The sun had just risen when the king of the bird kingdom, the eagle, summoned the birds to a meeting in the old pine tree. The theme of the meeting was to get everyone’s brains on how to sell the feather fans they produce to humans.
The crow spoke first: “The reason why our feather fans are not favored by humans is that the colors are too monotonous, only black and white. I suggest that in the future peacocks should contribute more by plucking some seven-colored feathers from their bodies, so that the colorful feather fans produced will surely be liked by humans.”
“What do you have in mind?” Before the crow finished his words, the peacock said coldly, “If I pluck the seven-colored feathers from my body, then what capital do I have to show off my beauty to humans? I refuse!”
After listening to the crow’s suggestion, the eagle had found it very reasonable and was about to adopt it when it heard the peacock defend itself again; it was in a dilemma at once and had to listen to the other birds in silence.
“King, I suggest that the company change the product slogan, the previous ‘fan, fan away your heat and fatigue’ to ‘electricity saving is the obligation of every citizen, please use the feather fan it! Because human beings are now facing a crisis of electricity shortage. If we advocate them to use feather fans instead of electric fans and air conditioners at this moment, it will surely be a big hit.” Magpie suggested.
“Well, that makes sense.” King Eagle expressed his approval.
“Your Majesty, this suggestion will definitely not work!” The swallow blocked it.
“Why?” King Eagle asked.
“I often live under the roof of human beings, and I know them too well. The new modern humans know how to enjoy themselves very well, even if we change the slogan, they will not necessarily use the feather fan, because what they like is air conditioning, who are too lazy to shake the fan with their strength.” Swallow stated his opinion.
“Oh, that’s true.” King Eagle nodded his head.
So the birds started a new argument.
The sun was about to set, and they were still arguing without any result. The eagle king had to announce that the meeting was temporarily over and would continue to discuss the issue tomorrow.
It was not until the end of the meeting that everyone realized that the sparrow had not come to the meeting again.
“What did it do?” Everyone was puzzled.
“This guy, it is simply unorganized discipline, it has not attended the meeting several times.” The crow said to the eagle king.
“Oh, what has it been doing?” King Eagle was also puzzled. Just as it was about to leave the meeting room, the sparrow arrived with a sweaty head.
“Dear King, I have found a way to sell the feather fan!” Sparrow said happily.
“When did you find it? Where do you want the goods?” King Eagle asked eagerly.
“I …… I used the time of each of your meetings to go to the dwarf country there to sell. This time, the samples brought there have been snapped up by them.”
The eagle king saw this and not only did not criticize the sparrow but also promoted it to the sales department manager, fully responsible for the sale of feather fans.
At the same time, the eagle king also realized that his daily meetings were not wise; they decided that in the future, unless there were important things, they would no longer open pointless meetings.
It can be imagined that if there is no sparrow “out”, such a meeting will endlessly open because the birds can not convince anyone, and as the manager of the eagle does not have their own opinion, it is impossible to quickly come up with ideas, so such a meeting to open no meaning.
This parable gives us a warning: for an organization, try to avoid purposeless, meaningless meetings so that employees spend this time on work; the benefits will be far greater than the things gained from the meeting.
For individuals, whether they must participate in meetings depends on their work’s actual situation; those purposeless, meaningless meetings should be firmly eliminated.
