First written on August 09, 2004 Revised and Updated Wednesday, October 08, 2008 Published April 07, 1999 Revised and Updated October 08, 2008 HORSES AND DONKEYS IN MANAGEMENT "Our army consists of mere scums of the earth, mere scum."----- Lord Horatio Nelson in one situation. "There are no bad soldiers, only bad officers."------- General Napoleon Bonaparte in another situation. - This statement will stand the test of time and as a tribute, his image appears below. Perhaps the readers would be wondering 'what a strange title' and asking what does horses and donkeys have to do with management ? Unfortunately ,if you ask me, plenty I would say. I am giving below the analogy of what normally happens in the corporate world. In any organization, you have two categories of people . The performers and non - performers. I would classify the performers as Horses and the non performers as Donkeys. The horse, as you all know runs pretty well and can reasonably carry some load. As against this, the Donkey is a beast of burden and can carry much more load than a horse but at a very slow pace. Since everybody cannot be horses , you need a mix of both animals in an organization. You identify the horses that can run and give them important assignments where speed and urgency are of paramount importance. As far as donkeys go, you know what to do and load them with mundane, clerical work which needs plodding along. Time is not the essence, as far as these people are concerned. These donkeys need a whipping constantly to get output and they are so thick skinned and knowing their limitations, carry along unmindfully their chores. They have to be pushed and prodded regularly, if you need any output from them. The horses just run to their target in quick time and will be ready for the next assignment. Now comes the problem with most of the management's. I would apply Pareto's Law to this situation and say it happens in 80 % of the cases. What does an average management do ? They know, any amount of flogging the donkeys will be of no use beyond a point but the work has got to be done. Now comes the irony. They will load the horses with more work of donkeys. Since the horse knows only to run and not kick, it continues to run with a higher load. This continues and one day the horse drops dead, goes berserk or quits. The best part of it is, donkeys continue to exist and prosper. As a result there are more donkeys than horses in most of the ORGANIZATIONS. I  feel, may be, it is better of to be a donkey than a horse. The above has been written with tongue in cheek and people should not mistake the references to animals. This is more of an indictment of management's and the follies they commit. It is time, management's realize their mistakes before the situation goes "beyond salvage " to quote Mr. Robert Ludlum from "Bourne Identity". Written  by Madhavan T Gopalachary Added on August 01, 2008 Dogs and Donkeys in Management I have a very good friend Mr. Natesan Sukumar whom I know from 1973. He is a top pharmaceutical industry executive having worked for organizations like Pfizer. He is now the Chief Compliance Officer at MSD ( Merck, Sharp & Dohme) India, a subsidiary of Merck, USA. He sent me the following story or tale by e-mail. I am happy to reproduce it verbatim.  Thanks Suku. It goes like this…  There was once a washer man who had a donkey and a dog. One night when the whole world was sleeping, a thief broke into the house. The washer man was fast asleep but the donkey and the dog were awake.  The dog decided not to bark since the master did not take good care of him and wanted to teach him a lesson. The donkey got worried and said to the dog that if he doesn't bark, the donkey will have to do something himself. The dog did not change his mind and the donkey started braying loudly.  Hearing the donkey bray, the thief ran away, the master woke up and started beating the donkey for braying in the middle of the night for no reason. Moral of the story " One must not engage in duties other than his own"  Now take a new look at the same story…  The washer man was a well educated man from a premier management institute. He had the fundas of looking at the bigger picture and thinking out of the box. He was convinced that there must be some reason for the donkey to bray in the night.  He walked outside a little and did some fact finding, applied a bottom up approach, figured out from the ground realities that there was a thief who broke in and the donkey only wanted to alert him about it. Looking at the donkey's extra initiative and going beyond the call of the duty, he rewarded him with lot of hay and other perks and became his favorite pet.  The dog's life didn't change much, except that now the donkey was more motivated in doing the dog's duties as well. In the annual appraisal the dog managed a "meets requirement". Soon the dog realized that the donkey is taking care of his duties and he can enjoy his life sleeping and lazing around.  The donkey was rated as "star performer". The donkey had to live up to his already high performance standards. Soon he was over burdened with work and always under pressure and now is looking for a job rotation…  Disclaimer:  All characters in the story are not at all imaginary. Any resemblance to person living or dying of work is purely intentional. Written by Madhavan Gopalachary The views, opinions and interpretations are personal. Sponsorship does not mean that the sponsors endorse them. 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