Corporate Cost Savings

To: Board of Directors
The Big-Stupid Corporation
Chicago, Illinois

From: A. Engineer
Systems Engineer
The Big-Stupid Corporation
Government Widgets Division
Phoenix, Arizona

Re: Enterprise-wide Cost Savings Proposal, "Rule #1 Training"

Dear Sirs,

I would like to propose a consolidation of our Enterprise mandatory training programs. There are currently 31 such courses with titles such as "Laptop Security", "Safe, Smart and Secure", "Industrial Security Refresher", "Computing Security", "Acceptance of Business Courtesies, Anti-Kickback", "Truth in Negotiations", "Procurement Integrity", "Trade Secrets and Proprietary Information", "Offering Gratuities", "Compliance with the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA)", "Foreign Office Export & Import Compliance Guidelines", "U.S. Import Compliance Awareness", "Export Awareness Overview Training", "Antitrust Compliance", "Insider Trading", "Fair Disclosure Awareness", "Lobbying Awareness and Reporting", "Recruiting and Hiring Government Employees - Conflict of Interest (COI)', "Privacy Directions Awareness", "Ethics Code of Conduct", "Ethics Challenge", "Ethics Recommitment", "Ethics and our Business", "Ethics Orientation" and so on. The structure of these courses is very much the same. Employees are shown the guidlines, and then some hypothetical scenarios and then asked what the correct behavior is to deal with that scenario in a manner consistent with the policies of The Big-Stupid Corporation.

Each employee must spend 1-2 hours in each of these courses which is purely an overhead charge to corporate budgets. I would like to suggest to you a means of consolidating these courses which can be enacted across the entire enterprise at a savings of at least 20 hours of labor per employee. Given our labor costs and the number of employees in this corporation I estimate the savings at roughly 100 million to 200 million dollars per year for this proposal.

Here is the point, the content of all these courses is roughly the same. There is a single priciple which, if applied diligently can answer all the quandries presented in these courses. I call this principle "Rule #1" and I suggest that we replace most or all of our existing training courses with a single, enterprise-wide course. What is Rule #1? Simply stated Rule #1 is "Don't be a dumbass". If we implement "Enterprise Don't Be a Dumbass" training we will not only save huge sums cash but we will, I suggest, enter a golden age in this corporation as the smog falls away from the eyes of employees.

Let me give you some examples from our existing training courses to illustrate the efficacy of Rule #1 training:

Example #1
You are an employee involved in a contract proposal-writing effort and you receive and anonymous letter which proports to give you proprietary information about your competitor's proposal. How do you respond? By applying Rule #1 you immediately realise, "Don't be a dumbass, that's probabaly unlawful." and take the packet directly to the legal department with an explanation of how you obtained it.

Example #2
You are an employee with access to personnel files. You are going on a trip tomorrow and you are concerned that there will be nothing for you to do while waiting at the airport. You consider downloading some of the files to your laptop to bring along to the airport. However, Rule #1 reminds you, "Don't be a dumbass, downloading personnel files to your laptop's hard drive is probably a policy violation".

Example #3
You are a program director and you spend a lot of time with your Government contract monitor. Eventually she offers to sleep with you and asks that you give her daughter a job. If you have had Rule #1 training you realise "Dont' be a dumbass, sleeping with the customer whether in exchange for contract consideration or not is probably a criminal offense."

If my proposal is of some interest to you I can offer you a more detailed course outline and arrange to teach a pilot class for demonstration purposes. Please let me know your decision.

Sincerely,
A. Engineer