Reluctant Agent 3

This is a level higher in the problem of agency cost.

Again, I would like to tell it in a story.

Samuel is a long serving excellent employee. He has been doing a great job in this company until even the bosses ask for his opinion when faced with pertinent issues.

Then, there were many other mediocre employees doing similar job like Samuel. All of them respected Sam and they have been working together fine.

One day, the company introduced a computer tracking system to monitor workflow. The regional office feels that consolidating the various branch offices would minimize wastage and improve efficiency.

So weeks passed. And Sam and others have meticulously fed in to the tracking system so that the information captured could produce a reasonable and credible outcome for the regional office.

Then, to the surprise of the senior supervisor, the regional office was very upset with the data captured.

The reason?

Very inconsistent! Some data was so plain and incomplete. A limited portion was overwhelmingly detailed and seemed reasonably analyzed with care. It was so different from the rest, and made the reader confused with the general picture. After having assessed the preliminary data, the regional office called the senior supervisor to ask about the discrepancies. However, it was difficult to account and explain the whole picture over a phone call. Inevitably, it became difficult to justify the use of only one source of input (by now you should already know it was Sam's) as a larger population was required for a convincing argument to present to the board of directors!

Due to such issue, the regional office directed a repeat of the exercise!

This being urgent, the senior supervisor called for an urgent meeting.

"All you listen up! We do this again! This time I don't want to do the shit explanations! So, just follow this example..."

The senior supervisor gave a template so that each and every employee followed a variant of the format in order to be consistent. With massaging of the figures and inputs to the tracking system, everything was only poised for success and there must be no room for failure!

And, later he called Sam to his room and blasted him! Why?

The reason being Sam was the one feeding in accurate data and making others look inconsistent!

Sometimes, acting Stupid is better than being Smart. The senior supervisor told Sam. He admitted that he can never out smart Sam, but he is the boss!

Now, that is agency cost and double standard!

Reflection

The good ones are rare. It is sometimes inevitable to sacrifice the few good generals to keep the whole army. The core reason is that people live in interaction, not solitude. Hence, there is politics, and restricted by the availability of resources, it is better seen as "fair" that everyone is average, not better of!