"...finds a grain of wheat, and asks for help from the other farmyard animals to plant it. However, no animal will volunteer to help her."Let's add a new modern twist to this story. What if the Farmer came to the Hen after planting the seed and told her "Good job! You've succeeded at planting the wheat. Now change your focus to work on making the bread. I need to justify to Mrs. Farmer the need to have you around." The Hen may protest, "But I don't have any flour yet." The Farmer's arrogant reply is , "It doesn't matter, I need results now. It doesn't even need to be a full loaf, one piece will do!"
"At each further stage (harvest, threshing, milling the wheat into flour, and baking the flour into bread), the hen again asks for help from the other animals, but again she gets no assistance."
"Finally, the hen has completed her task, and asks who will help her eat the bread. This time, all the previous non-participants eagerly volunteer. However, she declines their help, stating that no one aided her in the preparation work, and eats it with her chicks, leaving none for anyone else." (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Little_Red_Hen)
It does not matter to the Farmer that a project plan was vetted through him and Mother Nature. It needs to be changed now, even though following the original plan will get the Farmer a great tasting LOAF of bread. He just wants the Hen to throw something together by next week and 'prove Her worth' or to 'meet Mrs. Farmer's need for one piece of bread.'
Isn't this the typical reason projects fail or are extended? What seems at the moment a great pressing need to succumb to outside pressure to change the scope of the project, is allowed to creep in and change everything up. "Oh, we don't need to weed the soil or harvest the new wheat, or thresh & mill any new wheat. We can use the pile of old flour over there.
If the project is just allowed to progress, the bread will be made at the end of the project. Or maybe a new project will need to spin up concurrently to make the fancier bread (raisin or multi-grain bread) being requested. Non-the-less, either the natural progression of the project is stymied and ground is actually lost or the results of the project are not the full results that could have been achieved.
"But," goes the argument, "Mrs. Farmer got her piece of bread!" And to that I reply, "Yes, but next time, the old pile of flour will have been used up and more work will be required to get the same results."
So are we going to be a people of 'get rich quick' and rush to the results or at some point are we going to wake up to the fact that the foundation steps are required to achieve great results?
