A Quick 'N Dirty Parable: The Corporation and the Hot Dog Stand

So there's a typical multibillion dollar corporation. It employs battalions of accountants and huge databases to manage information and finances. They use all manner of accounting methods to maximize their enormous financial flow. And, properly managed, they do quite well.

Now consider the guy on the corner who sells hot dogs to those accountants on their lunch break. He may keep his cash in a mason jar in the bottom of the weiner heater. He buys his stuff in the grocery store, in a just-in-time fashion, and pays his taxes as he can. He takes cash only.

And this system has been working for him, as it has for the past twenty years. He makes enough to live on, and is content.

What happens if the president of the corporation looks down from his office on the 95th floor of the building, and seeing the hot dog vendor, reasons "we make a helluva lot more money than that poor fool down there. As a service to him, I insist that we help him get up to speed with how businesses should be run in this day and age. Release the accountants!"

In response to which the accountants, database engineers, and financial consultants descend upon the hot dog vendor. They insist that he modernise with the latest computer equipment, digitize his financials, and develop a portfolio of investments. He now accounts for the exact count of his frankfurters with a sophisticated database.

Huh?

Has the corporation helped that hot dog vendor? Maybe. Probably not. But why not?

Because it acted without an accurate view of the hot dog man's goals and business. They assumed that what worked in their world must of necessity work when transplanted into another world. And isn't it a bit arrogant to assume from the get-go that the hot dog vendor doesn't know his own business?

I think that's a lot like contemporary evangelism.