering
managers, three (3) deputy steering managers, and one (1) associate deputy
steering manager.  It was also decreed that a new performance appraisal
system would be put into effect for the one (1) rower.  It was hoped that the
new appraisal procedure would provide more incentive to work harder and
become a six sigma performer.  The CPI all agreed, "We must give the rower
Empowerment and Enhancement, and surely we will win."

	Sandia won the next race by two miles.

	LANL appraised the rower as unsatisfactory and fired him.*  The
Lab then sold all the paddles, canceled all capital investments for new
racing equipment, and halted development of a new canoe.  Lastly, LANL
paid an incentive award to the consulting firm, formed a new directorate
to analyze and distribute the lessons learned from the Sandia/LANL races,
and claimed another Total Quality Management victory in the following issue
of the Newsbulletin.

* Someone walking by put a line through "fired him" and wrote above it
  "promoted him into management".